In recent days I have been wondering about my grandparents and how their lives were affected by the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Did they face any of the issues we are facing now, during the Corona Virus Pandemic?
Thomas & Regina Mark
with their 3 oldest children:
Isabel, Vera and Ivy (the youngest in the photo)
Almost 100 years ago, my paternal grandmother, Ivy R. (Mark) Brown, was only ten years old when the 1918 Influenza Pandemic began in the United States. Her parents, Thomas K. and N. Regina (Gruissy) Mark, were both 39 years old. In 1918, the Influenza was a problem for younger people.
This flu caused soreness and tiredness, a cough, loss of appetite, and sweating. It was particularly deadly for people in their 20s and 30s. It often lead to pneumonia, so many deaths were incorrectly reported as simply pneumonia related with no mention of the flu.[1]
Ivy was living with her parents and siblings in Seville, Medina County, Ohio. They were fortunate to live in a rural area in the fall of 1918 when the Influenza reached Ohio. “Crowded residential areas” had the perfect conditions for mass infection and the “isolation of the farm” had definite health advantages.[2]Her father, Thomas K. Mark, was a farmer and carpenter. In 1918 Thomas and N. Regina (Gruissy) Mark had six children and Regina was pregnant with another child.
The experience across Ohio during the Spanish Flu was not universal. Midwestern states, like Ohio, knew the disease was coming from the coast by late September, but took a minute to act. Governor James Cox decided it would be best for individual local governments to make decisions for their citizens. However, on October 8th the Ohio Department of Health did begin making recommendations to close public gathering places (retail stores never completely closed in Ohio, although many cities imposed time restrictions).[3]
I doubt that the Mark family was affected by grocery shortages. They lived in a very rural area and grew their own food. They seldom, if ever, ate in restaurants. Ivy often helped in the garden and in the kitchen. My grandmother told me:
I had chores. When I was seven in took TB. I was supposed to stay out of doors as much as possible. I got the job of carrying in wood, carrying out ashes, feeding the chickens, anything to keep me outside.[4]
My grandmother and her siblings were in school in 1918. Most schools in Ohio closed. Ivy would have been delighted to spend her days outside rather than in school. She told me about her school:
It was a one-room school. About 30 kids in the room from first to eighth grade. I sat in a double seat. Like you have two kids to a seat.[5]
In Ohio each area of the state responded differently to the Influenza Pandemic.
The fact that the neither the federal nor state government has a centralized response to the influenza epidemic makes for a dramatic variance between neighboring cities in how they handle the crisis.[6]
Also, because there was no centralized response, rumors spread through the state. Some people thought the disease was being spread by their World War I enemies. People wondered why schools and churches were closed but saloons were allowed to stay open. Newspaper advertisements sold home made “cures” for the Influenza. Newspapers focused on war reports and pushed Influenza facts to back pages.[7]This must have made the Mark family wonder what was happening in their area and in their state. Despite the confusion, the Pandemic passed.
15 October 1918
The Akron Beacon Journal, Akron OH
from Newspapers.com
This newspaper clipping calls the Influenza "Nothing New." It reports the disease came from Spain which was untrue. At least it does recommend calling a doctor and to refrain from panic.
The first “wave of the disease” passed but it flared up again in December 1918.
11 December 1918
The Akron Beacon Journal, Akron OH
from Newspapers.com
By December, the Ohio newspapers were telling a different story. They called it "more deadly than war."
I do not remember ever hearing any stories from my grandmother or her branch of her family about this time in our history.
For a virus that killed 50 million people, the influenza of 1918 left very little in the way of cultural memory. …the 1918 pandemic seems to be a dark stretch of memory between the end of the Great War and the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. A pandemic doesn’t leave many physical traces.[8]
Fortunately, the Mark family made it safely through the Influenza. My grandmother, Ivy R. (Mark) Brown, went on to be the mother of seven children and grandmother of twenty. She lived to be 95 years old.
[1]Robertson, Karen. The Spanish Influenza Comes to Ohio; Ohio History Connection; digital article (ohiohistory.org: accessed April 2020).
[2]Green, Harvey. The Uncertainty of Everyday Life, 1915 – 1945 (Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas Press, 2000) 181.
[3]Robertson, Karen. The Spanish Influenza Comes to Ohio; Ohio History Connection; digital article (ohiohistory.org: accessed April 2020).
[4]Interviews with Ivy R. Mark Brown. Sept. 1993, 13 & 20 July 1994, 22 August 1994, August 1999. Notes held by Colleen G. Brown Pasquale.
[5]Interviews with Ivy R. Mark Brown. Sept. 1993, 13 & 20 July 1994, 22 August 1994, August 1999. Notes held by Colleen G. Brown Pasquale.
[6]“Columbus Is Surrounded” – When Spanish Flu Infected Ohio; Columbus Underground; digital article (columbusunderground.com: accessed April 2020).
[7]“Columbus Is Surrounded” – When Spanish Flu Infected Ohio; Columbus Underground; digital article (columbusunderground.com: accessed April 2020).
This post makes me THINK. I have not stopped to consider how my ancestors' responded to the Spanish Flu or how their lives might have been changed. I know of no one who died from it. However, my great-grandfather died of TB that year. Now I wonder if the flu played a part.
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