Smallpox and the Pesthouse

Few, now, can understand the terror that seized upon communities in 1792, when the smallpox scourge attacked them. The victims were isolated from home, family, and friends, in some hovel remote from town, in order to protect homes from contamination. The unsanitary conditions that so often prevailed offered a fertile field for outbreaks of the disease, at that time country wide. It had been known that inoculation generally resulted in a mild form of the disease and left the patient afterward immune. Dr. Adonijah Howe of Jaffrey, a progressive physician of skill and the highest character, studied the disease and kept abreast of the times. In 1792 he asked the cooperation of the town in setting apart a pesthouse for a defense against smallpox. There was intense opposition, but his request was granted by the town in spite of a petition of protest signed by many prominent citizens. A pest-house was obtained on the hillside below Cheshire Factory, in the former Simeon Burt house. The location is still plainly marked by a filled-in cellar hole from which an elm tree is growing. No record has been found of the number who took the treatment or the cures made, but that they came from a wide surrounding country and that six cases resulted in death is learned from the mortality record of the Reverend Laban Ainsworth.

Eliza Danforth of Amherst, New Hampshire, was the first to die, October 25, 1792. Seven days later, November 1, Honorable Abel Wilder of Winchendon, Massachusetts, (see Revolutionary record) was the second. He was one of the first citizens and a first settler of Winchendon, and had just been chosen delegate to the National Convention at Baltimore. As smallpox was epidemic in the city at the time he considered it wise before undertaking the long journey to take the lesser chance of inoculation, and came to the pest-house of Dr. Howe. On the first day of September, 1792, he set out from his home on horseback for Jaffrey, stopping on the way for a last look at the progress of the work upon the new meeting-house where a company of his neighbors were grading the common. Less than two months later fatal symptoms appeared and Dr. Israel Whiton of Winchendon was called to receive his last request in regard to his worldly affairs. Instead of meeting with his peers in the great, National Convention, he prepared calmly for his final journey to the corner of the cow pasture.

An even greater tragedy occurred in the death of little twelve-year old Nancy Thorndike, daughter of Joseph Thorndike, well-to-do storekeeper at the center of the town. Mr. Wilder had lived nearly his appointed time; he had known success and honor; his children were growing up to perpetuate his name and memory. But the child, Nancy, with the promise of a full and happy life, was suddenly called to undergo, disfigurement, pollution, suffering, and death. On November 4 she was buried in the little enclosure set apart for victims of the plague. A few days later, November 12, Enoch Thurber of Keene, a youth of twenty-three, died of the same disease; on December 14, a Mr. Cambridge from Rindge, and on December 19, Oliver Gould of Jaffrey. He was in the prime of life and had growing children. He could not well be spared, but he lies here, one of an outcast band, in the forsaken corner of the cow pasture, a soldier of the Revolution over whose grave Taps has never been sounded or the Reveille heard.

Source: Jaffrey Town History, Vol I, 1937. Pp 714-16.