Vermont AHGP
Part of the American History and
Genealogy Project
Epidemics in Montpelier
From D. P. Thompson's History
Endemics we have none. From first to last no diseases have made their appearance in town which could be discovered to be peculiar to the place, or to have been generated by any standing local causes. Of epidemics, Montpelier has had its share, but still a light share compared, as we believe, with a majority of the towns in the State, only four deserving the name having occurred from the first settlement of the town to the present day. The first of these was the dysentery, which fatally prevailed throughout the town, in common with most other towns in Vermont, during the summer and fall of 1802. The victims in Montpelier were:
Mrs. Sophia Watrous, wife of Erastus Watrous, Esq.
Erastus Hubbard, a younger brother of Timothy Hubbard.
John Wiggins, another young man, and a considerable number of
children.
The second epidemic was the typhus fever, which prevailed to a considerable extent in the summer season of 1806, and proved fatal to Montpelier's favorite and most honored citizen, David Wing, Jr., then Secretary of State. Luther Mosely, Esq., another valued citizen, also fell a victim to the same disease, together with a young man by the name of Cutler, a girl by the name of Goodale, and several others.
The third epidemic visiting the town was that fearful disease known by the name of spotted fever, which, to the general alarm of the inhabitants, suddenly made its appearance in the village in the winter of 1811.
The first victim was Sibyl Brown, a bright and beautiful daughter of Amasa Brown, of the age of nine years, who, on Saturday, January 2nd, was in school, on the evening of that day sliding with her mates on the ice, and the next morning a corpse.
The wife of Aaron Griswold, and the first wife of Jonathan Shepard, were next, and as suddenly destroyed by this terrible epidemic, which struck and swept over the village, to which it was mostly confined, like the blast of the simoom, and was gone. There were over 70 cases in this village, and, strange to tell, but three deaths of the disease, which at the same time was nearly decimating the then 400 inhabitants of Moretown, and sweeping off 60 or 70 of the 2,000 inhabitants of Woodstock.
The chief remedy relied on here was the prompt use of the hot bath, made of a hasty decoction of hemlock boughs; and the pine-board bathing vessel, made in the shape of a coffin, was daily seen, during the height of the disease, in the streets, borne on the shoulders of men, rapidly moving from house to house, to serve in turn the multiplying victims.
So strange and unexpected were the attacks, and so sudden and terrible were often the fatal terminations of the disease, that it was likened to the Plague of the Old World. Some of its types, "indeed, so closely resembled the Plague, as well to justify men in deeming them one and the same disorder. A bright red spot, attended with acute pain in some instances, appeared in one of the limbs of the unwarned victim, and, like the old Plague spot, spread, struck to the vitals and caused his death in a few hours. In other instances, a sort of congestion of the blood, or silent paralysis of all the functions of the life, stole unawares over the system of the patient, his pulse faltered and nearly stopped, even before he dreamed of the approach of the insidious destroyer.
The late worthy Dr. James Spalding once told us, that he was the student of an eminent physician, in Alstead, New Hampshire, when the epidemic visited that place, that he frequently went the rounds with his instructor in his visits to his patients, and that on one of these occasions they made a friendly call on a family in supposed good health, when the master of the house congratulated himself on the prospect that he and his young family were about to escape the disease which had been cutting down so many others. Something, however, in the appearance of one or two of the apparently healthy group of children present attracting the attention of the old Doctor, he fell to examining their pulses, when in two of them he found the pulse so feeble as to be scarcely perceptible; but keeping his apprehensions to himself, he made some general prescriptions for all the children, and left, hoping his fears would not be realized. Within three days both of those children were buried in one grave.
The physicians who had charge of these cases in Montpelier were Dr. Lamb, Dr. N. B. Spalding, Dr. Woodbury, and Dr. Lewis, of Moretown. Volumes have been written on the causes of this and similar epidemics, and yet to this day the subject is involved in clouds of mystery.
The fourth epidemic followed soon after the last, and in some instances, assumed some of its peculiar types. This occurred in the winter of 1813, and was here generally called the typhus fever, though it partook more of the characteristics of peripneumony, or lung fever, being the same disease which first broke out the fall before, among the U. S. troops at Burlington, and by the following mid-winter had become a destructive epidemic in nearly every town in the State, carrying on, according to the statistics of Dr. Gallup, more than 6,000 persons, or one to every 40 of its whole population.
In this whole town, during the year 1813, the number of deaths, most of which were of this disease, was 78, among which were those of Capt. N. Doty, R. Wakefield, C. Hamblin and others, in the prime of life. This great number of deaths in one year was, beyond all comparison, greater than ever occurred before, or has ever occurred since, it is believed, in proportion to the population, which was then about 2,000; while the average number of deaths in town per year, about that period, was, as near as can now be ascertained, but a little over 20, and of course but little more than one death in 100. In the village, according to records left by the Rev. Chester Wright, the average number of deaths for the five years preceding 1813 was but four per year, which must have been considerably less than one to 100 yearly. This seems to be confirmed by another record left by Mr. Wright, of the number of deaths occurring each year in the village for the 14 years succeeding 1816, by which it appears that the average number of deaths in the village, during that whole period, was but 10 yearly, while the population during the last-named period increased from nearly 1,000 in 1816 to nearly 2,000 in 1830; so that the rate of mortality during the whole 19 years, of which we have given the approximate statistics, was, with the exception of 1814, always greatly less than one to every 100 inhabitants; all going to confirm what we have before stated respecting the peculiar healthiness of the location of our town, and especially of our village, from the earliest times to the present day.
Source: History of Washington County Vermont, Collated and Published by Abby Maria Hemenway, 1882.
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