Canon Largo Cemetery, Sabinoso, San Miguel County, New Mexico

From Leslie Fox and Teri Reynoso-Boatman, Special Collections Library, Albuquerque Public Library:

Here’s what Leslie had to say: 

“While it’s not proof, I think we can safely assume, based on what we found, that it was a smallpox epidemic in the area that was responsible for so many deaths at the same time. Fort Union and the Winning of the Southwest, by Chris Emmett, (pp. 383-384) states that on Dec 19, 1877, 130 deaths had taken place in La Junta (a Parish?), 250 in the Parish of Las Vegas, and 300 in the vicinity of Mora. Gateway to Glorieta by Lynn Perrigo says that the first record of a smallpox epidemic (in the town of Las Vegas) was in 1877 with 82 known deaths. Apparently there’s a record of a boy who remembers his father’s wagon hauling 30 bodies to the graveyard in one day. This would explain so many people with the same exact date of death. In the Santa Fe New Mexican, Jan 28, 1878, it lists 161 deaths by smallpox in the Santa Fe Parish between May 27, 1877 and Dec 31 1877. “

A thank you to Morgan Kraft who saved newspaper articles and book pages. I’m attaching those here.

• Fort Union and the Winning of the Southwest, by Chris Emmett pp. 383-84.
• Gateway to Glorieta, by Lynn Perrigo, pp. 78-81.
• Small Pox, Las Vegas Gazette, 10 Feb 1877.
• Las Vegas Gazette, 3 Mar 1877.
• Small Pox, The Daily New Mexican, 5 Apr 1877.
• The Small-Pox in the Parish of Santa Fe, Weekly New Mexican, 26 Jan 1878.