From the global scale, down to the local level such as Lovettsville, it is impossible today \u2013 or even back then \u2013 to know how many deaths were caused by the Spanish Flu.\u00a0 Our research has documented at least 12 deaths in the Lovettsville District mostly likely caused by that dread disease, out of 50 to 70 deaths during the year of 1918. These were all in October and November. \u00a0There were likely more during 1919, which we have not yet documented.<\/p>\n
Although you will often hear that what is happening today with the coronavirus and Covid-19\u00a0 is \u201cunprecedented,\u201d it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 The biggest difference between then and now is the rapidity of communications, and advances in medicine.<\/p>\n
In Loudoun County, as well as across the country, churches and schools were closed during the Spanish Flu epidemic, as were other places of entertainment. Throughout the country, large public gatherings were banned.\u00a0 Facial masks were encouraged everywhere, and masks were legally required in a number of large cities.\u00a0 Violators were arrested and fined.<\/p>\n
In this area, the churches appear to have been closed from mid-October 1918 through December, or even into 1919. \u00a0In the minutes of the St. James Church Council, we find the following entry dated January 8, 1919: \u00a0\u201cOn account of the Epidemic of the Spanish Influenza the churches thus (ordered?) closed until further notice.\u201d\u00a0 The Loudoun Mirror<\/em> reported on October 15 that the Hillsboro Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church, which included Mount Olivet in Lovettsville, was closed.\u00a0 The minutes of the New Jerusalem Lutheran Church Council, which normally met monthly, don\u2019t show any activity for September, October, or November of 1918.\u00a0 There were no baptisms at New Jerusalem between August 14 and November 24, 1918, and then suddenly there were eight baptisms in December.<\/p>\n Then as now, public officials frequently issued optimistic statements proclaiming that the epidemic was abating, and that the Flu was going away.\u00a0 Such statements were common even during the peak of the epidemic, in October 1918, and can be found in local and regional newspapers.<\/p>\n And there were also various home remedies \u2013 quack remedies actually \u2013 which people used to try to prevent or treat the Spanish Flu. Among the more benign of these was liquor, generally not in short supply in the hills and hollers around Lovettsville.<\/p>\n But then consider the case of Sarah Talley of the Neersville\/Between-the-Hills area. She was born a Waters, the name by which that community used to be known. \u00a0Sometime on October 15 or 16, 1918, the 59-year old Widow Talley tried a remedy which she had no doubt heard recommended \u2013 Oil of Wintergreen \u2013 with unfortunate results. A physician, Dr. Nathaniel Burwell of Shepherdstown, \u00a0was summoned early in the morning of October 16, but was unable to save Mrs. Talley; she died about an hour later.\u00a0 Her death certificate, made out by Dr. Burwell, stated as Cause of Death: over dose of Oil of Wintergreen; accident trying to prevent `flu.\u2019\u00a0 <\/em>Oil of Wintergreen was in fact used in vapor form, along with camphor and menthol (the latter two being the primary ingredients in Vicks VapoRub, first marketed in 1905).\u00a0 She was buried at St. Paul\u2019s Lutheran Church two days later.<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s look more closely at 1918 and 1919.<\/p>\n In the U.S., the Spanish Flu hit in three waves during 1918-1919, according to most experts, although some think there were actually four waves.<\/p>\n The first wave emerged in Kansas in the Spring of 1918, and spread to the East Coast along with troop movements which were part of the mobilization to train and send U.S. troops to Europe.\u00a0 The first wave was relatively mild, and outside of Kansas, there were relatively few deaths.<\/p>\n The second wave, far more deadly, emerged in September, hitting first among troops and then civilians in Boston, then spreading to the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and to Quantico Marine base and Camp Lee in Virginia, among other places. By early October, the flu was raging at Camp Meade in Maryland, and in the District of Columbia, where many prominent officials were sickened. The U.S. government ordered all federal employees to wear masks.<\/p>\n A third wave struck in the first part of 1919.\u00a0 \u201cInfluenza Again Hits Loudoun County,\u201d reported the Loudoun Times<\/em> on January 8. \u201cWith Renewed Force the County is Being Swept by This Epidemic Which is Exacting a Heavy Toll.\u201d<\/p>\n Lovettsville and its neighborhood<\/strong><\/p>\n Lovettsville, although rural, was located in a region of the country that had a Spanish Flu death rate well above the average for the United States.\u00a0 The state with the highest mortality rate for Spanish Flu in 1918 was Pennsylvania; our neighbor Maryland was second. Virginia was a bit down the list, at number 11. The number of deaths attributed to Spanish Flu in Virginia was estimated at 16,000. \u00a0Cities, being more densely populated, had higher fatality rates than rural areas.\u00a0 Baltimore was 7th<\/sup>, and Washington D.C. was 12th<\/sup>, in the nationwide rankings of the influenza mortality rate in 1918.<\/p>\n In Loudoun County, about 90 deaths out of a total of 354 were officially attributed to \u201cinfluenza\u201d in 1918. \u00a0This figure is undoubtedly low, since the \u201cSpanish Flu\u201d was not well understood at the time, nor was there any test for it.\u00a0 As we see today with Covid-19, there were many complications of the Spanish Flu \u2013 affecting lungs (pneumonia, tuberculosis), respiratory tract (bronchitis), kidneys (nephritis), the heart, or other organs — so that the cause of death (COD) might be listed as the resulting complication, not the Flu itself.<\/p>\n Loudoun County appears to have had a lower-than-average death rate.\u00a0 The influenza death rate per 1000 people was 17 for Loudoun. This compares to the rates for nearby jurisdictions: Alexandria City \u2013 49; Alexandria County 16; Fairfax County — 42; Fauquier County \u2013 14; Clarke County \u2013 18; City of Winchester \u2013 27, and surrounding Frederick County (Va.) \u2013 12.<\/p>\n Among Loudoun County\u2019s six magisterial districts, the Lovettsville District had the smallest number of deaths officially attributed to influenza, six, in the Fall of 1918. This is somewhat surprising because of its proximity to the B&O railroad yards in Brunswick, which was a Spanish Flu hotspot; \u00a0about half of the Brunswick population was reported to be sick with the flu in October 1918. (The highest district in Loudoun County was Leesburg, with 24 deaths.)<\/p>\n However, by using cemetery records, newspaper accounts, and other sources, we have already determined that the real Lovettsville death toll was at least twice as high as reported.<\/p>\n Figuring out the whole picture<\/strong><\/p>\n A number of obstacles get in the way of trying to put together a complete picture of what happened in 1918-19.<\/p>\n First, we have found that many deaths in the Lovettsville area were simply not officially recorded by Loudoun County, probably because they were just not reported.\u00a0 For 1918, it looks like only about 50 of some 70 deaths were reported to County officials.\u00a0 This shouldn\u2019t be surprising to anyone familiar with the history of northern Loudoun County.<\/p>\n The Lovettsville area\u2019s isolation from the rest of Loudoun County, is a historic feature which goes back to its character as \u201cthe German Settlement,\u201d populated largely by the \u201cPennsylvania Dutch\u201d \u00a0who were looked down upon by Loudoun\u2019s elite because of their language and cultural differences.\u00a0 Then, generations later, Lovettsville\u2019s pro-Union majority during the Civil War resulted in its political isolation \u2013 if not ostracism \u2013 well into the 20th<\/sup> century. (The Lovettsville and Waters precincts were two of the three precincts in the County that voted against secession in 1861.) \u00a0So it could \u00a0be expected that more than a few deaths \u2013 and births, etc. \u2013 were not even reported to Leesburg and included in Loudoun County\u2019s vital statistics.\u00a0 For example, \u201cdelayed birth certificates\u201d were fairly common, as people often didn\u2019t need them until they needed to get a Social Security card for employment purposes.\u00a0 A housewife might never need to get one.<\/p>\n The other side of this isolation from Loudoun County, was that many Lovettsvillians and north Loudoun residents had closer commercial, religious, and family ties to Frederick County, Maryland, and \u00a0Jefferson County, West Virginia, than to the rest of Loudoun County.\u00a0 This included hospital usage.\u00a0 Many people from this area used the hospital in Frederick rather than the one in Leesburg, and people in the Between-the-Hills area and Neersville often used the hospital in Charles Town, and doctors in Harper\u2019s Ferry. \u00a0(As an example: the Loudoun Mirror<\/em> reported on October 22, 1918, that Charles Heater had undergone an operation at the Frederick Hospital for complications arising from the Spanish Flu. He apparently survived and lived until 1952.)<\/p>\n For our purposes here, one consequence of this would be that if a Lovettsvillian died at the hospital in Frederick (or at the emergency hospital in Brunswick), his or her death would not be recorded in Loudoun County.<\/p>\n Church records<\/strong><\/p>\n Here arises a second complication. Churches are often a good source for burial records, and information on causes of death. However, looking at the period of the Spanish Flu, we are faced with a couple of problems.<\/p>\n Two of the largest churches \u2013 St. James Reformed, and New Jerusalem Lutheran \u2013 were without pastors at the time, so few, if any, burials were recorded in the church registers. New Jerusalem was between Pastors Mauer and Poffenberger, and recorded no burials between October 1, 1918 and January 4, 1920. \u00a0St. James was between Pastors Stonebraker and Harner during the peak of the Spanish Flu, and between October 1918 up to February 1920, it recorded only two burials. \u00a0(These were Maggie Goodhart, widow of the undertaker Elijah Goodhart, a reported suicide in December 1918; and Dr. Harry Buhrman, who suddenly dropped dead in Eamick\u2019s store in June 1919.<\/p>\n Where are the newspapers?<\/strong><\/p>\n Lack of newspapers, and the paucity of coverage, present a big obstacle in this case.\u00a0 Normally, in this region and around the country, local newspaper accounts give us the best picture of the day-to-day, week-to-week development of the Spanish Flu epidemic in the United States and the world-wide pandemic.\u00a0 The Loudoun newspapers contain relatively little reporting on the impact of the Spanish Flu in the Lovettsville area \u2013 for reasons we\u2019ve already discussed.<\/p>\n The best source of newspaper information would be the Brunswick Blade<\/em>–Times<\/em> \u2013 the predecessor of the Brunswick Citizen<\/em> which is still today Lovettsville\u2019s local newspaper.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the issues of the Blade-Times<\/em> for the years before and after the Spanish Flu epidemic are missing, and have never been found.<\/p>\n What we do know\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n Despite all these problems, it is still possible to supplement the official death records with information from other sources: cemetery records, family histories, and newspapers where they exist. So, using those sources that are available to us, we can put together somewhat of a picture.<\/p>\n First, we can document at least 12 deaths from Spanish Flu in the Lovettsville (Magisterial) District. (13 if you count the poor Widow Talley.) \u00a0There were undoubtedly others beyond these, where the complication of the disease was cited as cause of death, rather than the disease itself. The known deaths are listed below.<\/p>\n Second, we can see how the Spanish Flu hit in clusters, and even families.\u00a0 We see two cases where the flu killed both a mother and daughter:\u00a0 Martha Cogle, 65, and her daughter Ida Axline, 38; and Sarah Virts Meyers, 31, and her infant daughter.\u00a0 The Myers family is an example of where deaths were not recorded by the County, but were passed down in the family, according to genealogist Gary Virts.<\/p>\n![\"Sarah](\"http:\/\/www.lovettsvillehistoricalsociety.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/Sp-Flu-Sarah-Talley.jpg\")
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