Considered the first documented influenza epidemic in North America, the outbreak is said to have spread all the way to the West Indies, where significant mortality was reported.
[6] John Winthrop, the Puritan Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, describes the "epidemical sickness" as prevailing in the month of June, afflicting "Indians and English, French and Dutch.
[8] It is said to have ultimately arrived in the West Indies, specifically Barbados and Saint Kitts, where, according to Winthrop's account, some 5,000 died on each island this year.
In direct response to this situation, the Massachusetts General Court enacted a quarantine requirement for all ships arriving at Boston Harbor from the West Indies, the first such measure in colonial America, to prevent the importation of "the plague, or like grievos [in]fectious disease" then raging in those parts.
[13][14] Some authors have asserted that it was specifically these outbreaks (rather than some unidentifiable "plague") that prompted the Massachusetts quarantine measure, as the restrictions were lifted two years later, in May 1649, only once the yellow fever epidemic in those parts had subsided.
[15][16] In particular, some have drawn an explicit connection between Winthrop's account of "great mortality" in Barbados and Saint Kitts and the yellow fever then epidemic in that region.
[10]: 183, 185 The Puritan missionary John Eliot described the outbreak of this disease as "suddaine & generall, as if the Lord had immediately sent forth an angel, not [with] a sword to kill but [with] a rod to chastize, and he smot all, good & bad, old & young.
"[10]: 185 Similarly, an order for a fast in Massachusetts the following year made reference to "the Lord's visitation generally through this country the last summer by an unknown disease.
"[10]: 186 Eliot described the disease as "a very depe cold, [with] some tincture of a feaver & full of malignity & very dangerous if not well regarded by keeping a low diet.
[10]: 185 John Brock, a graduate of Harvard in the Class of 1646, remarked casually in his memorandum book for the year 1647, "Every body has gotten a Cold.
[5][28] Caruso relied on historical records and "educated assumptions" to piece together a narrative of Alse Young's life, from her emigration from England in 1635 to her execution in Windsor in 1647.