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THE WEIRS TIMES, Thursday, April 15, 2010
THE BLACK PLAGUE IN WARREN- 1815
Reprinted From
The New Hampshire Sunday News
August - 1984
by George Woodbury
“Throat distemper,”
which modern medicine would in all probability identify as diphtheria, was a frequent and deadly epidemic in colonial New Hampshire, especially di- sastrous to small chil- dren. The Black Plague, some-
times called “spotted fe- ver,” which killed an es- timated one-third of the population of Warren in the single year 1815, has never been accurately identified and was no re- specter of age, sex or con- dition of life. The outbreak seems to have been pretty well confined to that town alone. The winter of 1815 had
been unusually severe, and spring was more re- luctant to make appear-
and portents. Owls hooted more ominously. the whip- poorwill’s cry was even harsher, comets were seen (one trailing a long blood- red plume fell in the great gorge of Moosehillock.) Then pestilence struck
silently and with devas- tating speed. The George Bixby family on Beech Hill was the first. Their small boy was tak-
en sick suddenly and with alarming severity. The doctor came, puzzled over the novel ailment, ordered a few simple remedies and had not taken his leave an hour when the boy died. Almost immediately his
body turned a loathsome black. As was the custom the body was laid out and “watchers,” two sons of neighbor Amos Little, vol- unteered to sit up with the body through the night. The next day one of the
1918 influenza victims crowd an emergency hospital at Fort Riley, Kansas. The flu, which is believed to have originated in Kansas, killed an estimated 40 million to 50 million people worldwide.
ance than usual. When it did it turned into a damp cheerless and cloudy sum-
mer, so the town history records. Perhaps engendered
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by retrospect, survivors of the dreadful epidemic recalled strange sounds
boys, James Little, was taken sick and in five hours was dead. Amos Little Jr., his brother, then sickened and died in three hours. The symptoms appeared
identical, with chills and fever followed by the erup- tion of dark spots all over the body, delirium and death. After death the body turned black almost at once. Then Dolly Little, the
sister of James and Amos, came down with the pesti- lence and died. After this, the plague
came down off Beech Hill and spread with aston- ishing speed throughout the town. Warren had no regular town doctor and was obliged to call in the services of Dr. Wellman of Piermont, then when he was swamped, Dr. Whip- ple of Wentworth, and when it became too much for those two, Dr. David Gipson of Rumney.
See HISTORY on 23
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