Epidemic Tragedy in 1739: Benjamin Blanchard, 8th Great Uncle
1693-approx
1760
I am writing this blog post in March
of 2020, during the COVID-19 or “novel coronavirus” epidemic. The state of
California has issued a shelter-in-place order, requiring that anyone who can
work from home do so, and that anyone who works for a non-essential business
also stay home. All schools are shut down, all gatherings of more than ten
people are forbidden, and food and cleaning essentials are in short supply in
the stores. Many people are facing financial hardship after being laid off from
their jobs. The stock market has lost one-third of its value, crippling
retirement funds. Like most Californians, I am stunned at how an epidemic can
wreak such havoc in such a short time. My genealogy research demonstrates that
epidemics brought devastation to my ancestors as well. The story of the
Benjamin Blanchard family is one example.
My 8th great uncle
Benjamin Blanchard was the fifth child of the seven born to my 8th
great-grandparents Johnathan Blanchard and Anne Lovejoy Blanchard of Andover,
Massachusetts. He was born on Valentine’s Day in 1693. He was a “husbandman” or
farmer, and married a local girl, Mary Abbott, daughter of Nathaneal and Dorcas
Abbott, on December 29, 1718.
Over the next two decades, the
couple had ten children. But the fall of 1739 brought tragedy. Beginning in
1735 and lasting until 1740, a disease called scarlatina or “throat distemper”
swept through the American colonies. The disease was a form of scarlet fever,
and since medicine in that time period was primitive, and doctors and healers
were few and far between, families had no one to turn to when family members
caught the disease. Children were particularly susceptible. There are some
anecdotes that suggest in some villages, half the children died in a single
year.
Ernest
Caulfield described the path of the disease south into Massachusetts in
his “A
History of the Terrible Epidemic, Vulgarly called the Throat Distemper, as it
Occurred in his Majesty’s New England Colonies between 1735 and 1740”
and “The
Throat Distemper of 1735-1740 Part II.” (excerpts below)
“It has
long been known that there was an epidemic of some disease…which involved most
of the inhabited regions of New England and caused great loss of life wherever
it appeared. In some of the towns nearly half of all the children died and at
times it was feared that the disease would actually destroy the colonies. This
strange “Plague in the Throat” was not like any disease with which they were
familiar. They knew that whooping-cough and measles could spread among
children, but never had any such mortality accompanied a childhood epidemic.”
The symptoms of the disease include
a red rash on the face, neck, trunk and limbs, white tongue with red spots,
high fever with chills, a sore and red throat, difficulty swallowing, nausea,
vomiting and headache.
Scarlatina
reached Andover in 1739. Over the span of one week in October, the Blanchards
lost four of their children. Nine year old Dorcas was the first to succumb; she
died on October 13. The youngest child, Abiel, who had just celebrated his
second birthday three weeks earlier, died on October 15. His eleven-year-old
brother Jonathan died the following day on the 16th. Three days
later, seven-year-old David died.
It is hard to imagine the grief
Benjamin and Mary faced. They may well have been ill themselves. Their teenage
children were spared, but four of the five youngest children were suddenly
gone. I am unable to find any record of the children’s burial location. Their
death records were recorded with the city, and appear in histories of the area,
but I have found no further information, Many of the extended Blanchard family
members were buried in Andover’s South Church burial ground, but no records
show the four children there. Perhaps
they were buried there, but Benjamin was unable to afford stones to mark their
graves so their resting spot was lost.
Benjamin and Mary had two more sons
after the epidemic. They named them for their lost sons, David and Abiel. David
was born February 19, 1740—his mother was pregnant with him when she lost her
other children. Tragically, he only lived two months, dying on April 10, 1740.
Abiel was born October 20, 1741, almost two years to the day after his
siblings’ death. Like his namesake, he only lived to the age of two, dying on
January 28, 1743.
What a tragic time for this family.
Benjamin and Mary had a total of twelve children, and suffered the deaths of
half of them before the age of twelve.
After Abiel’s death in 1743, the
remaining family members relocated, first to Dunstable,
Massachusetts, and then to Hollis, New Hampshire. Mary seems to have died
around this time, while Benjamin lived into the 1750s or 1760s. Their burial
locations are unknown.
Sources:
The Essex Antiquarian: An
Illustrated Magazine Devoted to the Biography, Genealogy, History and
Antiquities of Essex County, Massachusetts; Perley, Sidney, ed.; Volume 9, page 28
History of the Town of Canterbury,
New Hampshire, 1727-1912: Genealogy and appendix; Lyford, James Otis, Rumford, 1912.
Pg. 26-27.
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