Epidemic nearly wipes out entire family

Did you know that our first President of The United States of America was a survivor of smallpox?  In 1751, George, at the age of 19, went to Barbados in the British West Indies with his half brother to get some benefit from the warmer climate there, as he was suffering from tuberculosis.  It is said that he contracted smallpox during this visit, and If it were not for his experience, and first hand knowledge of smallpox, this dreaded disease brought by the red coats before the Revolutionary War ever got started may well have wiped out our militia, and our country might have turned out entirely different than what we know today.

Here Lies buried
Mr Zenas Rider who
Dec'd Jan'ry 1766
With the Smallpox
in ye 41st year of
his Age

Also Bethia Sister to
above Named Dec'd the same
time in her 39th year

As a self-professed, armchair genealogist, I often encounter the great influence of epidemics in the United States upon the lives of my ancestors.  I must admit, when I first started out researching my families’ history my own knowledge of the history of our great country was limited.  I was unable to recognize the signs and the patterns that existed in the records and documents of my research.   My ignorance I suppose is from my American education where I was taught from an early age that my ancestor’s migration westward was for greater opportunity.  While there is some truth to that, it does not begin to explain why families that earned their livelihood, and put food on the table from the hard labors of farming the land they owned, would just sell off their land where they had actually built their home by hand, and move.  

Mr. & Mrs. Hand were second cousins.
Miss Esther England was my great aunt.
She was the High School Principle of Ayers
Cliff High School.  Gordon P. England
was a famous author, and my great uncle.
They were children of my great grandfather,
Rev. C.P. England.

The photo above is from the Nickerson Cemetery in Chatham, Barnstable county, Massachusetts.  Although, as you will read later in this story, I highly doubt that either body is truly buried in this location.

My first education into epidemics was when I found a 1920's newspaper clipping in among some old family photos.  My family was struck by the 1917 nationwide outbreak of Spanish influenza, which killed over 500,000 people, and to date has been the single worse epidemic in the United States. My family mentioned in the two articles to the right recovered, and survived the influenza epidemic.

My paternal Grandfather, William Rider Howie lived for eighty-three years.  He died in January 1965 in Southern California not much time before I was born.  William was a naturalized citizen, emigrating from Canada.  He was born January 1882 in Fitch Bay, one of the many small communities of Stanstead County, which lies in the heart of Quebec Canada.  William was third generation Canadian on his father, William George Howie’s side.  His forebears from his mother side, Helen Desdemonia Rider, my paternal great-great grandmother were from the United States.  Her father Mr. Ezra Rider, leaving New Hampshire, and building his family home in Fitch Bay. His son, Timothy
Byron Rider built a home there which still stands today.
Actuellement connu sous le nom du musée du château de Witch Bay!
(Pictured below)

The many Rider families found in New England were quite large, and scattered throughout New England.  I had many theories as to why, but no facts as to the reason for their vast migration north, south and westward.  

This past week while doing my genealogical research on Ancestry.com I came across a series of newspaper articles from a Nova Scotia newspaper titled New Englanders in Nova Scotia. (Pictured above)  One of the family lines the author highlighted was that of the Rider family.  This caught my attention.  As you will read here in this article, almost entire families of Rider’s were wiped out by the smallpox epidemic of 1765-66 in Cape Cod.  According to contemporary reports, the smallpox epidemic began in the Chatham family of Deacon Paul Crowell.  He was a prominent citizen, who had purchased clothing from the British West Indies, probably Barbados where smallpox was known to have come from.  While still other accounts hypothesize that it emanated from a bale of cotton, which had been purchased in the South, and sold at a store very near to the residence of Mr. Reuben Rider, who contracted the disease. 

Selectman James Covel, also of Chatham, compiled a chronologic list of persons who died during the epidemic.  Of 37 deaths that he recorded, 17 occurred in one family, that of the Rider family!  The aged, and well-to-do Mr. John Rider and his wife were taken by the disease; as was their daughter Bethiah, their son Zenas and his wife and children, and their son Stephen, along with his wife and nine of their ten children.

Every method was used to combat the spread of smallpox in Cape Cod.  Schools were closed, businesses were abandoned, and funeral services for the dead were omitted; replaced with family members burying the dead on the rear of their family farm, far away from the community, and not in the town cemetery. 

One hundred years ago, the Honorable James W. Hawes, speaking at the 1912 Chatham Bicentennial Celebration spoke to the memory of this tragic event that took the lives of sixty percent of the citizens of Chatham that were attacked.  As a sociologist, I love statistics, especially when used by politicians!  While I agree it was a tragic event, especially to the relatives of my forebears, the actual numbers were that 37 died, and 24 recovered.  Nine percent of the population of Cape Cod was affected during that epidemic.   Now you and I have a much better understanding of one possible reason our forebears moved north, and left their homes in Massachusetts.  A story that was probably known to my great grandparents, but has been lost, not passed down through history to the next generations.