Early settlers in Orleans were plagued by fever and ague

‘Our county was very unhealthy until 1828.’ – Jeremiah Brown, pioneer in Ridgeway

By Catherine Cooper, Orleans County Historian

“Illuminating Orleans” – Volume 5, Number 4

“About the first of the next September (1816), myself and my wife and one child were taken sick, and until December following, we suffered everything but Death. Often during that time while myself and my wife were confined to our beds, our children were crying for food and neither of us had strength sufficient to enable us to get to the cupboard to help them.” (Jeremiah Brown, Ridgeway)

This account describes an illness encountered by the early settlers of Orleans County, they referred to it as “a fever and ague “(sounds like “ay-goo”). It was a miserable, debilitating condition which affected everybody, even the strongest person. It persisted for months and was recurrent.

“Our children, then four in number, had their full share of fever and ague. It was painful to see the little ones draw up to the fire while suffering the chill, then see them retire to their beds, tormented by the raging thirst and fever following the chills, while their mother could do little for them, except to supply their frequent requests for water.” (Asa Sanford, Barre)

In Albion, Lansing Bailey was sorely afflicted: his wife and brother died of the fever and ague in August 1813. After his wife’s funeral, some friends who lived on the Ridge took the children home with them. Bailey returned to his “desolate house to spend one of the loneliest nights I ever knew.”

The illness was thought to be part of the acclimating process, or “a penalty to Nature.” It occurred “whenever an opening was made in the forest; or the earth was turned over for the first time to the hot rays of the summer sun.”

Asa Sanford ascribed it to “clearing trees and building dams.” In 1817, Henry McCall and Robert Perry built a dam and mills at Sandy Creek to serve the twenty families living there. The dam raised the water to cover eighteen to twenty acres.

“The water killed the timber, and a terrible sickness followed among the inhabitants, about one quarter of whom died in one season. The well persons were not numerous enough to take care of the sick and bury the dead, and settlers from other neighborhoods came there and helped the needy ones. The mill dam was taken down and the sickness disappeared.”

We now understand that this was a malarial-type illness, caused by the mosquitoes who thrived in those water-logged areas. Those who had access to a doctor were prescribed “quinine and the blue pill” but that many people “just let it work itself off the natural way.” Adin Manly mentioned that some early Kendall residents drank whiskey to keep off the fever and ague.

Dr. White, who attended Lansing Bailey told Bailey that he could prescribe something that would stop it, but that he would be well advised not to take it. Bailey said that he would take it on his own responsibility. Dr. White gave him arsenic, Bailey took it.

“It stopped the ague, but I did not get well for a long time.”

Jeremiah Brown observed that “our county was very unhealthy until 1828.”

Asa Sanford recalled that “as the county was cleared up and the lowlands drained of their surface water, the people suffered less from ague.”

(Source: Pioneer History of Orleans County, Arad Thomas, 1872)