Margin Notes: Rose Hayward and the Cholera Ship

An inside look at my approach and processes, and some of the challenges faced

| Margin Notes | Start from the Beginning|

Release date: October 14, 2025

Hi, and welcome to the Margin Notes on Rose Hayward and the cholera ship, a special feature for paid subscribers here at The Lost & Found Story Box. Thanks so much for your support!

Today I’ll be sharing a little more about the story of Rose Case Hayward, a young bride, scholar and world-renowned musician who found herself in the middle of one of America’s most challenging health care dramas of the period. I’ll get into how I found this story, how I approached it and some of the challenges it represented in terms of research and writing.

Despite focusing primarily on Rose’s experience, this event was a big story with a lot of moving parts. There were also a lot of really interesting side stories that didn’t make it into the finished piece, and I’ll be writing a little about them, as well.

And finally, there were some unanswered questions, and I’ll talk about what’s happening with them, too.

So, let’s jump in and see what we find!

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Where the story started

I first came across the name Rose Case back in December of 2024 while looking for stories about remarkable women. In fact, I may even have used that phrase in my search of the newspaper archives!

Initially, I wondered if Rose’s story might be about her life as a musician. Beyond being accomplished, maybe she’d done something super interesting, or at least worth writing about. I clipped more than a dozen articles before finding what I was looking for — and spoiler alert, it had nothing to do with music1

Headline from the Iowa County Democrat, Mineral Point, WI dated October 14, 1892.

Published nearly a month after Rose, George and the rest of the cabin passengers aboard the Rugia had been released from quarantine, the story included a good number of direct quotes — which I’m always looking for, but was also about a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, namely the 1892 cholera outbreak on immigrant ships.

I knew there was a lot of information about the outbreak. It was a big deal at the time, and set a lot of protocols for quarantine, some of which are still in use today. Newspaper coverage was extensive, if not always responsible. And nearly all of the government agencies and authorities involved did post-event reports. Entire books have been written on specific aspects of the event and its aftermath, and in all genres, and there’s no shortage of content online, again some more accurate than others.

All of which is to say, I knew I would have to show some discipline in sticking to the story I wanted to tell: the story of one privileged young woman’s experience as a cabin passenger on a ship infected with cholera. Full stop.

And I was right – scope creep was a constant, daily battle as I worked my way through more than five months of research and writing to bring you Rose’s story.

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Research by the numbers

My finally tally for research material was pretty impressive:

• 97 unique newspaper articles clipped and transcribed, nearly all of which were published during the six-week period between August 21 and October 9, 1892

• 21 official government or agency reports published between 1892 and 1904

• 6 books published between 1899 and 1927

• Various material held at 23 different public or institution archives

Oh, and I also did partial genealogical research on 42 individuals, including cabin passengers, steerage passengers, ship crew members and health and government officials. Basically, if someone was named in an article or report, I did at least a cursory inquiry into their background.

There was a mind-numbing amount of redundancy in the research material I reviewed for this story.

Mind. Numbing.

I also, of course, came across a ton of really cool stuff that will totally increase my over-under at Trivia Pursuit and give me hours of useless information to share on long car trips.

On a serious note, this story taught me so much history and has sparked so many lines of research, the fruits of which are still to come. That’s what I love about doing what I do.

Research is an astonishingly rewarding journey, and one which captivates me on a minute-by-minute basis. Thanks for helping to make that possible.

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Probably one of the coolest things I did was go through the Rugia’s steerage passenger list line-by-line documenting country of origin, destination, accommodation location and status ie married, parents, etc., in an effort to get a better idea as to what may have happened to Frida. Standard protocol called for an unaccompanied minor to be cared for by crew, often the captain himself, until the child could be passed off to authorities or a guardian. But if Freda actually was just six-months old as listed on the passenger info, I couldn’t help but think she may have been cared for by a female passenger traveling with an infant of her own whom she was breastfeeding. More about that search behind the paywall.

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In the eye of the storm

In getting into the weeds of this event, it was easy to assume that everyone was sort of winging it. Sure, there were protocols in place for “if and when” another deadly disease landed on American shores via a ship full of immigrants — and if you happened to be the owner of that ship, you had protocols, too — but overall, those protocols seemed to be more paper than practical, and possibly even unknown to all but those tasked to write them.

So when “if and when” actually did arrive, it took a while for everyone to get up to speed.

Part of the issue was the authorites in Hamburg who withheld crucial information about cholera infections until the ships were already steaming toward New York. As a result, in most cases, at least, it was several days before anyone came down with symptoms, much less died. And even then, cholera wasn’t the immediate obvious cause.

It was a sad fact that people died on crossings fairly frequently, so ships had their protocols pretty much down pat, at least until the deaths started piling up. Just looking at notations on the the passenger list, its pretty obvious ship staff were worried. Names were crossed off, cause of death was scribbled in then, changed, dates appear in some instances but not in others. And no ship records were kept on who went where once the ships were in Quanratine.

Here’s an example: Althought the Rugia arrived into port September 3, and all the passengers had been removed from the ship by September 15, the official paperwork put their arrival at September 21 — the day the first groups of passengers were released from Quarantine.

On shore, the response — and more importantly for me, the documentation, was equally chaotic, convoluted and confused.

Once the Rugia and other ships were sent to the lower harbor to be quarantined, harbor patrol was sent out to make sure no one got on or off the ships and to limit access to passengers. In the early hours, tugs were hired by reporters to get close enough to talk to passengers, but that was soon halted, and only official briefings and correspondence was allowed.

The result was that the same facts — and I use that word loosely — appeared in different papers on different days, often reported as having occurred whatever day the paper came out, or the case of morning, evening and special editions when the paper had room to fill : announcements of onboard deaths is a great example.