Donath talks about the horrific impact the Spanish Flu had in Logan County at October meeting of the LCG&HS

 

[October 20, 2022] 

At October’s Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society meeting, William Donath presented information about his book, The Spanish Influenza Epidemic In Logan County, Illinois, 1918-1920.

The book shares the history of the experience of the residents of Logan County during the Spanish Flu epidemic. It is divided into eight chapters, each dealing with a different aspect of the county residents’ experience with the epidemic.

The first chapter of Donath’s book gives some basic information about the Spanish Flu. The timeline for the Spanish Flu in Logan County was early October 1918, through the end of April 1920.

Medical records for Lincoln document the first cases in the county being recorded the week of October 5, 1918. Donath said the Spanish Flu started suddenly and roughly in the county. By the end of the first week the Spanish Flu was identified in the county, Donath said there were already deaths noted in the papers.

The Spanish Flu was very virulent and made people more susceptible to other diseases such as pneumonia. When people got pneumonia back in 1918, there were no antibiotics to protect them from it. Donath said people got sick and they either survived or did not survive.
 

Donath provides a definition of the Spanish Flu in chapter one of his book. The Spanish Flu, also known as the Grippe, was a respiratory illness. Donath said it got people in the throat and the chest. It caused fatigue, fever, chills and a hacking cough. The Spanish Flu caused people to have difficulty breathing, which sometimes led to pneumonia.

Of those who contracted the Spanish Flu, Donath said the most vulnerable were mothers of newborn children, which he talks about in chapter two of the book. These new mothers were especially susceptible to developing pneumonia from it. Sadly, several new mothers in the county died in the early months of the epidemic. Of 21 cases of new mothers in Logan County who got the Spanish Flu, Donath said 14 died.

One of the earliest reported deaths in the county was that of Mrs. Catherine McCue, wife of Charles McCue. Mrs. McCue was suffering from Spanish influenza when the baby was born and she developed double pneumonia. The death was particularly tragic as Mrs. McCue left a week old baby in addition to four other children. Another notable death of a mother of a newborn was that of Mrs. William K. Maxwell, mother of author William Maxwell. Mrs. Maxwell developed double pneumonia within 24 hours of contracting the Spanish Flu.

Chapter three discusses the doctors of Logan County, many of whom caught the flu themselves. Donath said Dr. W.C. Paine of Hartsburg and Dr. George W. Brock of Atlanta, both died of Spanish Flu. Dr. Brock had secondary problems and developed gangrene in his leg. Though Dr. Brock’s leg was amputated in hopes he would survive, he passed away.

About half the doctors in the county were called to military camps to help stem the suffering of the soldiers, putting a burden on the remaining doctors. Many doctors contracted the flu while working in the army camps. At one point, there were around 68 flu patients in Hartsburg, and they had no one to call for help because their doctor had contracted the flu.

The Red Cross started training their nurses to go out and help these people [who were ill], but Donath said it did not work well for most of them.
 

In chapter four, Donath talks about several families that experienced multiple deaths. For example, the Shehorn family lost their six year old and one year old to the Spanish Flu. The Groetski family in Mount Pulaski lost three of their ten children within the same week in December 2018. In another case, a husband and wife died within 48 hours of one another.

Chapter five talks about the deaths of caregivers, which included nurses and family members caring for one another. In a report from the United States Army, it listed at least 200 nurses who died of Spanish Influenza while treating soldiers in the camps in the U.S. and overseas. Donath said two young women from Logan County died from the flu while in nurses training.

Family members taking care of sick family members then became ill from the Spanish Flu themselves and several died. One example Donath gave was Conrad P. Janssen, a widower who died leaving behind four children.

Chapter six focuses on World War I, which was nearing its end as the epidemic began. Out of 78 soldiers from Logan County who died during WWI, Donath said 33 were from the Spanish Flu. Many were at Camp Hills, New York waiting to embark on their ship to Europe and Donath said it became a hot spot for the flu.

In Chapter seven, Donath talks about the epidemic in Logan County. He divided it into sections for 1918, 1919 and 1920. Placards about maladies like measles, whooping cough and chicken pox were put on houses during this time to warn people to stay away. Donath said people got tired of the placards and wanted them off the houses.

Red Cross workers were already making masks for the medical part of the war. As the flu epidemic began, Donath said attendance at Red Cross meetings decreased because people did not want to get sick. Theaters and businesses were shut down.

As we experienced with COVID, restrictions would shut everything down. Donath said things would get better and restrictions would stop. The flu numbers would rise, and restrictions would be put back in place. Donath said that happened three or four times.

While doing research, Donath found forty pages of records for those in Lincoln who had the Spanish Flu. By the end of 1918, Donath said there were 2000 cases in Lincoln. From October 1918 to April 1920, the Spanish Flu resulted in around 500 deaths in the county.

Chapter eight is about the Lincoln State School and Colony. The school had its own infirmary and they put a lot of beds in it. Donath said there were about 100 deaths there, though reporting of the numbers ill from the State School was spotty.

When Dr. E.C. Gaffney came home from his time in the service, Donath said he was assigned to be an epidemiologist for Logan County. The county then showed everything going on with the Spanish Flu.

Donath said the Spanish Flu was much more deadly than COVID, killing more than five million people.

Once Donath was done with his presentation, he asked if anyone had questions.

Since Donath talked about young women dying from the Spanish Flu, LCGHS member Diane Farmer asked whether older women were also dying from it. She then asked whether the flu hit people harder if they had other health problems as COVID did.

People around 40 who were healthy were the ones Donath said seemed to contract the Spanish Flu more quickly than others. Many who contracted the illness and died had weakened hearts, kidneys and other organs that were damaged. Just as with COVID, Donath said the Spanish Flu caused long term effects in some people.

There was little defense against the disease because there were no antibiotics. Donath said the deaths from the Spanish Flu were painful.

Another asked if the flu hit women more than men. Donath said he did not believe so.
 

Questions LCGHS member Curt Fox had were whether the medical community learned anything from dealing with the Spanish Flu. Fox wanted to know whether the medical community was any more informed ten or fifteen years after the Spanish Flu happened.

In researching the Spanish Flu, Donath said he read many county papers about it. He said the medical community seemed to learn how to deal with it as far as not getting around people without masks and what kinds of masks to wear. Donath’s book tells how they made masks with gauze folded so it was eight layers thick.

One LCGHS member said in the case of some illnesses, families would be quarantined all together. When someone died, they had to bury their family members themselves. This person wondered if the same happened with the Spanish Flu.

Donath said one Mount Pulaski doctor told of dead children being laid out on the kitchen floor at farmhouses. When someone died during the winter, people would have to wait until better weather to bury the dead.

Another question Farmer had was if things would get better certain times of the year with the Spanish Flu like they seemed to with COVID. She wanted to know if numbers were consistent or if there were breaks.

From October 1918 to the end of March 1919, Donath said the numbers were high. When the weather got better, cases slowed down. Donath said they thought numbers would rise again in the fall 1919, but in the county, cases did not rise much until January 1920. At that time, Donath said the flu came back as heavy as it was the first part of the epidemic. The rise lasted until about the end of March 1920. Then around here, Donath said the flu was gone just like someone had turned off a switch.

The only other disease Donath said outstripped the Spanish Flu as far as deaths during that time was Tuberculosis.

As Donath worked on his book, he researched many county records. Recently, Donath has been researching the history of the water system in Lincoln and found over 200 articles he has shared with Nathan Pennisi, Superintendent of Illinois American Water.
 

Originally, Pennisi was supposed to share a presentation on Lincoln’s first water system developed in the 1800s and advancements through the years at the October meeting. Due to circumstances beyond his control, this presentation has been postponed until spring 2023. At that time, Pennisi will also give updates on the construction of the new Lincoln water plant and the Illinois American Water acquisition of the Mount Pulaski Water System.

Monday, November 21, the Logan County Genealogical and Historical Society will have a dinner meeting at Daphne’s with Brenda Short presenting a program on Lincoln Lakes.

[Angela Reiners]