Of Pests, Pestilence & Death

From Dave Brigham:

Concord, Mass., is a town connected intimately with Colonial American history. Incorporated in 1635 as the first inland settlement in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, per the Concord Museum, Concord is "perhaps best known as the site of the first organized armed resistance to the British rule." On April 19, 1775, "British soldiers marched out to Concord to destroy the arms, ammunition and other provisions which the colonials had stored here. At the North Bridge in Concord, the command was given to return fire: with the 'shot heard round the world,' the American Revolution had begun."

As you might expect, or possibly already know, the town of about 15,500 people located about 20 miles west-northwest of Boston, is filled with beautiful old homes, historic battle sites, old graveyards, great conservation areas and other funky backside areas (see Parts I, II, III and IV of my series about this fair town from 2012).

What one doesn't see a lot of are abandoned houses and two-stone cemeteries with connections to America's pestilent past.

Located on the corner of Fairhaven Road and the Concord Turnpike (Route 2), this old farmhouse has obviously been vacant for quite some time. A stone's throw from famous Walden Pond and a mile from downtown Concord, 188 Fairhaven Road includes nearly two acres of land, most of it now woods and swamp that abut the Farm at Walden Woods.

As so often happens with older buildings, I haven't been able to definitively put a date on this house. I found online a list of properties subject to Concord's demolition review bylaw that lists the build date as 1876. I also found a much more useful file from the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System (MACRIS) that says the place went up in 1907. I'm tempted to believe the former date, but because the latter file has a lot more research behind it, and presents much more information about prior owners and connections to surrounding properties, I'll assume it's correct.

From MACRIS: ""At the turn of the century its lot was part of the property at #154 Fairhaven Road....an early-eighteenth-century Potter family farm which was then owned by Elisha S. Develley (Dwelley,) who operated it as a hen farm until about 1907. It was then acquired by farmer George F. Wheeler....who rented the old Potter farmhouse out to tenants. It was he who had #188 built, probably as a rental house for workers on his large Hubbardville farm."

Full confession: I left something out of that MACRIS report -- the words "Pest House" in parentheses after 154 Fairhaven Road. What is a Pest House? you ask. Man, are you behind the times! The kids today are all about the pest houses. "Oh, man, let's go vape in the pest house," they'll say as they ride motorized scooters while uploading TikTok videos. "Yes, pest house vaping is certainly the best."

OK, boomer.

Unlike many of you, I knew about pest houses before I read this paragraph. I learned about them in the course of trying to pin down facts about 188 Fairhaven Road, which took a bit of time online. A pest house, per Wikipedia, is "a name used in the 18th century to describe a building in which to quarantine those afflicted with communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, cholera, or smallpox." So 154 Fairhaven, which is located across Route 2 from the decrepit house in the photo above, was for a time a place where, presumably, nurses and doctors tended to the sick while keeping them away from the general population so as not to induce an epidemic.

But the house we're interested in wasn't the pest house, it was simply on that property. Still, fascinating.

Even more interesting is this bit from Wikipedia about 154 Fairhaven Road (which still stands): "John Fitzgerald, the current owner of this old property, describes that it is his 'dream...to keep it standing.' He lives happily with his wife Maria and two children Erin and Brendan. The Fitzgeralds regularly perform period reenactments where they turn their home back into a functioning smallpox hospital and perform surgeries on young school children from surrounding Concord."

!!!!!!

What?! I want to party with these people....

This rundown pile of memories also has a garage.

I wonder if there's a cool old car or tractor in there.

Maybe there are some unpaid delousing bills in there.

As mentioned above in the MACRIS report, a family named Potter is associated with both this property and the Pest House. From the Wikipedia write-up about the Pest House: "In 1752, Ephraim Potter married Sarah Taylor, which probably dates this house. Ephraim was one of the men who stored provincial supplies in his house prior to the Revolution - tents, tow cloth, canteens, etc."

I love reading stuff like this! Learning about everyday Colonial citizens and the roles they played in the American Revolution never gets old for me.

Anyway, it's Ephraim Potter's wife who we're here to learn more about. As often happens when I'm out backsiding (I really want to make t-shirts that say, "Gone Backsidin'". Would you buy one?), I stumbled across another intriguing site. Driving past the house, I looked up the small hill across the street from 188 Fairhaven and saw something else I had to explore.

This is the smallest graveyard I've ever seen. Even smaller than one I stumbled upon while exploring a chapel on the grounds of St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church in Sudbury, Mass. (see August 20, 2019, "A Perfect Sanctuary").

The large stone indicates that Mrs. Sarah Potter, wife of Ephraim Potter, died of small pox, "taken the natural way", Nov. 29, 1792, 60 years old. "Taken the natural way" indicates, I believe, that the brave former Sarah Taylor refused treatment for her disease, whose initial symptoms include fever and vomiting, per Wikipedia, followed by "formation of sores in the mouth and a skin rash. Over a number of days the skin rash turned into characteristic fluid-filled bumps with a dent in the center." I'm assuming she was ensconced in the Pest House when she passed on to her great reward.

While the large stone is engraved with Sarah's information, the smaller one says absolutely nothing. I'm not sure the purpose of that stone. At first, I thought it marked a child's grave. But since Mrs. Potter was 60 years old, her children would have been grown. Somewhere online I saw speculation that there are other, unmarked graves here.

As for the abandoned house, I'm not sure when it was last occupied, or what may become of this property. Since the house was on a list of properties to be reviewed for demolition, surely it will be knocked down eventually.

Stay tuned, you little pest.