In search of a up-to-date land and a up-to-date life, the Salladay family went to Ohio, but they brought with them a noiseless killer: consumption. Falling into strange superstitions, they believed that the only way to stop the disease was to prevent the undead from rising from their graves.
Early American history is strewn with strange, obscure superstitions – rituals born out of fear, desperation, and the primal struggle against disease that no one understood. Among these disturbing tales is one from Scioto County, Ohio, set in the dead of winter of 1816–1817: the tragic and bizarre case of the Salladay family, whose hereditary disease of tuberculosis led to a desperate, macabre ritual in the hopes of staving off death.
It may not have made New England's vampire scare famed, but this disturbing episode is a powerful reminder that superstition knew no bounds in early America.
A family cursed by consumption
The Salladays were Swiss immigrants, part of a wave of European settlers moving west after the opening of the French Grant, a plot of land along the Ohio River. It was granted by Congress in March 1795 to a number of French families who had lost their lands in Gallipolis under invalid titles. The river bottoms are well suited to growing corn, and much of the hillside could be used to grow miniature grains and grass, tempting settlers inland. The name Sallaway is an Americanized version of Swiss German We pointed out
Not long after settling in Scioto County, the family fell victim to a disease that had terrified the community for centuries: tuberculosis, then called tuberculosis. It was a cruel, debilitating disease that slowly claimed victims in the form of coughing fits, fevers, and debilitating pallor that convinced many that it was the work of a malevolent force rather than a elementary infection.
When the head of the family and the eldest son died and others began to show signs of illness, panic overcame common sense.
A desperate and gruesome remedy
In the middle of the winter of 1816–1817, the Salladay family, surrounded by frightened neighbors, resorted to a folk remedy that was familiar to followers of the New England vampire tradition: the belief that a deceased family member could prey on the living from the grave.
“The Cure” was grim. They decided to exhume one of the dead, burn some of the organs in a ceremonial fire and do it in front of the surviving family members – in an attempt to break the sinister connection between the corpse and their loved ones.
The victim of this desperate ritual was Samuel Salladay (1789-1815), one of the earlier victims of tuberculosis, who died in the fall of 1815. His body was exhumed by Major Amos Wheeler of Wheelersburg, an vital borough official who gave this gruesome event a disturbing legitimacy. A immense crowd from the surrounding villages gathered to witness the ritual, drawn by a mixture of morbid curiosity and general fear.
Samuel's entrails were removed and burned in a fire specially prepared for the rite. She hoped the ritual would put an end to the spread of disease within the family and provide respite for those still alive.
The madness of superstition
No wonder this desperate act turned out to be in vain. Consumption was a highly contagious disease, transmitted by airborne bacteria rather than by supernatural means or evil corpses. Despite the burning of Samuel's remains, the remaining Salladays continued to fall ill one by one.
Ultimately, only George Salladay survived this misfortune, while the rest of the family perished – victims of both disease and superstition.
Today, no monument or statue commemorates the Salladay ritual, and their history survives largely through scattered historical accounts. This may have been the only vampire exhumation to take place in Ohio. Although not closely associated with New England, Ohio was the location of many earlier settlers as people moved west from the East Coast and part of the state was once part of Connecticut.
Samuel Salladay still rests in the Salladay Cemetery in Sand Hill, Scioto County, along with all of his loved ones who were never cured of the life-destroying disease.
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The Vampire in Ohio: The Strange and Grim Superstition of the Salladay Family
In search of a up-to-date land and a up-to-date life, the Salladay family went to Ohio, but they brought with them a noiseless killer: consumption. Falling into strange superstitions, they believed that the only way to stop the disease was to prevent the undead from rising from their graves.
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New England Vampire Panic – Wikipedia
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/197357043/samuel-salladay
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