[Ansteorra] Bubonic Plague: Millican, Texas outbreak

[Peter Schorn]

Just to bring this back on-topic (sort of) Millican Texas was the site of the last Bubonic Plague pandemic on the North American continent.  Millican's just a few miles south of College Station, on the old Wellborn Road (but not Old Wellborn Road).  Back before the Civil War it was the southeast Texas railhead--that is, the railroad came up there from Galveston and stopped.  Of course that meant all the overland commerce from the interior came there too.  So it's not surprising that's where the Plague broke out. It was somtime in the 1840's, as I recall, but I'm not sure and can't find anything online.

(And FWIW, "Black Plague" is apparently a misnomer--a Swedish mistranslation of the Latin "atra mors"--"terrible plague."  The people of the time simply called it the the Great Pesitlence, Great Plague or Great Dying) 

The quick succession of the epidemic, the Civil War and the extension of the railway pretty much killed Millican off. There' not much left of it now, but if you ever pass through there's a historical marker near the crossroads.

--Cadfan ap Morgan