People in this part of Maine have suffered from smallpox since Europeans arrived. They brought a decimating epidemic to the Indigenous people of Maine, who had no immunities to it. It killed eighty percent of Maine’s Indigenous population at first contact.

Smallpox was brought to Kennebunkport from the West Indies in 1787 in the sick crew aboard one of the vessels commanded by Captain James Perkins. He lived on Oak Street in the oldest house still standing in Kennebunkport. It was built in 1724 by James’ father, Captain Thomas Perkins. The Perkins family once owned all of what is now Kennebunkport Village and Cape Arundel.

Arundel’s first physician, Dr. Thatcher Goddard, persuaded Captain James Perkins to temporarily turn his Oak Street house into a smallpox hospital. Dr. Goddard inoculated many Arundel inhabitants with small amounts of the live smallpox virus, some 9 years before the smallpox vaccine was officially invented. It worked. It saved lives, but most of the citizens of Arundel were opposed to inoculation. They voted at a special town meeting that “any person that shall set up a pest-house in Arundel, for inoculation, shall pay a fine of 50 pounds.” Smallpox again arrived in Kennebunkport by sea in 1803. The town itself set up a pest-house for inoculations at Cleaves Cove.

In 1867, Ira Grant’s daughter came home from Boston to her Union Street home feeling sick but not so sick she couldn’t be out and about. Soon David Grant’s daughter next door became very sick. Feb 16, 1867, their neighbor Celia Nott Perkins wrote in her diary, “A case of real smallpox. Flags out. Quite a panic.” She and her husband Charles Perkins of the Nott House were vaccinated 11 days later.

Five years later Ella Huff brought the disease to the poor farm. That time the town purchased the Samuel Tuman House on Old Cape Road as a hospital. In 1895, Maine passed a law that required free annual smallpox vaccinations for anyone over the age of two.

In February of 1902 the Sadie M. Nunan arrived at Cape Porpoise from Boston where one of its crew had contracted smallpox. She was fumigated. The spread of smallpox was prevented when crew members were quarantined for two weeks. The town paid for vaccinations and daily visits by Dr. G. F. Merrill for all the men.