Milk sickness, also known as tremetol vomiting, or in animals as trembles, is characterized by trembling, vomiting, and severe intestinal pain that affects individuals who ingest milk or other dairy products, or meat from a cow that has fed on white snakeroot, which contains the poison tremetol.
Although highly rare today, milk sickness claimed thousands of lives among European-American migrants to the Midwest in the early 19th century in the United States, especially in frontier areas along the Ohio River Valley and its tributaries, because they were unfamiliar with the plant and its properties.
-- from Wikipedia
This is Eupatorium rugosum, the white snakeroot.
In the fall of 1818, the scantily settled region of Pigeon Creek in Spencer County, Indiana suffered a visitation of that dread disease common in the West in early days, and known in the vernacular of the frontier as "the milk sick." It had hovered like a spectre over the settlement for over ten years. In October 1818, Nancy Hanks Lincoln became ill. She died within the week.
The winter of 1829 was marked by another visitation of that dreaded disease. It was making the usual ravages among the cattle. Human victims were falling before it every day, and it caused the usual stampede in southern Indiana. Dennis Hanks, discouraged by the prospect and grieving over the loss of his stock, proposed a move further westward. Returning emigrants had brought encouraging news of the newly developed state of Illinois. Dennis's proposition met with the general assent of the Lincoln family.
On March 1, 1830, Abraham Lincoln's family along with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, left the old homestead in Spencer County and came to the Macon County, Illinois area. The Lincoln family only lived there a year, discouraged by sickness and the extreme winter. By the next spring, the young Lincoln had begun to seek a life of his own.
We all know about the life of Abraham Lincoln.
James Halford (b.1784 ) married Elizabeth Hammond (b.1786). He acquired land in Wayne County, Tennessee, as early as 1822 where he settled in the Beech Creek area. Eight children were born to James and Elizabeth there.
Following in the footsteps of other related family groups, such as the Harrises and Hickses, the family emigrated to Blue Point, later known as Edinburg, Illinois in the spring of 1834 . The James Weeden family, also from Wayne County, and some members of the Hammond family were domiciled together in the same cabin. Tragedy overtook them only six months later. Between October 11th and 15th of that year James Halford, daughter Mary (b. 1810), and sons John (b. 1812) and Jesse (b. 1827) were fatally stricken with "the milk sick." In the Weeden family, wife Elizabeth, a son, and Miss Mary Ann Hammond were claimed by this same plague. It is said that five of these settlers lay dead in that cabin on the same day.
After the tragedy of these deaths James Weeden married Elizabeth Hammond Halford and stayed in the area.
This is the marker of the 22 year old John in the Blueville Cemetery in Edinburg, IL. Unfortunately, the photo I have of James's stone is too worn to read.
James Halford was my 3rd Great Grand Uncle. This was the second story I found in searching old family records when I was first bitten by the genealogy bug; the first being how James's father died in 1803 while trying to cross a rain-swollen stream on his horse. It's a wonder I didn't quit then.
In about 1824, sixteen year old Anna Pierce came with her family to settle on a farm just north of what later became Rock Creek in Hardin County, Illinois.
Either through her own study and training in midwifery and herbal healing or by a formal course in medicine back in Pennsylvania, Dr. Anna, as she was eventually called, coped fairly well with the ailments of the frontiersmen, until an epidemic of a terrible disease tore through the settlement. Anna's deep concern with the highly fatal disease became even more acute when her mother and sister-in-law died and her father was made seriously ill by the ailment.
Observing that the disease was caused by drinking milk or eating butter, Anna also noticed that the ailment was seasonal, beginning in June and ceasing soon after the first frost. Then she observed that although both men and cattle were dying of the disease, milk cows appeared not to be effected.
By the spring of 1834, Dr. Anna began to follow the free-range grazing cattle, checking the plants they fed upon. One day while walking with the cattle through the woods, she happened upon an elderly Shawnee medicine woman who showed Anna the white snakeroot and told her that this was the plant causing the milk sickness.
After testing this for herself by feeding the white snakeroot to a calf, Anna started a snakeroot eradication program to eliminate the poisonous herb from the area. She encouraged men and boys to search the woods and fields, uprooting and burning all of the white snake-root that they could find. The program lasted for three years throughout the summer and fall. At the end of the program, the weed and the disease had been virtually eliminated from southeastern Illinois.
Dr. Anna Pierce Hobbs Bixby continued to serve as Rock Creek's only physician until her death of a heart attack at age sixty-one. She died having not received recognition for her remarkable discovery. It wasn't until 1928 that the American Medical Association confirmed that the white snakeroot plant was the cause of "the milk sick."
The tales, lore and legend of Dr. Anna are full of contradictions, ghostly manifestations, hidden caves and her attempted murder by her second husband, Eason Bigsby (or Bixby). Whether she came from Tennessee with her then husband Isaac Hobbs or with her family from the East remains in question. What does seem to be sure is that she did live in Hardin County, that she acted as a physician, that she discovered the cause of the "milk sickness" in the 1830s and that at some point Eason Bixby disappeared from the area.
The events recounted above took place in a very small area in the southern parts of Illinois and Indiana as shown below
My own 3rd Great Grandfather, James's younger brother, Jonathan A. Halford, one of the last of the clan to leave the Beech Creek area of Wayne Co., TN, removed to Blue Point, IL in 1847. He served as Edinburg's first postmaster in 1855 and again in 1863. He is buried in the tiny little Blueville Cemetery alongside his brother James, and the others who succumbed in that horrible October of 1834.
So there you have it. While my family has no claim to fame, it is clear that their lives bumped up against those of the history makers, large and small, time and again. It is unfortunate in this case that the commonality was so tragic. I still have hopes, however, that I will eventually find concrete evidence linking Jonathan more closely to Lincoln, other than a recorded first person report that he voted for him for President. I have reason to believe I will.
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Now for something I've been thinking about for a while and discussed briefly with OFL, edwardssl. I think our Group is ready for its own banner/logo/icon/image whatever it may be called. We are, after all, quite a distinguished group.
What do you think? I will gladly host an Open Thread on Tuesday, Dec 6th wherein we can all submit an image and then eventually choose one by common agreement. A poll, maybe? I'm thinking of something like this but with a brick wall in there somewhere....
There are plenty of images like this available to any Googler worth his/her salt. We probably have at least one graphic designer or two in our group. What do you say? Anyone up for a contest?