'A coffin a day:' The story of a New Brunswick gravesite for children

The settlement of Brown Ridge no longer exists. What used to be a community of farms and a school house about 50 kilometres south of Fredericton is gone, replaced by patches of forests and sprawling clearcuts.

All that remains is a gravesite full of children.

The Neary Cemetery has one tombstone. It marks the final resting place of seven people from the Neary family, most of them children. 

Local historical society publications, as well as New Brunswick Board of Health records, tell a story of a family devastated by an infectious illness to the point where a child died every day for nearly a week. 

Gravesite of children offers glimpse at a family's tragedy

5 years ago

Duration 0:52

In 1890 the Neary family was devastated by an outbreak of diphtheria in their small rural community. A child died each day for nearly a week.

"Five children in five days," says Facts and folklore Tracy and Little Lake Area, a book recounting the history of Sunbury County, by Miriam L. Phillips.

"It is said that they made a coffin a day from wide pine boards. Since no one dared enter the house, they would pass the little coffins out through the window." 

That was April 1890. 

A "slab of fieldstone" was engraved with the names of Mannie Neary, an infant, John Neary, 5, George Neary, 7, Lucy Neary, 9, and Charlotte Neary, 13.

The killer was diphtheria. 

Diphtheria causes fever and can paralyze throat muscles. Sufferers produce a thick mucus. Together, these effects can make diphtheria lethal, according to Health Canada.

Historical records

Today, a weathered portion of the original Neary headstone remains. It's unreadable now, and a metal cross added later lists the children's names and ages.

Names of other family members who died in later years are also inscribed on the cross. There are a few plastic flowers, and a Neary Cemetery sign punctured with hunters' bullets. 

But records found at the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick offer more insight into what happened. 

"They kind of say, regrettably, 'If we had known we would have come here and told everybody to shut everything down and quarantine the different houses that had been visited by diphtheria," said Joshua Green, a photo-archivist at the archives, where a report on the outbreak can be found. 

The closest community to Brown Ridge was Tracy, about 30 kilometres to the north.

According to the document "Report of County and Parish Accounts of the County of Sunbury," a warden visited Brown Ridge and described the aftermath of the outbreak in June 1890. 

C.T. Keirstead inspected Brown Ridge, as well the nearby Little Lake Settlement, where another six children got sick with diphtheria and died.  

"During the outbreak of the disease, the school in the settlement was open, and we are at a loss as to know how more persons did not contract the disease," Keirstead wrote in the report.

"We visited the infected houses and inspected them, ordering a thorough disinfection, at same time fully explaining the methods of disinfection, leaving circulars, pamphlets, etc."

"We might state here that had the Board of Health been notified when the disease broke out among them, measures could have been taken to confine the disease to the houses where it first made its appearance and thus saved many lives." 

Many of the details surrounding the outbreak and the Neary grave have been lost, along with the communities of Brown Ridge and Little Lake Settlement themselves.

But according to John Wood, a history blogger, who has written about the outbreak, the majority of the story lives on in local storytelling. 

"It's in the oral history of that whole area," said Wood, who has made the trek to the Neary Cemetery for his blog. "In Tracy, and that whole district, people will tell you that, and local histories will include this story, but not with much detail." 

Wood said that Phillips's book, published in 1985, offers the only theories of the origins of the outbreak that killed so many children in such a small area.  

"Two accounts were given as to how the epidemic started," wrote Phillips. "It was said a worker at Pride's Landing contracted the disease from a sailor while loading ships' masts and carried it back to Brown Ridge." 

"The other account states that a family from the Ridge had driven over to the Piskahegan Settlement in order to buy a pig. The children were given a little kitten to bring home. It was believed the kitten carried the diphtheria germs in its fur." 

Health Canada says diphtheria was once one of the most common causes of death in Canadian children under the age of five.

The department still lists it as a serious disease, but it's now rare in this country. 

"Thanks to immunization, in the last 20 years less than five cases of diphtheria are reported each year in Canada," the department website says.