It was the winter of 1813, after a brilliant naval victory in September that secured the strategic waters of Lake Erie for the American forces, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry weathered out the harsh winter at Presque Isle’s Little Bay.
But fate would turn the safe harbor of Little Bay into what we would know today as Misery Bay.
Small Pox had begun to spread onboard Commodore Perry’s Flagship, the Niagara. But being quarantined in the bottom of ship’s hold did little to stem the tide of the disease and the plague was quickly spreading ship wide. When those of his crew were struck down with the disease, Perry ordered that their bodies be buried at sea in the lagoons of the pond near the bay. Now, as the plague’s ferocious force began to unleash itself upon all the crew Perry made a radical decision to bury all those infected with disease at the bottom of the adjacent pond. There was little hope for them; Perry did what he had to do in a remote region of the then wilderness with little help coming for a long time. He buried the dying who yet had the breath of life into the little pond; tying stones around their bodies he surrendered them beneath the waves before death had the chance to naturally take their lives.
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