The Cholera Epidemic

In 1850, disaster struck Kalamazoo in the form of a cholera epidemic. As a small village which hadn't even been incorporated as a city yet, Kalamazoo was hit hard by the disease. A large number of Dutch immigrants were affected in particular. 

A party of twenty-seven people from Holland had landed in September of 1850, headed by Paulus DenBlkyer. They likely traveled along the Erie Canal to Buffalo, before finding their way to Detroit, after which they presumably took advantage of the Michigan Central Railroad to end up in their destination: Kalamazoo. From there, the party found refuge in the Exchange Hotel on October 1st, 1850, though sources vary on how many of the immigrants stayed there. [1]

Either way, by October 4th, six people staying at the hotel had become terribly ill and died. The disease spread from there, claiming more lives until seven of Paulus DenBlyker's party were dead, along with at least two other Kalamazoo residents.  [2]

The news must've been shocking to the village of Kalamazoo, with rumors quickly spreading. The disease's seeming origins at the Exchange Hotel and the recently arrived immigrants did not paint a pretty picture. 

Paulus DenBlkyer himself wrote a letter after arriving in Kalamazoo claiming that two last-minute additions to the party were the ones who were infected with the disease, and the ones who had spread it upon their arrival. This account has multiple issues with it, so it's unlikely that this was the cause of the outbreak. For instance, DenBlkyer's letters seemed to mix facts up; the number of people in his party was listed as 27 once, and 38 another time. A boy named Charles Hoek was supposedly one of the cholera victims, despite the contradictory lack of a Charles Hoek on their ship's list. 

It's also possible that one of the party members was an asymptomatic carrier of cholera, though there's no proof of that either. 

Dutch immigrants were reportedly forced by village officials to move to another location on October 9th. No doubt, this was due in part to the village mistaking the epidemic for a series of poisonings. 

With such rumors flying about, the increased wariness of Dutch Immigrants in particular was to be expected. It's a cycle that repeats itself even to the modern day: the spread of disease is blamed upon those who are foreign to the community, which most often places the burden of blame upon immigrants. This was also one of, if not the first party of Dutch immigrants to arrive in Kalamazoo. 

A young medical student named Robert C. Kedzie was called on to try to shed some light on the mysterious death of the victims. While Kedzie reported cholera symptoms–abdominal pain, excessive vomiting and diarrhea, and gaunt or sunken eyes–he could not find any evidence of poison as the rumors claimed. He also correctly deduced that the various medicines that had been used in an attempt to treat the patients had little effect.  Despite correctly diagnosing the patients, Kedzie and the other doctors on site were unable cure many of the victims.

It wouldn't be until 1883 that the cause of cholera would be recognized as a "comma-shaped germ" called the bacterium Vibrio cholerae, with the invention of a vaccine following soon after in 1885.  

Cholera epidemics were not all that unusual in the 1800s, though the cholera epidemic that swept through Kalamazoo Village was likely one of its earlier serious disease outbreaks. 

[1] Kedzie, Robert C. The Cholera in Kalamazoo: with a historical introduction by Willis F. Dunbar. Edited by Alexis A. Praus. (Kalamazoo Public Museum, Kalamazoo, MI, 1961).

[2] Brewer, Robert N. Kalamazoo's First Cemetery (Kalamazoo Valley Genealogical Society, 1987)