With the recent stay-at-home order by Missouri Governor Mike Parson concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not the first time in history that Lebanon and Laclede County has experienced a pandemic.
The first pandemic noted was in the fall of 1872 when the smallpox epidemic hit Lebanon. The epidemic started when a vagrant woman came into the Sam Farrar Drug Store and sat by the stove. From there she went to the Spiller Store, where Madison Street Grill is now located. The disease spread far and wide and a pest house was established in the old Methodist church in Old Town with approximately 20 victims. Folks all over Missouri were warned not to travel in Lebanon, or get off the trains when they stopped here.
Another smallpox epidemic occurred when smallpox broke out in Lebanon on May 20, 1901. According to historian Frances Ethel Gleason who wrote “The First Hundred Years, “ the disease broke out in Old Town and spread rapidly. The necessary quarantine made it obligatory on the town to provide the necessities to the families who were shut up. The Lebanon City Council voted $300 for food which the mayor at that time, Lorenzo Gleason, delivered to the destitute families each day. A pest house as established out of town in the neighborhood of what is now New Buffalo Road for the most extreme cases.
For more on this story see Wednesday's edition of the LCR.
