Saturday Serendipity (September 2, 2017)

After a hiatus of two weeks for some family events and an anniversary trip to South Carolina to view the total eclipse, Saturday Serendipity returns this week with a few recommendations for your weekend reading.

1.  The Weekly Genealogist of NEHGS cited to an article in Smithsonian Magazine that provides a new theory on why Benjamin Franklin lived in Europe estranged from his wife Deborah for almost two decades -- repeatedly promising to return home to her -- and returned only after she had died as the result of her second stroke in five years. You can read the article here.  

2.  Gina Kolata, a science writer for the New York Times and author of Flu about the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic, had an article this past week about the effect of DNA testing on family histories and discusses the limitations that DNA test providers do not always acknowledge.  It is worth the read and you can view it here thanks to NEHGS and The Weekly Genealogist citing to it this week.

3.  Judy Russell -- The Legal Genealogist -- posted a very important piece this week that is getting a lot of attention.  For example, UpFront With NGS gave a major shout out to Judy and her post.  You can read Judy's post about ethics in genealogy by going here.  I agree that it is not just a should read, it is a must read.  After reading Judy's post, I recommend you go to the UpFront post by Diane. Richard for additional considerations and links to further reading.    
        
4.  If you heard or read about President D.J. Trump's re-tweet regarding General John Pershing's  mythical mistreatment of Muslim rebels in the Philippines in the early part of the last century, then you might want to check out this post on The Vault by Daniel Immerwahr.

5.  Bill West of West in New England blog just posted the initial notice about his upcoming "Ninth Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge."  Bill will post links to submissions on Thanksgiving Day. You can read the Challenge rules/guidelines here. There are various ways to participate, but I think my personal favorite is to find and post a poem created by an ancestor. It is a way to give that act of creation a new life and an audience that your ancestor never could have anticipated.

6.  As readers of this blog might recall, I have long had an interest in and fascination with the 1918 influenza pandemic (see #2 above) and I have blogged about it on more than one occasion. My maternal grandfather survived the first wave of the 1918 flu (called "the grippe" at first) and I have his postcard home to tell his mother about being laid low by it and being the 56th man out of 360 to end up in the hospital while stationed at Watervliet Arsenal in upstate New York in March - April, 1918. [See my post of March 11, 2014 here and learn more -- including why the pandemic was erroneously named the "Spanish Flu." See also my post of January 20, 1913 here for more about the horror of the pandemic.]  As we approach the 100th anniversary of that deadliest of all epidemics this coming March (up to 100 million people died world wide), there was an interesting post this week on Cow Hampshire blog by Janice A. Brown titled "100 Years Ago: Cures for the Spanish Flu."  You can read her informative post here.       
     
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Copyright 2017, John D. Tew

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Saturday Serendipity (May 24, 2014)

The month of May has turned into the first significant hiatus from blogging sine Filiopietism Prism was born in December 2012.  The combination of trips and paperwork to assist my parents with selection and application to a continuing care community in Pennsylvania, and travel to the Adirondacks to examine and submit an offer on a lakeside property (along with a little necessity called "a job"), have consumed almost this entire month and, sadly, left no time to blog.  Today marks a return to The Prism and some more regular posting I hope. 

Here are a few accumulated recommendations for inclusion on your reading list this week:  

1.  Readers of The Prism know of my long-time interest in the 1918 influenza epidemic [http://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-most-lethal-plague-in-history.html and http://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-great-influenza-pandemic-of-1918.html].  The Weekly Genealogist by NEHGS published about the "The Great Influenza Epidemic" recently and subsequently published reader accounts of how the epidemic affected families.  These posts make for fascinating reading for those interested in this world-wide catastrophe and for those who want to learn about a significant event that might be buried and undiscovered in their own genealogies.  You can see these posts here and here. 

     

2.  The families of veterans of the Revolutionary War had to prove their relationship to a veteran when applying for government pensions.  Many of them sent their proof in creative and beautiful ways.  You can see some examples of their relationship proofs at this article from The Vault.       

3.  A little-known and very sad chapter in U.S. history was the stripping of U.S. citizenship from thousands of American women who fell in love with and married men who were non-citizens.  This was all done pursuant to laws in the early part of the last century.  Since this was applied to thousands of women, many of us might have female ancestors or relatives who were mistreated in this way. Read about this injustice and the belated resolution of "regret" by the U.S. Senate here.  

4.  As mentioned here at The Prism and many other places, 2014 is the 100th Anniversary of the start of World War I.  Much attention is being devoted in the genealogy world to this signal event in many family histories.  To aid in your exploration of ancestor and relative memories and writings about this horrific war, you might find this piece on the slang names for German munitions of interest and of help in deciphering accounts of the war. For example, find out what Flying Pigs, Hissing Jennies, Jack Johnsons, Rum Jars, Sneeze Gas and Turtles were.     

5.  Do you have new arrivals to your family on the way in 2014?  If so, you might want to see what folks were naming their babies in 2013 -- either to emulate and join the crowd or to avoid overly popular names.  Go here to see the top male and female names for 2013 according to the Social Security Administration. 

6.  One of the most devastating storms to hit the northeast United States was the September 21, 1938 hurricane.  My father was 16 years old and living in Woonsocket, Rhode Island the day it arrived almost without warning.  He remembers well running around the neighborhood with a hastily donned leather football helmet looking for his missing younger brother -- who was discovered playing in a friends cellar completely oblivious to the storm raging outside.  A cache of essays about experiences during the storm has now been discovered in Fairhaven, CT.  You can read about them here.

7.  And finally, this "must-read" post by Heather Rojo on Nutfield Genealogy raises good points about the nature of genealogy blogs and blogging as well as the importance of speaking up when one believes an error has been made.  Like many things in life it is not what you say, but how you say it -- so berating comments, sarcasm, insults and the like are not acceptable, but well-intentioned inquiries and suggested corrections should always be welcomed.  As Heather points out, "The give and take of ideas and information is part of the whole blogger format."       
    
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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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The Most Lethal Plague in History -- The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

Camp Funston, Kansas makeshift hospital for men with influenza (1918)

As Geneabloggers and others have noted, today is regarded as the anniversary of the outbreak of the so-called "Spanish Influenza" ninety-six years ago.  The deadly influenza -- or "grippe" as it was first called -- is generally thought to have started with a little over 100 men reporting sick at Fort Riley, Kansas on this date in 1918.

This particular epidemic has always horrified and fascinated me and I have written about it previously here at The Prism. [See, http://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/search/label/Influenza] It has often been referred to [erroneously] as the "Spanish Influenza" not because the flu originated in Spain or even because Spain was particularly hard hit by the disease. Rather, Spain was a neutral country during WWI and as such did not have war censors who carefully guarded against the public release of any information that could affect morale or, more importantly, inform the enemy about manpower weaknesses.  The Allied and Central Power nations therefore had tight control over any discussion of the epidemic that was soon raging world-wide and affecting especially the young and healthy who usually were the most resistant to such disease. Spain, as a non-warring country, reported the flu outbreak and alarming deaths in newspapers and other media -- particularly after the Spanish monarch, Alphonse XIII was stricken by the influenza.

Modern estimates are that the Great Influenza of 1918 killed somewhere between 50 and 100 million people world-wide before the pandemic ended. Most people do not realize that it arrived and spread in two waves -- a strong first wave in the spring of 1918 that caused severe illness with high fevers, and a lethal second wave that began in August 1918 and was capable of suddenly infecting and killing a young healthy man within 24 - 36 hours. 

As I wrote in my first post about this deadly epidemic, my maternal grandfather, Everett S. Carpenter, contracted and survived the first wave of the 1918 influenza while stationed at Watervliet Arsenal in upstate New York in March-April, 1918. Below is a re-post of the postcard he sent to his mother when he recovered from "the grippe" that provides the proof of his survival. Many, many Americans  have ancestors and relatives (some 675,000) who were not so lucky!

I highly recommend two books for those with an interest in learning more about the deadliest plague in history.

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For additional reading on the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York, New York: Viking, The Penguin Group, 2004).

Gina Kolata, Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

The image of the makeshift hospital at Camp Funston, Kansas 1918 can be found here.  The image is in the public domain in the U.S. because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923. 

Photographs of the April 1, 1918 postcard from Everett S. Carpenter to his mother and of the book dust jackets from the personal collection of the author. 

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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The Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reporting influenza activity during the week of January 6 -12, 2013 as “elevated” in all ten Health and Human Services (HHS) Regions across the U.S.  -- and with the CDC also stating that the proportion of deaths attributed to pneumonia and influenza is “above the epidemic threshold” -- it might be instructive to briefly compare the current epidemic to the 1918 so-called “Spanish Flu” * that some authorities have referred to as “the deadliest plague in history.”  If in your genealogy research you have come across ancestor and relative deaths in 1918 that are not known to be combat-related, or explicitly explained as due to other causes, the Great Influenza of 1918 could well be the cause.

 At the halfway point of the current flu season there have been a total of 29 pediatric deaths reported nationwide since September 30, 2012.  This nearly matches the total of 34 pediatric deaths for the entire flu season in 2011 – 2012.  The total of all deaths during a given flu season (adult and pediatric) is usually not tallied until the end of the season, but deaths in the U.S. from influenza-related causes have ranged from 3,000 to 49,000 during the last quarter-century.

Patients ill with the flu at Camp Funston, Kansas 1918.

Nothing in the annals of influenza or other diseases and plagues can compare to what the U.S. and the world experienced in 1918.  In the U.S., the flu arrived in Kansas in January 1918 and spread through late spring in a “first wave” that caused severe sickness and deaths in a typical pattern and particularly among the elderly and the infirm – younger, healthy people usually recovered.  But in the “second wave” starting in August 1918, the flu returned in a mutated, lethal form that now attacked and killed the young and the healthy with a vengeance.   Estimates are that deaths worldwide in the first twenty-five weeks of the pandemic reached as many as 25 million.  Older estimates offered total deaths at the end of the pandemic at 40 – 50 million people, but more modern calculations say that as many as 50 – 100 million people were killed by the 1918 influenza!  Epidemiologists now believe that there were 675,000 flu deaths in the U.S. in 1918 -- and that was out of a U.S. population of 105 million.  The dust jacket of the 2004 book The Great Influenza by John M. Barry captures the horror and the numbers succinctly:

In the winter of 1918, the coldest the American Midwest had ever endured, history’s most lethal influenza virus was born.  Over the next year it flourished, killing as many as 100 million people.  It killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in 24 years, more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century.  There were many echoes of the Middle Ages in 1918: victims turned blue-black and priests in some of the world’s most modern cities drove horse-drawn carts down the streets, calling upon people to bring out their dead.

In early April 1918, my maternal grandfather, Everett S. Carpenter, was posted at Watervliet Arsenal about 8 miles north of Albany, New York.  On April 1, 1918, he wrote home to his mother in Lonsdale (Cumberland), Rhode Island to inform her that he had been hospitalized.  He explained that he was the 56^th of a total of 360 men to give in to what was then being euphemistically called ‘the grippe.”  He had experienced a fever of 103 degrees for at least two days.  The postcard, which I now possess, is shown below.  It is eerie proof that my grandfather had just survived the first wave of the deadly 1918 influenza pandemic!  

*  The 1918 influenza pandemic became known as the “Spanish Flu” because Spain was neutral during WWI.  In the warring countries, the war censors monitored the press and newspaper reports so that negative news that might affect morale or inform the enemy about manpower weakness was banned from publication.  In Spain, the press was free to report on the advance of the disease and reporting increased when King Alphonse XIII became very ill from the flu.  The disease that had previously been often referred to as “the grippe” when it was rarely mentioned in warring Europe or the U.S., soon became known as the “Spanish Flu” or the “Spanish Influenza.”  There is no evidence that the deadly 1918 influenza originated in Spain.

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For additional reading on the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic

John M. Barry, The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History (New York, New York: Viking, The Penguin Group, 2004).

Gina Kolata, Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It (New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999).

The image of Camp Funston, Kansas 1918 can be found here.  The image is in the public domain in the U.S. because its first publication occurred prior to January 1, 1923.   

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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

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