Perhaps an unfortunate ancestor spent time in a pest house? Why? What were "pest houses" anyway? (The above image spotlights a YouTube video.)
"Pest House," is the sad term for an isolated hospital, often away from towns, often shoddily built and poorly maintained and the condition of those housed there was often quite awful.
Back in the day, people with contagious or communicable diseases such as leprosy, TB, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, typhus and many more, were shunted away from society for there was no effective treatment or cure. Such unfortunates were isolated until they either somehow recovered or died. "Municipalities in the day didn't want to waste county money on caring for the walking dead." (HereLiesAStory.com, 16 Jun 2023)
Arrival ocean ports often had quarantine areas...as did our own Washington:
(U.S. Marine Quarantine Hospital on Diamond Point, between Sequim and Port Townsend 1905.)
In the early 1900s, Spokane County had a "pest house" located in Riverside State Park, near the Bowl and Pitcher, to isolate those with contagious diseases.
Seattle's "pest house" was on Beacon Hill, a location chosen "due to its proximity to a town dump and a gully used for waste disposal." The description of this place reads like a horror movie script: "filthy floors, leaky roofs, lacking proper sanitation, totally dilapidated." (The place was destroyed by fire in 1914 and the site became a golf course. HistoryLink.org, #2157.)
Blessedly, the need for such places disappeared with the advent of vaccines to cure many diseases. Do watch that YouTube video.
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