Sandusky to commemorate Cholera Cemetery

SANDUSKY — Sandusky officials want to highlight a property reminiscent of what many consider the city's "darkest hours."Led by three city commissioners — Dick Brady, Dave Waddington and ex officio mayor Dennis Murray Jr. — they're pushing to honor the Cholera Cemetery in time for Sandusky's bicentennial, or 200th birthday, in 2018.The elected officials aspire for walking tours and other tributes to commemorate all 357 people buried there in 1849. Today it's a closed cemetery and recognized as a memorial park.Before hosting promotional events at the cemetery, located on Harrison Street near AMVETS Park, local public services department employees plan on sprucing up this site. It would mark the cemetery's first such major makeover in about 50 years.Among the expected enhancements: planting shrubbery and flowers; trimming trees along a fence line; painting the fence; and touching up a monument, or obelisk, acknowledging those dying from the disease."These people deserve to be honored," Murray said. "It's a really important story in terms of the cholera epidemic, how it got to Sandusky and how it dramatically changed our population."Various Sandusky officials — from left: public services director Brad Link, commissioner Dave Waddington, ex officio mayor Dennis Murray Jr. and commissioner Dick Brady — stand in the Cholera Cemetery on Wednesday, March 8, 2017. They all committed to making major enhancements at the memorial park by 2018.Prevalent in the 1800s, cholera is an infectious, and often fatal, bacterial disease of the small intestine, which is typically contracted from toxic water supplies."When transportation started ramping up, on the Erie Canal and on steamships, cholera traveled with it," Brady said. "The more mobile the population got, the higher the propensity was for this disease to spread."History records show at least 400 Sandusky residents died from cholera between the late 1840s and the early 1850s. This count includes the 357 buried at Cholera Cemetery. An additional 2,500 people fled the city because of this disease."We lost half of our population," Murray said. "This was definitely one of Sandusky's darkest hours, no question about it.Added Brady: "They felt that if they could get out of the city, they could survive. But they were wrong. Many people died on rural farms and died all over Ohio because they hadn't figured out the problem was in the polluted water."So why remember something so terrible?"It's a big part of the history of this community, and now it's time that we should be taking advantage of showing off our history, no matter good or bad," Brady said.A memorial for the doctors who treated victims of Sandusky's cholera outbreak in the 1840s stands in disrepair at the Cholera Cemetery. By next year, city officials promised to enhance the cemetery, which includes touching up the memorial and its surrounding area. History lessonCholera first appeared in North America in or around 1832. It spread rapidly up the St. Lawrence River and into New York due in part to crowded and unsanitary conditions on the ships people traveled on and also some of the shore accommodations along the way, where eating and drinking was done with little regard for cleanliness.The dreaded disease hit Sandusky that year with the death of Captain S. Wadsworth of the schooner Ligure, which had arrived the week before from Buffalo, N.Y. The Sandusky Clarion announced his death and reported: "He was not a resident, and his habits had recently been such as to be a cause of cholera. During the period, there were thirty (30) or thirty-five (35) deaths, all of them strangers or person of dissipated habits so that there was no loss to the city."Three tombstones mark the graves of Revolutionary War veterans at Cholera Cemetery on Harrison Street in Sandusky. The city will make various updates at the cemetery, which hasn't seen any major makeover whatsoever in decades. In June 1832, a petition was presented to (the Sandusky city) council to pass an ordinance to guard against cholera and other contagious diseases. Council passed an ordinance providing for the inspection of vessels and passengers before allowing the discharge of same as a measure of prevention.Cholera plagued many areas of the country, but Sandusky was relatively free of the disease until the summer of 1849, when, from July 1 to Sept. 7, there were 357 deaths. Unreported cases would bring the total to at least 400.There were 357 burials in the Harrison Street Cemetery (now known as the Cholera Cemetery) in 68 days, including 60 of them in a common grave on July 28-29. Many people, naturally, fled from the city and, according to a story, there was no one to dig graves, so the "town drunkard" volunteered his services and dug graves all through the summer for the cholera victims.Source: Erie County Historical Society, "Cemetery History" by Barbara K. WendtA historical marker explains the significance of the Cholera Cemetery in Sandusky. Sandusky officials are planning on making upgrades to the cemetery, which hasn't seen any major changes in decades. Sandusky officials meet at the Cholera Cemetery on Harrison Street in Sandusky to discuss updates at the historic site on Wednesday, March 8, 2017.