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Watertowns’ 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
