The plague house

New Hampshire · USA · Road

The local children call it that. People with illnesses nobody could cure were left in this house, and buried deep in the woods afterwards.

There is a very old house on Bear Hill Road at Hillsboro, New Hampshire, and the children in the area call it the plague house.

The account is that people infected with diseases nobody could treat were left there to die, and that the bodies were taken out and buried deep in the woods.

The practice was real and it had a name. A pest house was a building set apart from a town where people with smallpox, cholera, typhus or diphtheria were put, because isolation was the only tool anyone had. New England towns maintained them into the nineteenth century, usually at a distance from the village, and burials were made nearby rather than in the churchyard.

Whether this house was one has not been established. Town records would show it, since pest houses were a municipal expense.

The property is private.

FAQ

Hvor ligger The plague house?

The plague house ligger i New Hampshire, USA.