Recently I was assisting a local group with their cemetery database. They have some interesting notes left by a local historian regarding who is buried in the oldest cemetery in town, and do not have headstones to prove burial…and, by golly his notes are pretty accurate! Anyhow, I was cross-referencing these notes with a transcription of records from the local church, which I photographed and transcribed some fifteen years ago. I noticed in the record book of Rev. Thomas Balch, the deaths of 18 people from the village of South Dedham in September and October of 1775 had been recorded. This is a sharp contrast to the 8 to 10 deaths Balch recorded annually.
Currently we are dealing with a pandemic, the likes of which we have not seen in over one hundred years, so these recordings caught my eye. In the 1770s the village of South Dedham was a sparsely inhabited agricultural community, and 18 deaths in a two-month span must have been devastating for this little village. These entries made me want to figure out what was happening in the fall of 1775 in the Boston area. I found that the illness Bostonians were dealing with was a small pox epidemic. In fact, one article I found online noted Bostonians were so focused on the illness that it took away their worries about the war.
Small pox is a virus, the CDC says “it was a serious infectious disease caused by the variola virus. It was contagious—meaning, it spreads from one person to another. People who had smallpox had a fever and a distinctive, progressive skin rash. Most people with smallpox recovered, but about 3 out of every 10 people with the disease died.” Bostonians were not unfamiliar with small pox. Over the 150 years since the Winthrop Fleet landed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they had experienced waves of this illness. The English, who had taken over the city of Boston in 1775, were not concerned about catching the virus, as many had either been previously exposed or inoculated against it. But the citizens of Boston struggled with the virus, some were sent to the countryside, by the British General Gage, some say to free up space in the city for British soldiers, others believe Gage wanted to spread the illness to the Boston countryside.
Like today, as we grapple with this strange novel virus, the American colonists, in the 1700s, recognized the importance of quarantining those with the contagious disease. Sometimes by setting an individual off by themselves or sometimes closing off an entire community until the virus had run its course. Often businesses were forced to close during these times, and farmers found they were either too sick to tend their crops or that others were too sick to help them. Even in the 1700s, there were economic consequences to these epidemics.
Back in Dedham in the fall of 1775, those that were the most effected were the children. Nathan Morse lost three children, while the families of Silas Morse, Jeremiah Kingsbury, and Benjamin Fuller each lost two children. After October, Rev. Thomas Balch’s record book does not record any deaths until Sarah Farrington and Liberty Thorp both died in January 1776. Indicating the smallpox virus had run it course for the good people of South Dedham, and likewise, today the Covid-19 virus will run its course for the people of today.
Tony Williams, an author who has written and lectured extensively on the 1721 smallpox epidemic in Boston, notes in an online article he wrote for the St. Luke’s Historic Church and Museum, in Smithfield, Virginia, “That winter, businesses opened again, ships returned to the harbor, social relations returned to normal, people walked freely through the streets without fear, believers went back to church. While their lives may have been forever changed in large and small ways, the people endured, and normal life returned again. “
I find this statement very hopeful for our own future.
Sources:
- Thomas Balch, “The First Church Record Book” The First Church of Norwood, transcribed by Laurie L. Kearney
- Laurie L. Kearney, “The Second Parish Cemetery List,” Census Notes, Norwood, Massachusetts
- “What is Small Pox?” The Center for Disease Control, The US Department of Health & Human Services (cdc.gov: accessed May 10, 2020)
- Elizabeth Fenn, The Great Small Pox Epidemic, History Today, Vol 53, issue 8 August 2003
- Tony Williams, “A Pox and the Social Covenant:1721 and 2020” St. Luke’s Historic Church and Museum, stlukesmuseum.org
Laurie L. Kearney 