1850 Project : Alamance County, NC
Throughout the 1850’s many events were taken place, such as the operation of the underground railroad, which was a passageway lead by Harriet Tubman to show slaves a route to escape to freedom. Also events such as laws trying to be passed throughout congress to make certain states become free states. What caused this to become difficult for slaves desperate to free themselves was called the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act which made it illegal for any citizen to assist an escaped slave and if one was sighted by a citizen that he should be turned into the authorities so he/she can be returned to its rightful owner. This is why it was very dangerous to use the underground railroad and try to escape because if you were caught the consequences were detrimental. The 1850s for slaves were rough as you will see in the next few graphs, many black people died a slave. In conclusion, the 1850’s were not easy, many houses were unstable, new laws and acts were being passed daily, and slavery brought black people a great deal of pain.
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This graph “Top Five Causes of Death 1850 Alamance County, NC” is basically showing the top five causes of death in Alamance County during the 1850’s, but in this pie chart the numbers are put into percentages because it is just more convenient when comparing which cause had more people die from it. This is a necessary graph to show due to cause of death being one of the main questions you think about when you are reading data about the people of 1850 in Alamance County, NC. This can also tell you a lot about Alamance County in general cause you could see common causes of death. [pic 2]
For example an unusual cause of death on the list was croup. Croup is an upper airway infection that creates a barking cough due to the lack of oxygen being breathed in. This is unusual because now in the 21st century viruses of this nature clear up within a few days or a few weeks, it is now not the cause of death, but I see how it would be the cause of death in the 1850’s due to their being a lack of treatments to cure small viruses like this.
This next graph is explaining the Number of Deaths in each month for Alamance County, NC in the 1850s. This graph is very interesting to analyze due to how much the number of deaths differ for each month. The month that had the most deaths was March. March is the month where Winter is basically trying to transfer into Spring, so my hypothesis of why so many deaths happened in the month is because the the drastic change in weather messed with many people’s allergies which most likely in the 1850s they did not have many allergy medications available to the population. This is why I think that March has the most deaths. [pic 3]
The weather in NC is not very consistent meaning it could be well into spring and you will still have those very chilly mornings as if it was still winter time. This type of weather could also cause pneumonia which apparently around this time of the 1850’s was a common death.
My third graph has to do with the average age for white females and males and also african american females and males. This is showing just the average ages for the males and females of the races black and white. This graph has nothing really complicated about it. Although I will explain how the differences in average ages do not vary much from one another except for african american males, which it the one category of this graph I am going to focus on the most. [pic 4]