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Watertown’s Quintuplets
Watertown Daily Times 08 15 1992
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The Watertown quintuplets received only an 18 line item in the Watertown
Gazette, one of the weekly newspapers here that preceded the Daily Times. Yet they were the first quintuplets born
in the United States.
The quintuplets born here were five boys, born to Mr. and Mrs. E. M. Kanouse.
The mother, Mrs. Edna Beecham Kanouse, was 22
years old at the time. The attending physician was Dr. T. H. Vesty, but the babies were delivered without his presence,
because the father of the quintuplets went to bring him to the Kanouse home and the two were delayed by an extremely heavy
snowstorm. When they arrived, the five boys had been born with several of the
neighbor women providing assistance.
The five boys appeared normally developed. One baby was stillborn, three
died a few minutes following delivery, and the remaining one survived only a
few hours. The total weight of the five was 10 pounds, two ounces.
The story was also told in a special bulletin which the Wisconsin State
Board of Health issued in 1942. The story was based on the doctor's record and
old Watertown newspaper files.
Mrs. Kanouse had another child several years
after the quintuplets were born. The mother died a few months later of a contagious
disease which she contracted while caring for a sick friend. Her husband
studied medicine after her death and practiced in Columbus, Appleton and Wausau
with his father who was a prominent physician.
The Watertown Historical Society files at the Octagon House include a
picture of the quintuplets.
Cross Reference:
Picture of the quintuplets displayed at Bittner & Tetzlaff,
1934
