Smallpox Quarantine Farmhouse, 1902
7014 W County Line Rd, Knightstown, IN
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Private residence — no public admission.
Access
Limited Access
Rural road, gravel shoulder
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1902 · Public Health History · Epidemic Quarantine · Henry County Indiana
In the summer of 1902, Henry County, Indiana confronted a smallpox outbreak serious enough that health officials and county commissioners locked down Knightstown and its surroundings entirely — no entry, no departure. Indiana health authorities tracking statewide cases that year identified 298 confirmed cases, and Knightstown was among the most affected communities.
The response centered on isolation. Physicians in the county agreed that vaccination, quarantine, and disinfection offered the most reliable containment, and a designated building outside the main population cluster became the county's pest house — the term then used for epidemic isolation facilities. The 17-room structure held patients removed from their households while their homes were disinfected. The death rate among admitted patients was severe by any measure.
The building at what is now 7014 W County Line Road survived both the epidemic and the subsequent decades as a working farmhouse. It remains a private family residence and carries informal recognition as a historical landmark in Henry County, noted in local genealogical and historical society records documenting the 1902 crisis. The Henry County Genealogical Society has preserved detailed records of the epidemic's scope and the role the facility played.
Sources
The account most consistently associated with the Pest House comes from a local historian who visited the property. At the front door, a woman he did not recognize told him, without being asked, that no one was home. She closed the door. He knocked for several more minutes. When the owners pulled into the driveway, he relayed the encounter, and they searched the house together. No trace of the woman was found.
The specificity of the report — a woman offering an unprompted explanation, the sequential timing of the owners' arrival, the thorough search — is what distinguishes it from generic haunted-house folklore. The account has circulated within Indiana paranormal research communities for years.
Additional incidents have been reported by individuals connected to the property, though details remain vague in available sources. Given the building's use as a quarantine facility where numerous patients died from smallpox in 1902, local observers have long connected the atmospheric weight of the site to its epidemic history.
Notable Entities
View the farmhouse exterior from the road. The property is a private residence and was the documented quarantine facility during the 1902 Henry County smallpox outbreak. Do not approach the property.
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