Influenza in Plainfield

Spanish Influenza was a pandemic that hit the whole world in 1918. Traveling with the troops in World War II, it hit Fort Devens in Massachusetts first, then traveled via transportation hubs throughout the country. The Spanish flu killed 50-100 million people worldwide, At its peak, the week of October 12^th, 393 people died in New Hampshire alone. The statistics are very misleading, because people died of flu related complications, especially pneumonia, after they had technically recovered from the flu. Often those deaths are not counted as flu fatalities.

Spanish Influenza did hit the Upper Valley. As a rule, Vermont is supposed to have been hit harder than New Hampshire. I decided to focus some research on four towns I have not featured yet: Plainfield, Lebanon, Hartford and Norwich.

In Plainfield, there was an uptick of deaths that seemed to be caused by influenza, but it was an uptick only. In a span of 6 years, 1918 actually had the lowest number of deaths from 1914 to 1922. 1919 had the highest number of deaths, but not by a significant amount. In 1915, 20 people died in Plainfield. In 1916, 18 people died; in 1917, 24 people died; in 1918, 14 people died; in 1919, 24 people died, in 1920, 18; in 1921, 18; and in 1922, 17 people died. Only 2 people died of influenza in 1918, 4 in 1919 and 2 in 1920. I think there were probably a number of deaths, especially in the very rural more isolated areas, that went unreported.

The first person in Plainfield to die from the Spanish flu was Annie Bean, who was a 35 year old farm wife when she died on October 12. She had been sick with the flu for two weeks when she finally died of pericarditis (inflammation of the heart). Annie's husband's name was Clarence, who was a farmer in Meriden. She had two sons, Richard, born in 1904, and Clarence, Jr, born in 1914.

Initial research of Annie and the boys is confusing. Her younger son is listed on Ancestry.com as having been born in Maine, yet Annie never lived in Maine, and she is listed only as having given birth to Clarence, Jr. A close examination of the census records for 1910 tell the story. In 1910, Annie and Clarence had been married for 8 years, and they lived with Clarence's parents, Chauncey and Amelia. Clarence had one brother, Lewis, who never married and also lived with his parents. On the census, Chauncey is listed as the head of household, Clarence is listed as the son, Annie as the daughter-in-law, and Richard as the adopted grandson. This leads one to believe that Clarence adopted Richard. Until the end of his life, Richard's official documents always stated that Clarence and Annie Bean were his parents.

It is sad to view Clarence's World War I draft card on Ancestry.com. You can see the card, with his signature on it, listing Annie Louise Bean as his wife, and verifying that the information he gives on the card is true to the best of his knowledge on September 12, 1918. Exactly one month later, his wife would be dead.

When Annie died, Richard was 14 years old and Clarence was 10. They continued to live in their grandparents' house, and more than likely their grandmother took care of them. It is easy to speculate about a woman whose sons lived with her as adults, and to wonder how she and Annie got along.

Unlike his brother, apparently Clarence was not content to stay single, because he married again four years later, to Clara Smith of Hartford, Vermont. This time, he moved out of his mother's house and rented a house for himself, his new wife, and his son. In 1920, Richard is listed in the census with his father, but in 1930, he was 26 and out on his own.

The second person to die from Spanish Influenza in Plainfield was Clinton Smith, who was the 18 year old son of Juliaetta and Frank Smith. The Smiths were also a farm family, and Clinton was their only child . Although the name Juliaetta was quite common in Cornish and Plainfield, I cannot find any link between this Juliaetta and any of the others. There was even another farmer named Frank married to Julietta in Plainfield, but their last name was True.

Margaret Ross was 17 years old. She was born in Scotland and had lived in Plainfield as a servant for four months. She died in St Luke's Hospital in New York City, after having had influenza for 14 days and pneumonia for 7. She had been in the hospital 7 days when she died. Apparently she was sent home to New York to the hospital when she got sick, and then died there. She was buried in the Plainfield cemetery, though.

                                                                                                    Luella and Walter

Luella Williams was 41 years old when she died after having had Spanish Influenza for 5 days. Walter was her husband and they had been married for 22 years when she died. Luella married Walter when she was 18 and he was 25. Luella had 9 children, 7 boys and 2 girls. Two of the boys died. When she died in 1919, her oldest child was 20 and her youngest was under a year old. In 1900, like Clarence Bean and Annie Bean, Walter, Luella and their infant son, Everett lived with Walter's

parents, Norman and Stella. In 1910, Stella had died and the younger Williams' had added three more children to the household, Erwin, Herbert and Stella ( named after her grandmother). In 1920, Norman is still part of the family, several more children have been born, and two (George and Roger) have died. The last child, an infant at the time of Luella's death, was named after his grandfather. Eva, the youngest girl, was 3 years old when her mother died.

Walter raised all of the kids himself. He never remarried. The kids stayed with him until they were quite old. Norman, the youngest, never married and always lived on the farm. Everett lived with his father until he was 31, then disappears from all record. Erwin married Marion Smith in 1931 and they were divorced by 1935. Herbert had a wife, Beulah, and a daughter Patricia. It seems that they had a happy life. Patricia died very recently. In 1933 Stella married a Wilfred Longwood, who had already been married and divorced. At 19, he married a 14 year old girl who divorced him 3 years later citing extreme cruelty. Stella disappears from the record after her marriage to Wilfred. There are a couple of mentions of a Wilfred Longwood who could be the same person. It would be interesting to speculate, but since I'm not sure, I guess Wilfred and Stella are lost to history. Eva died in Hartland at age 99 in 2014. She is listed in the Hartland vital statistics at Eva Williams-Wolfshire, but I can't find an obituary or any other information.

 

 

My point in writing about these Spanish Influenza victims was to put a face and a story to what seems like dry statistics. Of course, two or three families do not constitute sociological research. However, many articles mention the social disruption the epidemic caused. Frank and Juliaetta Smith lost their only child. Annie Bean left two sons.  Both married unhappily and divorced. Walter Williams raised seven children by himself after Luella died. Of all seven children, only one had a happy marriage. There is some reason to believe that several of the children married people who were sketchy at best, and maybe even violent or criminally ill. Some of the unsettled aspects of their adult lives could have been caused by the traumas caused by the death of their mother, and the difficulties of raising children in a single parent home during the early 1900's.