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 25th. 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.
