HISTORY ABOUT THE PEST HOUSE
DONATED BY : SCARLET BOLIN
THANK YOU !
Paragould's Pest House
The small frame house was located where the City
Light and Power warehouse
is now. "It was out in the country then." Kingshighway,
then called Junction
Street, and the Jonesboro highway were dirt roads. (412 and 49)
Patients were assigned to the house when they contracted highly
contagious
diseases such as typhoid or yellow fever. Dr. Scott and
Mary Goins, the
county doctor and the county health nurse, treated the residents
as best
they could, given the medical knowledge of the day. But few left
the Pest
House alive and some say that explains the morbid location near
the
cemetery.
The sexton of the Linwood Cemetery, Mr. Yarbrough and his wife
prepared
meals in their home for residents of the house. Mr. Yarbrough
would take the
meals to the front porch each day and leave them. Those
quarantined would
eat in seclusion in their rooms. Folks lived there until their
disease
subsided and then returned to their families.
The house had four white posts on the front porch with separate
rooms for
each occupant.