Mount Union borough, Mapleton borough

The Spring The Trains Passed By

Mount Union in T. M. Fowler's bird's-eye view, 1906, the year after the quarantine.Library of Congress Panoramic Maps (T. M. Fowler, 1906) Public domain

By the end of March 1905, the sickness Mount Union's local physicians had been calling chicken pox had a new name. Dr. A. B. Brumbaugh of Huntingdon, sent by the State board of health, examined it and pronounced it smallpox, and virtually the entire town was quarantined.

Then the Pennsylvania Railroad stepped in. The Democratic Watchman counted 140 cases in the town and reported that General Superintendent George W. Creighton had ordered that no tickets be sold to Mount Union from any point on the line and that no trains stop there at all. A Chambersburg paper, quoted in the Fulton County News, wrote that no mail had gone in or out of the town for several weeks.

The quarantine leaked anyway. The roads into town were not strictly guarded, and dozens of factory workmen who lived in Franklin, Fulton and Juniata counties came and went. Cases traced to Mount Union turned up around Fannettsburg in Franklin County and at East Waterford in Juniata County, and that September an outbreak in southern Blair County was traced to the town as well.

Mapleton had its own outbreak that spring. The borough's 1966 centennial history says it began with a single case and spread to several families before Dr. J. C. Spangler slowed and finally stopped it, and that the borough treasurer recorded $235 in bills paid to the doctor.

In early May the Watchman reported that the epidemic had about subsided and that trains scheduled to stop at Mount Union were stopping there again. "Mount Union is again upon railroad map," the Bellefonte Republican announced. A week later the Watchman still counted 47 cases, with the majority of quarantines to be lifted May 15. That November, Judge Woods of the Huntingdon County court settled who would pay to quarantine families who could not pay for themselves, and he left the expense with Mount Union.

Checked and confirmed. Confirmed 2026-10-31 against the sources listed: every factual sentence was tied to a word-for-word passage in its source. Where sources disagreed on a number, the number was left out.

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