When a silent enemy traveled undetected: the Seacoast “throat distemper” epidemic of the 1730s

“It was this readiness to adopt a theological explanation for the epidemic which was chiefly responsible for the hasty abandonment of a scientific one.” –Ernest Caulfield

By July 26, 1736, when Portsmouth’s Reverend Jabez Fitch speculated that the “throat distemper” epidemic ravaging the Seacoast was “the Fruit of strange Sins,” 129 children had died in nearby Kingston, NH–nearly a third of the town’s children.

This new and mysterious disease, with its horrific mortality rate, took hold suddenly, with the  appearance of gray or black spots at the back of the throat. Within a day or two, or sometimes hours, a child victim would be gasping and struggling for breath. If the disease was merciful, it claimed its victim quickly, but sometimes helpless parents had to keep vigil over slowly suffocating children for several days before the end came.

Kingston’s residents were baffled by this disease and stunned by how rapidly it claimed its victims. Unlike smallpox, the throat distemper seemed to erupt with no warning or contact from an obvious source of infection. With smallpox, colonial Americans understood that the disease spread rapidly from one infected person to another. Quarantine was one tool they used to battle smallpox, with towns often establishing quarantine stations during an outbreak.

The throat distemper, however, seemed to come on out of nowhere, as if God had suddenly decided he needed to provide a sign or warning to a certain cluster of people.

The first cases in Kingston occurred in homes located four miles apart, and then continued to appear in widely separated sections of town. Since its circulation seemed arbitrary, people abandoned (to their peril) the usual precautions they might attempt to prevent the spread of smallpox.  Although people had a general understanding of contagion (minus the specific knowledge of germs, viruses and bacteria), they did not know about “silent” or “healthy” disease carriers who were asymptomatic. Thus, Kingston residents who seemed unaffected by the disease probably were transmitting the bacteria in their town and in other nearby New Hampshire villages as they went about their business.

The epidemic next erupted in Hampton Falls, where one family reportedly lost all of their 13 children, then it travelled to Exeter, Durham, Dover, Chester, and finally to Portsmouth. At the Isles of Shoals, eight miles out to sea, the isolated fishing community lost 36 children. Ministers presided over fasts and prayers, but the fasting did not stop the spread of the disease, which jumped the Piscataqua River to Kittery, where 125 deaths were attributed to throat distemper, and then spread to other coastal towns in Maine. All told, over a span of about five years, the epidemic killed about 5,000 people in New England, most of them children.

Medical historians believe that the “throat distemper” was diphtheria, a bacterial infection in which a gray to black membrane develops in the throat, causing the victim to die from a choked airway, or from a blood infection caused by toxins produced by the bacteria. In 1890-91, German physician Emil von Behring developed the anti-serum that could, if administered in a timely fashion, cure diphtheria, (a discovery for which he was awarded the first Noble Prize), but the disease remained common in the United States until the 1920s, when a vaccination was developed. Although rare in the U.S. today, with only a handful of cases each year, diphtheria is still a public health threat in some parts of the world.

In suggesting divine causes for the epidemic, Reverend Fitch’s 1736 sermon may have inadvertently contributed to the spread of throat distemper. However, it also provided a wealth of specific information about the epidemic along with town vital records. Bare statistics reveal heartbreaking stories.

Ward Clark had been on the job as minister in Kingston for ten years. Hired in 1725 at age 22 to be the first minister of the new church, Clark had become a beloved and respected figure in Kingston. In the midst of the epidemic, along with two town doctors, Reverend Clark travelled from one home to another, offering spiritual comfort and medical advice, and probably spreading bacteria as he moved about.

Then, Clark’s own family took ill. On July 27, his wife Mary and their infant daughter died. A month later, on August 29, he lost his daughter Elizabeth, and then the disease also claimed his two little boys. Finally, the minister couldn’t take the suffering any longer. Bereft of his young family, Reverend Clark returned to his hometown of Exeter to regain his health, but died in May 1737 of a “wasting consumption” that may have been related to the disease, or to the trauma of loss.

The epidemic eventually eased, but returned time and again to Kingston and other Seacoast towns in the 18th century. In Kensington, NH, with about 600 residents, 120 children perished in the epidemic between 1735 and1737, “so many there were few children left to die,” writes town historian Reverend Roland Sawyer, who documents additional epidemics in 1745, 1747, 1760, and 1764.

I’ve looked for traces of the epidemic at the Plains Cemetery in Kingston,  but very few graves exist from before 1750. I’ve found two small gravestones from 1743, those of Seccomb French, who died on September 21, and his brother William, who went on to his fate two days later. Were these two little boys the victims of another diphtheria wave?

Somehow, their parents carried on. Father Nathaniel lived to age 69, long enough to see the outbreak of the Revolution in 1775.  Their mother, Abigail, lived to age 90. I would need to do further research to find out if they had more childre, but I suspect that their descendants walk among us today.

PS Reverend Fitch was a man of his times, when it was not uncommon to attribute many calamities to divine intervention. However, colonial ministers, who were the most educated, also were “early adopters” of scientific inquiry. In 1721, Onesimus, an African slave owned byCotton Mather, introduced the minister to the practice of smallpox inoculation — the pre-cursor of vaccination.  Inoculation usually resulted in a milder case of smallpox, and produced immunity (although some people also died from the practice). Mather used his pen and pulpit to advocate for widespread inoculation, gathered data and information on this “experiment,” and cited Onesimus as his original source.

Sources and resources:

This post is  modified version of material in my book, Pioneer on a Mountain Bike: Eight Days through Early American History, available from Amazon, at the Kittery Historical & Naval Museum, and from Rice Public Library.

Barry, John M. The Great Influenza; The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. New York: Penguin Books, c2004, 2005, p. 70. (info on diptheria).

Caulfield, Ernest. “A History of the Terrible Epidemic, Vulgarly Called the Throat Distemper, as it occurred in His Majesty’s New England Colonies Between1735 and 1740.” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, 1939 January 11(3), p. 223, and pp. 243-245. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Fitch, Jabez, An account of the numbers that have died of the distemper in the throat, within the province of New-Hampshire : with some reflections thereon ; July 26. 1736. U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Sawyer, Roland D. The history of Kensington, New Hampshire, 1663 to 1945 (232 years) with a family and homestead register of the pioneer families, early settlers and permanent citizens of the town. Farmington, ME: Knowlton & McLeary Co., 1946, pp. 264–265.