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https://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-kingston-new-ham...
http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/great-throat-distemper-1...
http://www.hampton.lib.nh.us/hampton/history/dow/chap10/dow10_23.htm
https://historicipswich.org/2017/04/29/the-deadly-throat-distemper-...
In May 1835 a Farmer Clough of Kingston NH was distressed at the sudden death of his hog, and examined its inflamed throat. Within a day his own throat was badly swollen and a few days later he was dead. His family was infected and soon their neighbors as well with what we would now call a transgenic disease. Thus began the raging epidemic of 'throat distemper" that swept away a large number of children and some adults in the lower Merrimak Valley in the 1735-36 period. In Kingston NH alone 114 deaths occurred over 14 months and the impact was even more lethal in the Hampton Falls area, with 210 people one sixth of the total population dying, 160 of them children under 10 Twenty families there lost all of their children.
For our Eaton Clan The records of 4th generation parents are laden with these child deaths. Many members of the Salisbury branch of the family were drifting northward from Salisbury MA toward the Hampton grant, of which Hampton Falls was the southernmost township and hence they were close to the center of the storm. Haverhill only 12 miles south of Kingston lost more than half of its children under 15 and a smaller spike of child deaths registered in Salisbury MA.
We can define the Eaton Children at greatest risk as those of Haverhill areas there were 30 such children in Salsibury and Proto-Seabrook of whom 13 died all in 1736 or early 1737. The distribution of these children across was as we expect with this kind of contagion quite uneven. Out of the 10 Eaton households with children at risk four with a sum of 9 children had no deaths. This is 13 deaths across 21 children at the ages of risk in infected households. Most desolated of the parents were Jabez and Sarah (True) Eaton who lost 3 of their first children. The toll was lighter but still visible in the smaller population of Eatons at Haverhill with 17 Eaton children at risk with 3 dying in 1736. The epidemic rolled on in every direction from the Kingston NH epicenter. It took 2 yrs to reach the Hudson River in New York State.