A hike to Mount Parker yields clues to a smallpox outbreak

On a recent spring hike, I learned about the joys of hiking Bartlett’s Mount Parker, which offers great views of Mount Washington with far fewer people than many other White Mountain trails.

While not not an easy hike at about 8 miles round-trip, this trek offers a variety of terrain, as the trail follows an old logging road to a stretch of open forest and then climbs a series of switchbacks to the mountain’s 3,004-foot ope summit.

But what intrigued me most about the day’s adventure was the mystery at the Mount Langdon trailhead: the lonely grave of Dr. Leonard Eudy, who died far too young, at age 34, while caring for patients during a smallpox outbreak.

With the Langdon Trail beckoning, I didn’t notice the gravesite when we first set out.

Dr. Leonard had been caring for smallpox patients at a Bartlett logging camp when he became infected with this deadly disease, which had a mortality rate of about 30%. There were many logging camps in the White Mountains, and I couldn’t find any specific information about where the outbreak was, or why Dr. Leonard was buried here, across from the Saco River. The woods below the Mount Parker summit look young, like the area was heavily logged. Was this general area the site of the logging camp?

Dr. Leonard, born in Bethlehem, NH, had left the mountains in 1862 at age 19 to enlist in Company C 15th Regiment of New Hampshire Volunteers, joined by his two older brothers, Emphraim and William. In Carrolton, Louisiana, horseplay with another young man took a tragic turn when Eudy’s gun accidentally fired, shattering the leg of his friend, who died after the leg was amputated. This accident haunted Eudy for the rest of his life. I wonder if becoming a doctor in a small mountain community was Eudy’s way of trying to compensate for the accident, or at least to live with himself. Or maybe the illness and suffering he witnessed during the war led him to medicine. Of the 71 men in Company C, only 40 returned home. Disease killed all but four of these young men.

After the War, Eudy Leonard enrolled at Harvard Medical School, and then returned to the White Mountains, moving to Bartlett in 1871.

Smallpox vaccination had been invented by Edward Jenner in 1796. During the first part of the 19th century, smallpox outbreaks were greatly reduced with the combined tools of vaccination and isolation. Memories of smallpox faded. By the 1840s, vaccination efforts had waned. When the time the Civil War erupted, smallpox had again became prevalent in the United States.

Both the Union and Confederate Armies required all soldiers to be vaccinated, so it is possible that Eudy Leonard had a smallpox vaccine, though its effectiveness may have diminished by 1877 (during this period, smallpox vaccines were considered effective for about seven years). But it’s equally likely that Company C was never vaccinated, as often the vaccine requirement was ignored in the rush to get troops to the front lines.

By 1877, smallpox vaccine was a small industry, with vaccine “grown” on calves’ hides at “vaccine farms.” After harvesting, the vaccine was stored in a glycerine solution, or ground into a powder that was applied to the arm through a scraping process (i.e. making a wound and rubbing in the vaccine). There was no regulation of vaccine, and quality varied greatly, but the vaccine was transportable. However, it wasn’t free. I’m guessing that by 1877, most locals in the White Mountains were not vaccinated because in the absence of disease, they felt no need for a vaccine that was probably expensive by local standards.

Irregular vaccination and variable vaccine quality was fairly typical until 1902, when the last major smallpox epidemic killed 270 people in Boston. In Boston, vaccination efforts immediately ramped up, along with resistance to the vaccination and to the city’s mandate to vaccinate all people in a specific area impacted by smallpox (no one was forcibly vaccinated, but they faced a $5 fine or 15 days in jail if they refused).

The Boston epidemic changed the game for vaccination, with new federal laws passed to regulate vaccines and the first efforts to use mass vaccination campaigns as a public health tool to prevent disease. By 1932, smallpox was a rare disease in the United States. By the early 1950s, it was eradicated in the United States.

If Dr. Leonard had survived smallpox, he might have lived long enough to witness the first stage of this public health victory. Like many doctors today working with COVID-19 patients, Dr. Leonard understood the dangers of smallpox and likely tried to protect himself, but the risks didn’t stop him from doing his job of trying to save the sick from dying. I hope that in his six-year tenure in Bartlett, he took a walk or two to the summit of Mount Parker, and enjoyed the view of Mount Washington from its ledgy summit.

Sources and resources

“Cemeteries.” Bartlett, NH History. https://www.bartletthistory.org/bartletthistory/cemeteries.html

“History of Smallpox“, Centers for Disease Control.

Albert, Michael, R., M.D., Kristen G. Ostheimer, M.A., Joel G. Breman, M.D., D.T.P.H. “The Last Smallpox Epidemic in Boston and the Vaccination Controversy, 1901–1903“. The New England Journal of Medicine. February 4, 2001.

McGregor, Charles. History of the Fifteenth Regiment, New Hampshire Volunteers, pg 214  1862-1863 (cited in the Bartlett, NH History information).

Priest, Conn Granville. History of the New Hampshire Surgeons in the War of the Rebellion.(cited in the Bartlett, NH History information)

Reimer, Terry. “Smallpox and Vaccination in the Civil War.” National Museum of Civil War Medicine. November 9, 2004.