Posted on 10/13/2014 10:50:00 AM PDT by Citizen Zed
Exactly right...at least according to this book as well
http://smile.amazon.com/Great-Influenza-Deadliest-Pandemic-History/dp/0143036491/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1413227369&sr=1-1&keywords=the+great+influenza
Another flu outbreak like that one would kill our economy and probably contributed to the great depression.
The old people and kids survived, the 20-40 year olds died.
Read that one.
They literally had bring out your dead carts in Philly and Boston IIRC.
Grandmother (still alive, last G left bless her) on my Mom’s side lost 4 family members in the VA/W.VA mountains. The hill areas had a LOT of uncounted dead too...
It killed my grandfather.
My paternal grandfather got it just before he was due to go to France. In his case it may have saved his life.
“I recently toured the family cemetary with my father, who is the resident expert genealogist.
It was not uncommon in the cemetary to see entire families wiped out within a few days of each other. A couple were from the Spanish flu, a double handful more, Dad said, were from smallpox and cholera.”
My Dad’s sister disappeared at the same time. She was supposedly in the San Francisco area, as a new arrival from the southwest. My Dad and the Aunt who raised him, his brother and sister tried to find her and contact her. They never did and gave up about a decade after she disappeared.
My personal theory was she got the flu and died without relatives or relatives in the area and was buried in a mass type of grave or a pauper’s type of grave.
I tried some genealogy searches re cemeteries and death notices, and I never found any data listing her.
“Many years ago I worked with a gentleman who at that time in 1918 had a job making coffins.
He told me how wide spread the deaths were and how they came so fast. It was hard for me to grasp it at that time (circa late 50s)-Tom.”
My mother’s family was in the same geographical areas of my Dad’s family, and they lost no one in that epidemic. They were isolated on a small farm, miles from the nearest small town. They were basically self sufficient re food and water. They just stayed at home and kept the kids home from school. My mother’s dad, had 3 brothers in fairly large towns/cities, and they lost no one to the flu epidemic. Again, they kept away from others and stopped their kids from going to school. Also, they had no one in the military at that time.
My wife’s families on both sides in small towns in the midwest had zero casualties, and interestingly no one in the military at that time. She had a lot of relatives living at that time.
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