The house at 366 West Street (a bit off the road, on the left when going toward Upton, not far from the Upton line) has long been known as the Pest House. I'd heard that it was a place where people had been sent for the reason of being quarantined, the name being short for pestilence, but I didn't know anything beyond that.
After receiving a question about it from the present owner a few weeks ago, I decided to ask Hester Chilson if she knew anything about it. As it turned out, she remembered the situation quite well. Her foster-father, Edwin Darling, was a selectman at the time it was first needed and was involved in the purchase of the house. Also, the brother of the victim lived next door to Hester and the Darlings, on Freedom Street. As far as she knows, the house was only used once when an employee of Henry Patrick's Store, Heman K. Hersey, become ill with smallpox. She recalls that no one knew how he caught it.
From what I can tell by looking through town reports, Hersey came down with the pox in 1901. I haven't found out where he was living at the time, but he survived and the 1905 town directory gives his occupation and place of residence as "clerk, Patrick's, rooms in block over store." That would be the store that was where the parking lot between the library and the pizza place is now. I haven't seen any town directories for about fifteen years after the 1905 one, but by 1920 Hersey lived with his parents at 7 Hopedale Street and was there through 1923. His age that year was given as 45. By 1924, evidently his father had died, and he had moved back to an apartment over Patrick's, this time with his mother.
Hester told me that Hersey eventually married, moved to Mendon and lived at the corner of Main Street and what she referred to as Birch Alley. She cleared that one up for me by telling me that it's now called Washington Street, and Main Street is Uxbridge Road/Route 16. Dan and Joyce Gilmore live there now and about a year ago they donated a wooden Henry Patrick delivery box and two very old (c. 1900) order books to the Hopedale museum. I assume they were items left there long ago by Hersey.
The town report of 1903 mentions that the town paid rent for the Pest House. In the years after that, it's listed as a town owned property. (The value of each building owned by the town is given in town reports.) The Pest House was valued at $600 for a few years and later raised to $1,000, where it remained into 1928. It's not listed in town reports after that. Evidently after years of not being used, it was sold. The town report of 1901 lists the following expenses related to the case:
Smallpox case, account Heman Hersey:-
Sylvester L. Madden, milk, etc. $9.88
J. Allen Rice, rubber gloves 2.50
H. Louise Ketchum, nurse 95.00
H. Shattuck, nurse 95.00
Edith L. Warner, nurse 75.00
Abram Waldron, labor 2.00
Draper Company, sundries 7.30
H.L. Patrick, groceries, etc . 72.78
Remick Furniture Co., furniture 59.12
Dr K.A. Campbell, medical attendance 340.00
Avery & Woodbury, screen 1.50
S.A. Staples, sundries 18.75
L.A. Lamson & Son, medicine 34.85
F.T. Harvey, hospital bed 9.00
Hopedale Stable, wood, etc. 12.75
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