Cape Cod History

It was placed there almost 70 years ago by the town of Chatham in gratitude for a noble sacriface two centuries before. 

 

Dr. Lord began medical practice at Chatham in about the year 1735. The sixth of eight children of the Rev. Joseph Lord (1672-1748) and his wife, Abigail, a daughter of Massachusetts Governor Thomas Hinckley, he had been born at Charleston, South Carolina, where his parents were then living, on June 26, 1707. His father, a graduate of Harvard College in 1691, was the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Chatham from its incorporation in 1720 until his death. The pastor also practiced medicine and imparted this knowledge to his sons, Joseph and Samuel.

Dr. Joseph Lord (1704-1788), who graduated from Harvard College in 1726, settled at Athol, Massachusetts, where he was physician, preacher and judge. Samuel came to Chatham from Barnstable with his father's family. He received by bequest, upon his father's death, the former's "English books that relate to Physick and Chirurgery," appraised at a value of £8, s.15. Dr. Samuel Lord, who did not marry, lived on a farm near Burying Hill and the triangle of land between Queen Anne's, Old Comers and Training Field Roads where the colonial militia drilled. His remains were buried on this fa

The Epidemic begins
The smallpox epidemic of 1765-66, according to contemporary reports, began in the family of Deacon Paul Crowell, a prominent citizen. One account stated that it emanated from a bale of cotton imported from the South and sold at a store near the residence of Reuben Rider, who contracted the disease. Another alleged that it was brought in with a package of clothing from the West Indies — garments washed in the house of Deacon Crowell.

Selectman James Covel,5 of Chatham, compiled a chronological list of persons who died during the epidemic; this, he noted, was "drawn from my own journal and compared with several others by me." Of 37 deaths recorded, 17 occurred in 1 family! Commenting on the devastation, Chatham historian Smith6 wrote:

Medical science was then in its infancy and the nature of the disease, which appeared at first seemingly without cause, was not suspected until many had been exposed to infection. The local physician, Dr. Samuel Lord, early succumbed to the disease. Mr. Thomas Freeman, who lived at Harwich at the head of Pleasant Bay not far from the Chatham line, and was considered skillful in medicine, also caught the disease and died on January 19. [Smith noted in 1917. "His gravestone may still be seen in the field at So. Orleans near where he lived."] . . .

Every known method of combating the disease was employed. Schools were closed, business abandoned, and the community was in a state of fear and consternation. Whole families were almost wiped out. Mr. John Rider and his wife, aged and well-to-do people, were taken away, their maiden daughter Bethiah, their son Zenas and his wife, their son Stephen, his wife and nine of his ten children and the wife of their son Reuben. Deacon Stephen Smith, his wife and two of his daughters died and other families lost two or three members each . . .

To avoid the danger of spreading the disease, the usual funeral services were omitted, and the bodies of the deceased were taken out by the members of the family and buried in the rear of their 324 respective farms, where many of them lay buried today, their resting places being marked in some cases by substantial slate gravestones. . . . Some of these stones may still be found in the fields north west of the former residence of the late Samuel Clifford. Others have been removed to cemeteries in the town.

The plight of the Chatham people elicited sympathy from the neighboring towns of Harwich, Eastham and Yarmouth. Money was raised in several Cape Cod churches for assistance to the bereaved. Mr. John Hawes, of Chatham, was chosen to receive this money, and a committee, consisting of Messrs. John Young and Barnabas Eldredge and 3 selectmen, was designated to distribute these funds. Mr. Eldredge (and later Captain Joseph Doane) was appointed town agent to the General Court of the Colony to solicit additional recompense for the widowed, orphaned and infirm.

A petition on behalf of the town, accompanied by written evidence from its selectmen, in 1768, was recognized by Court Statute two years later. This device remitted the sum of £98, s.7, d.9, from Province Tax monies for the year 1769, "for the Relief of Poor Persons and others, who were visited with the Small Pox in said town from the first of November 1765 to the first of August 1766."

Some of these charges doubtless included the expense of demolishing houses to erase contagion. The executor of the estate of Hezekiah Eldredge, for example, charged off the following items: 'House and Barn taken down of Necessity by reason of the Small Pox and appraised at £17."

Thomas Hamilton, Jr., who had been born at Chatham in 1739, was so moved by the disaster that he wrote a letter of condolence to the survivors. Entitled, "Some Account of the Small Pox in the Town of Chatham in the year 1766," this melancholy epistle was printed in pamphlet form at the request of the townfolk — the first printed record by a native of the village.