The Faces of Spanish Influenza in Lebanon

The Spanish Influenza was a worldwide epidemic that travelled with the soldiers of World War I in 1918. It killed 500 million people worldwide and at least 500,000 in the United States. Families in the Upper Valley lost loved ones to the Spanish Flu, but not on the huge scale experienced in other places.

In Lebanon, as in Plainfield, deaths from Spanish Influenza caused a very slight uptick in deaths as documented in the vital statistics. In 1914, 96 people died in 1914, 99 in 1915, 88 in 1916, 94 in 1917, 96 in 1918, 106 in 1919, and 98 in 1920. Similarly to Plainfield, the slight increase in deaths was evident the winter after the flu hit. Nationally, deaths from influenza peaked in mid October of 1918, but in both Plainfield and Lebanon, more people died from complications and lingering ailments caused by the flu, especially pneumonia, in the winter of 1919. Between 1918 and 1919, 27 people died from the Spanish Influenza in Lebanon. Maybe because the deaths were spaced out over two calendar years, the numbers don't seem significant.

Lebanon in 1918 and 1919 is the first town I have researched where I found families that had recently arrived in America. Even the first settlers at Fort Number 4 and Cornish were descendants from families who had been in America for generations. Also for the first time, I encountered people who worked in industry. Study of the death records shows that Lebanon at this time was a town bustling with people from every corner of Europe, who worked at many diverse occupations.

Spanish Influenza hit Lebanon before it hit Plainfield. The first death from Spanish Influenza in Lebanon was Fred Page, who died on September 25^th. He had been ill with influenza for two days and had contracted pneumonia twelve hours before he died. He was a 21 year old mill worker.

Luella Sargent died the next day. She was 65 years old and had only been married to her husband for four years. He was her third husband. Her first two husbands had died. She had one son, Carlos Benton, who managed the Oympic Theatre in White River Junction.

Eliza Lique, age 20, died on September 27. She had been sick with the flu for five days. Eliza's real name was Mary Elizabeth, but she was called Eliza. The Liques were French Canadian Catholics. In the 1900 census, they lived in Rutland and Eliza's father, Joseph, was listed as a carpenter. They are nowhere to be found on the 1910 census, but when she died in 1918, at age 20, Eliza was a weaver in a textile mill in Lebanon. In the rural river valley towns, like Plainfield, or in the hill towns, like Barnard, young women stayed home and worked on the farms and in their parents' households before they were married. If they never married, they were the maiden aunts, staying with their parents as long as they were alive, and then moving into the households of a brother or sister. Unmarried siblings often lived together for their whole lives. In larger towns with industry, however, young women went to work in the mills. After Eliza died, her family moved to Hartford, Vermont, where her father and brother both worked in textile mills. Except for her brother Henry, who drowned when he was a teenager, most of her siblings continued to work in the mills, and died in old age.

Spanish Influenza continued its march through Lebanon, at a death a day. Typically, the disease targeted young people in their teens and early twenties. This seemed to be the case in Lebanon, although not in Plainfield. Robert Bruce, another factory worker, 28 years old, died on September 28.

Robert, his wife Christine, and their three children lived at 21 Green Street. Christine never remarried. After Robert died, Christine and the kids went to live with her parents, who were dairy farmers in Addison, Vermont. They died in the late 1920's, and she must have inherited some money, because in 1930 she lived in her own house, that she owned, in Randolph, Vermont, where she lived with the three children and a boarder. Her son and one of her daughters were both in the military during World War II.

Throughout the country, Spanish Influenza struck all ages and genders, rich and poor, but it seemed to hit young adults especially hard. This was the pattern in Lebanon. Twenty-six people died of influenza in Lebanon between September, 2018, and March, 2019. Of those twenty-six, 20 were between ages 19 and 31. One was in her fifties, two were elderly, and two were children. One of the children was a six year old who died of septis due to an ear infection that she had as a result of influenza.