The great part about having town records is that you can always consult them and find incredible facts about the people that used to live in your neighbourhood.
In this particular case the documents allowed us to as far back as the time when Scioto County [Ohio] was settled, back in the 1800s.
We are treated with the following article:
The family of Philip Salladay came from Switzerland, bought and settled on a lot in the French Grant soon after the opening of the country for settlement. Hereditary consumption developed itself in the family sometime after their location in Scioto county. The head of the family and the oldest son had died of it and others began to manifest symptoms, when an attempt was made to arrest the progress of the disease by a process which has been practised in numerous instances, but without success. They resolved to disinter one of the victims, take his entrails and burn them in a fire prepared for the purpose, in the presence of the surviving members of the family. This was accordingly done in the winter of 1816–17, in the presence of a large concourse of spectators who lived in the surrounding neighborhood, and by Major Amos Wheeler, of Wheelersburg. Samuel Salladay was the one they disinterred and offered up as a sacrifice, to stop if possible the further spread of the disease. But like other superstitious notions with regard to curing diseases it proved of no avail. The other members of the family continued to die off until the last one was gone except George.
Based off the way the text is worded I got the feeling that they were trying to make a distinction as to the family being foreigners that had settled recently and the sidenote that they had a predisposition for consumption [aka tuberculosis].
We also get details about what happened after the ritual was performed on Samuel – his family sadly continued to suffer from the diseara and apparently died off.
๑۞๑ Related: ๑۞๑
† Superstitions
† Legends
† Vampire Accounts