Mercy Brown
Mercy Lena Brown | |
|---|---|
 Rare photo of Mercy | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1872 Exeter, Rhode Island, Washington County |
| Died | 1892 (aged 19) Exeter, Rhode Island, Washington County |
| Resting place | Chestnut Hill Cemetery 41°34'53.4"N 71°33'30.1"W |
| Nationality | American |
Mercy Lena Brown was one of the people exhumed and desecrated during the New England vampire panic. She was an accused victim under the concept of Vampirism, alongside the victims who lost their lives due to the shared regional epidemic.
Personal Life
Mercy was born in Exeter, Rhode Island to parents George and Mary Brown in 1872. She lived a fairly quiet life growing up into her youth until Consumption ravaged the region of New England. Following her eventual infection, New England's death toll soared, families lost children and spouses quickly and were gripped by this disease for many years. By the time of her death, Mercy's brother Edwin, who had just returned from a Wellness Center in Colorado, also contracted Consumption. He claimed that it felt as though his sister was "sitting on his chest", while suffocating him. Mercy died from the disease, but suspicions grew of her being a vampire, and claims of her walking in cemeteries and fields were reported, but no viable evidence ever surfaced. As a precaution, her family exhumed many graves, including hers, but unlike the rest, which showed signs of decomposition, her face was flushed and well preserved. They eventually removed the heart from her body and burned it.[1] [2]
Legacy
As of today, the legacy of this family and crisis remains; the mass hysteria left historians questioning the existence of vampirism, but no documented evidence exists. Studies show that it was a combination of the ignorance of the theories of epidemiology and the simple folk superstition prone to the area that produced an alternative to the unknown germ theories at that time. Mercy Brown and her family were buried in Chestnut Hill Cemetery in Exeter and were never again exhumed since. The town of Exeter became a popular documentation of vampire exhuming, nicknaming Rhode Island the "Transylvania of North America".[3]
References
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