Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1873

Fathers and Brothers from the Society of Mary arrived in Louisiana in 1863 at the invitation of Archbishop John Mary Odin. At that time America was a mission for the European-based Marists. One of their first houses was at Jefferson College in Convent, Louisiana. In 1873, a scant decade after the Marists’ arrival, Jefferson College experienced a deadly outbreak of yellow fever, with five members of the college community dying in a short period.