#52Ancestors, Week 35: Disaster - 1885 Smallpox Outbreak

Disclaimer: Pulaski County, Illinois, has never been large (the 1880 census cited fewer than 8,000 people).  Mound City (the town where this disaster takes place and where many of my ancestors lived) accounted for roughly 2,000 citizens, so while this post is not specific to any of my family, it is still relevant to an understanding of their community.

In my genealogical infancy (before I had the means to purchase subscriptions), my research consisted almost entirely of volunteer-run sites like Family Search and Genealogy Trails.  On the Pulaski County Genealogy Trails website, I found the deaths of two Pearson children listed in a transcribed Birth and Death Book.  At first, I believed them to be children of my great great grandparents, but that didn't jive with the birth dates of their other children.  They belong to another (to my knowledge, unrelated) Pearson family.  

I continued scrolling to see if there was anything else of interest.  George (13 months) and Mabel (4 months) Pearson had died from, respectively, dysentery and malaria in 1889. In 1885, though, the Birth and Death Book told the partial tale of a community wracked by a smallpox outbreak.  Although smallpox vaccines had been developed in the late 1700s, not all people chose to get them, and some people simply didn't have access to them.  Starting in the 1850s, some parts of the United States required mandatory smallpox inoculations, but rural southern Illinois certainly wasn't one of those places...

There is no mention of the outbreak in any available area newspapers from 1885 (most from neighboring Alexander County), so I can't be certain when/how it started.  Here is what I have been able to piece together from various articles concerning the disease and the limited information available in the Birth and Death Book.  The outbreak appears to have started in Mound City in mid-March.  The first death listing smallpox as the cause was A. Craig, a black 16-year old who died on March 16th.  There is no indication as to whether the victim was male or female, but the entry indicates the deceased was buried 'outside the levee.'  Every other victim of this smallpox outbreak was also buried outside the levee. This is likely referencing the area around Mound City National Cemetery. Primarily a burial ground for Civil War soldiers, it is roughly 10-acres and protected by a levee.  

Between March 16th and May 3rd, 39 people succumbed to smallpox.  (The number is almost certainly higher, as statewide registrations for deaths didn't start until 1916.) They ranged in age from 7 months to 70 years.  38 of them were black.  The only exception was Laura Peaslee, a single white woman of 31 years.  But death knows no color.  She was buried 'outside the levee' as well.  While none of the 39 were related to me, I still had questions.  Why did the disease seem to be contained within the black community?  Why were its victims buried outside the levee?  I didn't know much about smallpox or how it was handled, so I did a bit of research.  I've included my sources at the bottom of this post (as any good English teacher would).

"Why did the disease seem to be contained within the black community?" requires a compound answer.  First, it is likely partially due to the way in which smallpox was transmitted.  While Mound City was hardly a wealthy area, it is probable the black population was less well-off than the rest (the United States was barely two decades post-Civil War, after all), and smallpox was known as a poor person's disease.  Transmission primarily occurred through prolonged periods of face-to-face contact but could also occur through contact with fluid from the open sores (such as might be found on dirty clothes or used bed linens).  Going back to the records, there is an unfortunate repetition of last names; 4 Bolens (ages 5-21), 3 Dismukes (ages 4-17), 3 Gants (ages 16 months - 30 years), and several other pairs of surnames were listed. Even assuming household occupants knew to distance themselves from the afflicted, there was just no easy way to do it. A second contributing factor was probably segregation. The interaction between the black and white communities would have been minimal and probably ceased entirely with the first news of the outbreak. 

Why were the victims of the disease buried 'outside the levee'?  The simple answer would be that there was a general ignorance concerning the transmission of smallpox. The longer explanation requires an acknowledgement of the existence of  ‘pest houses’ and 'smallpox cemeteries.’  Pest houses were a sort of communal quarantine for those with the disease. Once the outbreak had run its course, the pest houses were usually burned to eliminate the possibility of any further transmissions.  Of smallpox cemeteries, a New York Times article from 2000 suggests, "every town of colonial antiquity has one."  A quick Google search suggested this was not an exaggeration. These unofficial, makeshift cemeteries are often found just outside the boundaries of actual cemeteries. People knew transmission occurred when the victims were alive and feared it continued after death.  For the same reason that pest houses were burned, those who died from smallpox were buried away from the rest of the living...and also the rest of the dead.   'Outside the levee' must have been Mound City's version of the smallpox cemetery.

Outbreaks like the one described above occurred everywhere in the United States.  Thousands of people are buried in 'smallpox cemeteries,' and due to their very nature, knowledge of their existence is limited.  If I ever get back down to Pulaski County, I will make it a point to check out the area surrounding Mound City National Cemetery.

References:  

"Death Records," Genealogy Trails, genealogytrails.com/ill/pulaski/deathrecords1883-1899.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.

"History of the Smallpox Vaccine," World Health Organization, www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/history-of-vaccination/history-of-smallpox-vaccination. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.

Monagan, David. "Isolated Reminders of Old Epidemics," The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 9 Apr. 2000, www.nytimes.com/2000/04/09/nyregion/isolated-reminders-of-old-epidemics.html. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.

"Smallpox," Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 12 Jul. 2017, www.cdc.gov/smallpox. Accessed 27 Aug. 2023.

#52Ancestors #Week35 - DISASTER

 Amy Johnson Crow has brought my Cuzzin and I together in a quest to make it through 52 weeks of writing about our (mostly Pearson) ancestors with her weekly topical challenges.  This week's "Disaster" prompt encourages us to highlight a disaster that befell our ancestors or a disaster in our own research. Why not both?

^^^America, Illinois March 2018

Much has been documented about the Great Ohio River flood of 1937. My grandmother was a teen that year, and most of her Pearson and Chamberlain relatives lived far away from their hometowns on both the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers by that point. Her grandparents, however, were still living and had many cousins and friends still living and farming in the flood plain. 

There had been so many major floods over the years, bringing evacuations and significant damages. This was a time when many rural folk still lived on what passed for houseboats on the major rivers, when even major roads weren't yet paved, and the Great Depression had not yet been relieved by the War Effort. I've spent a small amount of time in both Pulaski County, Illinois on the Ohio and Pemiscot County, Missouri on the Mississippi, some of it on land so flat it feels as if one can see at least all the way across the state. I've read reports about how the water in 1937 came up to the 2nd story of small houses that were miles from the river.  I will not even pretend to imagine the terror as the river swallowed everything the residents knew. Every neighbor's house, every general store, every school in so many little towns with people already struggling to get by.

The flood brought another kind of destruction I know that any genealogist or historian will understand:  It destroyed the bulk of old records at the Pulaski County Courthouse. Few records remain prior to 1900, and even those after 1900 are often faded or water stained. SO many records that really should exist and often are easily found in other locations, are just gone. Also, on my first trip to research Grandma's roots, I said many times and wrote in my journal that I had never seen so many cemeteries in such poor repair. You can see the toll that's been taken right there, in the eroded stones and the stones tipped off of their bases due to the sodden ground. 

These events were tragic when they occured; they changed lives and futures. I have no intent to diminish the impact felt then.  The effects are only frustrating now, as Cuzzin and I call, email and scroll, hoping that the ONE record we NEED has survived and can be found.

#52Ancestors, Week 34, Newest (Photo) Discovery

This post was moved to the Collecting Dead People blog:

Newest Photo Discovery

#52Ancestors, Week 33: Strong Women

I feel like this post might be something of a cop-out.  I've tried my best to come up with a "new" idea about the strength of my (Pearson and other peripheral) ancestors, but I've discussed that very trait in so many of my previous posts!  Specifically, strong women seem to be first and foremost in many of my musings.  Of course, men had to be strong - physically, at least - but women bore (and lost) children, kept their households running, and sometimes had to accomplish tasks more typically left to men.

For example, I would consider Ann Elizabeth Echols Green Pearson a strong woman. She raised her two daughters alone while her husband fought in the Civil War.  She attempted to coexist with her husband after he returned from the Civil War, but when she discovered that was impossible, she was strong enough to accept that divorce was necessary. It is clear that she did not have a replacement in mind when she and Thomas Green divorced, as she did not remarry for almost 4 years, so she was once again raising her daughters without a husband.

Ann's husband remarried, and he produced a few strong women, as well - his daughter, Leona, and her daughter, Jennie Grace. Leona married and had a daughter with Charles Terpinitz, but when that marriage ended, Leona did not remarry (as was the case with so many women who depended on their husbands to support them).  Leona boarded and worked nearby while Jennie Grace pursued a degree at the University of Illinois.  After Jennie Grace married, Leona pursued a career on the East Coast as a corsetiere.  Jennie Grace, an obviously strong-minded woman, pursued a career in music, and performed overseas.  With the arrival of World War II came the need for women to enlist to serve their country. Jennie Grace did that, too.

Someone else who fits the bill of a strong woman is Nancy Ann Fields Pearson.  In a time when infant mortality was extraordinarily high, Nancy had the misfortune to lose 4 of her 10 children in their infancies.  Not a single one made it to his/her first birthday.  The strength it must have taken to bury those babies and then go about her business is something I cannot comprehend. Also, not long after her husband's death, there is a story of Nancy being assaulted in Cairo, Illinois. (Cuzzin Heather wrote about this incident in one of her previous posts.)  While the report says "grave fears are entertained of her recovery," she did recover, and she ended up outliving one (possibly two) of her remaining six children.

Finally (although I'm sure many more deserve the title of 'strong'), my great grandmother, Lena Pearson, falls into this category for many reasons.  In 1923, after only 7 years of marriage, she lost her first husband to (I believe) tuberculosis.  He left behind not only his wife but a young daughter, Lois. Lena remarried to my great grandfather, Daniel Benton, and had 2 more children.  In 1937, Lena was instrumental in saving both her young son (my grandfather) and Lois (now married with a child of her own) from a fire!  In her later years, Lena survived stomach cancer.  Can't get much stronger than that.

If you've read to the end of this post, I encourage you to click on the link to each woman's story. What I have written here is simply a precursor to a much more detailed account...just to whet your appetite.  ;)

#5Ancestors #Week33 - Strength

There are so many different ways to approach this week's challenge, but the topic that consistently stands out to me are the Women Who Came Before.  I could and may continue in this vein at a later date as well. When I'm doodling, or contemplating embroidery or a new tattoo, I sometimes make a list of the names who came before. Strong women, in ways known to me and other ways that I'm sure were taken to their grave, as most of us have some things we never share.

On my mother's side, my generations of grandmothers are:

Catherine

Hazel

Winifred Bridget

Bettie and Florence

Eldora and Kate

On my dad's side:

Margaret (and honorable mention to her sister Dorothy)

Elsie

Lulu

Maggie and Dirkje

Jennie and Anna

I've counted, and if I include my mother, all of us have given birth to a whopping total of 97 children. Kate and Bettie had twelve each, one was Irish, both were Catholic. Maggie had 11 children, born across 2 countries and her youngest daughter born in an actual cave in North Dakota. The older generations above all buried small children (I don't know if this is true for Jennie), and Hazel lost a daughter at 17. Kate lost an infant daughter and a 20 year old daughter, and Florence had a son that went on the lam at age 20 and never returned. That kind of loss is rare now, and we tell ourselves that we don't know how we could survive it.  They carried on.

All of us with the exception of myself and possibly Dirkje have worked on a farm or at least done some significant farm chores at some point in their lives. I've never had the experience, but my step-grandparents lived on a farm in their retirement, and I have seen a farm in action and had some fun experiences there. It certainly isn't anything as romantic as Little House on the Prairie or the Waltons would have had me believe. I have newspaper articles and research by a cousin outlining farm sales, near bankruptcy, photos and tallies of crops that had to be tended and gathered without machines, and homes cut from the very sod they sat upon. Farms that experienced flood, drought and tornados, one tornado leaving Eldora an invalid for many years before her death. Anna was enumerated as a laborer in Norway, living away from her single mother while a teen - Anna is believed to have been an only child.

Most of the above women saw the advent of the automobile, and what they must have thought! Jennie was recently widowed and moved from the farm to the city at about the time that cars were becoming more popular, and I imagine the challenges were exacerbated by the noise alone. Bettie's son Bill was the first in that family to own his own car, and it traveled from Missouri to Wisconsin and back more than a few times, once with his mother, siblings and all of their worldly possessions. My grandma was small when she saw their arrival but remembered that "it looked like a clown car with all of those people pouring out."

Catherine, Hazel, Winifred, Margaret, Elsie, Lulu and myself, we've all watched husbands or sons pack their things, get into their uniforms and go to war. Letters, the occasional phone call, sending packages. The sleepless nights, the news, both good and bad. The loneliness, and the adjustment when they come home, and after. We've had candles, yellow ribbons and lapel pins. We've had the prayers of our friends and families. I see you brave ladies, and I wrap my arms around you. We too, have served.

Maggie, Dirkje and Anna arrived in a foreign country without the ability to speak the language. They all had the benefit of large immigrant communities in the same circumstances. For Anna, although her husband's arrival preceded hers by 2 years, she had no family nearby. My Dutch ancestors had thankfully been here for a number of years before the government began enacting anti-German edicts including bans on speaking their language. We are not German, but Dutch, but Dutch was "close enough" for the US Government and often included in these bans. The language survived in that my grandmother Margaret and her siblings started school (the eldest was 6 just as WWI started) with no English, as they simply didn't speak it at home. I am sad that by the time I was interested in learning a phrase or two, my grandmother didn't remember much of her first language. I know only a few words.

Bettie, Kate and Jennie lost husbands at what today would be considered perilously young ages (edit - I hadn't noticed before writing this that they were all the same age):

Bettie's husband was a farmer and reportedly all-around good guy who had been kicked in the head by a mule about 2 years prior to his death. He has been reported by an elderly cousin and a newspaper report to have "not been the same since" and while they didn't have the terminology for a TBI, he was also reported by another cousin to have been somewhat depressed afterward. George was found by a man he was doing business with and by his 3 teenage sons, hanging from the rafters in his hay barn. He was 49, and left his wife, 8 children (his two eldest daughters had married the year prior, both had newborns and lived in the family home) not to mention the affairs of the farm. His brother Robert helped to pick up the pieces.

Kate's husband was ill from severe dysentery contracted during his Civil War service, which resulted in later rheumatism. He was also thought to have injured himself while working on his farm prior to heading into town to fulfill jury duty. He was active in many civic positions and was well known and respected, and when the trial was over, he was brought to the home of the defendant in the case (who had lost) as he was quite ill and needed to rest before his 20-mile journey home. He quickly deteriorated, and lost consciousness. It was not recorded if he was able to say goodbye to his family, who arrived before his passing. Patrick was also 49 years old. He left his widow, 11 living children, many still at home (son Tom was 5), and the affairs of a mortgaged farm for his family to settle.

Jennie's husband, also a farmer, was not a well-to-do man. He had been an orphan and was separated from his siblings at a young age, and all of those siblings seem to have lost touch with one another, although 2 sisters lived in the (not immediate) area. He and Jennie, who lived near her family, rented their farm, and the only mentions of them in their very busy community papers were at his death. He and some of the neighbors, and possibly one of his children, had influenza in the early spring of 1899, and Charles (often called by his middle name Perry) died one month before his 49th birthday. His wife and seven children stayed in Cherokee County for a few years before moving to Sioux City.

All of these women raised families who remembered them fondly (and sometimes not as fondly, because we are human), who passed down their photos (Jennie is the only one that I've never seen a photo of) and their recipes and tales about how they lived. Most have namesakes, even Eldora, which tickles me as relatively unusual. I admire them all, because they all persevered, and without any of them, I certainly wouldn't be here. I do in fact have both Margaret and Elsie's names in a tattoo, because we are breast cancer survivors. 

My grandmothers Margaret and Catherine lived to "ripe old age." Both survived all of their siblings (Catherine was the oldest, Margaret was the youngest). Both had Alzheimer's disease, but not before they had the opportunity to raise families who loved them and love back, see the world (a little), work, laugh (a lot) and adore their grandchildren.

#52Ancestors #Week32 - Family Reunion

 I received a very special gift two weeks ago when Hubz and I went to Wisconsin for his family's "Christmas in July." We try to see both of our families on some of these weekends as our mothers were from the same neck of the woods, and we can usually pull it off. One of my aunts was out of town, but we saw the other. We came home with a large and enormously heavy afghan, crocheted probably mid-1970's by my great-grandma. I remember her fairly well, all 5' nothing and gravelly voiced.  Devout Catholic, devoted mother and grandmother, and cooking still talked about 40 years after her death. It's beautiful, and I will treasure it by using it, NOT hiding it away.  Currently, my cat loves it, too.

My great-grandparents used to host family reunions in a city park, and I only vaguely remember those. I was quite small, and the only picture I have is one in which they were honored by their children for their 50th anniversary, which was in 1973. They left quite the legacy in their 7 children, 27 grandchildren and great-grandchildren still coming for several years after they were gone.

In the late 1990's, we had a reunion again, and my grandma, as well as her aunt (my great-gram's youngest sister) were the matriarchs at that party, although Cousin Mike stole the show with his fire truck, giving rides to all. What I remember most about that party, though, was telling my entire extended family how much they mean to me, to us, to each other. I didn't do this of my own volition.

My Aunt Polly, who I have described for lack of a better adjective as "caffeinated," approached me and insisted that Right That Second I get up on top of the nearest picnic table. She and her sisters (there were 5 of them once) used to dance and put on homemade "shows" before television came, but I am not the family extrovert, but wouldn't dream of saying "no" to Aunt Polly. Up I went. What she had me do was give her speech. She was only in her early 70's at the time, but I was 30 and even though I'm generally quiet, I can still yell. She relayed the message, through me, about how very loved and treasured we all are. I'd get on that table again This Minute. God Bless, Aunt Polly. And Gram, too.

Actual Photo of Aunt Polly relaying her speech to me.

#52Ancestors, Week 32: Delayed Family Reunion

A few months back, my co-blogger (Cuzzin Heather) and I collaborated on a post concerning our direct ancestors, Joseph and Benjamin Pearson.  Click the link if you'd like to read more (PLEASE!), but I'll give you the abbreviated version.  Joseph and Benjamin were brothers.  In the 1850s, Joseph left the family home in Virginia and put down roots in southern Illinois.  For years, he and Benjamin corresponded, and Joseph would implore that Benjamin join him. After the Civil War (in which Benjamin fought for the Confederacy and Joseph did not fight at all), Benjamin finally made his way to southern Illinois to reunite with his brother.  The exact date of their reunion is unknown, but we place it some time in 1872.  Benjamin married a "local gal" in 1873 and she helped him to raise (and add to) his family in close proximity to his brother. The brothers got roughly a decade of time with each other before Joseph passed away in February 1882.

That was a family reunion of sorts but not exactly the one I want to discuss in this particular post. Something I appreciate about genealogy is that it helps you "add" to your family.  They were always your family, of course, but every once in a while, you make a real connection with one of them.  Sometimes this connection is purely familial and peters out after you have exhausted your discussion of family tales. Occasionally, though, the connection is personal and you end up finding a good friend in someone who also happens to share some of your DNA.

Heather and I connected through a shared relative in 2012.  The three of us (as well as several other peripheral relatives) communicated via group email for a few months.  Heather and I continued a lengthy email exchange for the next two years. Years later, Heather and I recognized each other in a Facebook genealogy group (big surprise, right?). We started helping each other research shared relatives.  And then, we started helping each other research ALL the relatives. We shared strategies, frustrations, genealogy memberships... Making headway in our trees was important, but so was the comradery. As the years passed, very few days would go by where we didn't at least touch base with each other. 

And then we started to talk about meeting up somewhere.  We threw around the idea of doing some joint genealogical research in southern Illinois, but that didn't pan out.  We talked about a midway meet-up in Chicago, but my vehicle decided it needed an overhaul that summer.  We considered getting together over this past Memorial Day weekend, but we couldn't make it work with our schedules.  Finally, as I pondered where we might road trip this summer, it only made sense to include Cuzzin Heather in our travels.  And so, a few days before my birthday, we finally saw each other in the flesh!  This post's picture is from the beginning of a day of Minnesota sight-seeing. 

In a sense, through us, Joseph and Benjamin were reunited once again.  I'd like to think they enjoy the fact that their descendants still find comfort in each other's company, and maybe they even awwwed when my daughter was talking to Heather and said "love you" before handing the phone back to me. 

#52Ancestors, Week 31: Flew the (Religious) Coop

I thought of more than a few relatives who might fulfill the guidelines of this particular prompt.  Unfortunately, I have already written posts about them.  Nettie Pearson flew the coop when she left her family and married for the first time at the tender age of 14.  Nettie's brother, Horace, flew the coop (albeit slowly) when there was an apparent break with his family, and he was forced to make his living as a double-amputee door-to-door salesman.  Joseph Allen Pearson flew the coop of Virginia and moved to Illinois prior to the Civil War.  Jennie Grace Terpinitz flew the coop of gender expectations when she enlisted during WWII.  Roy Hudson presumably flew the marital coop when he seemingly faked his own death.  Click on the links to read their stories because they're really interesting!

After sifting through some old newspaper clippings, I decided to focus on James Henry Pearson.  He is not a direct ancestor, but Joseph Allen Pearson (my ggg grandfather) was his uncle because Benjamin Everett Pearson (Cuzzin Heather's direct ancestor) was James Henry's father.  Now that we have all the important lineage out of the way, let's get down to the story.  

James Henry didn't leave his family, nor did he leave his home state in order to avoid the ravages of war.  No, it would seem that James Henry left a "normal" religion for a religious sect.  When he did so, he also left his secure job with the railway (because they operated trains on Sunday).  Then, when he consequently opened a restaurant, he refused to serve coffee because he believed it was sinful to drink it.  

Most of the Pearsons of this era and region were southern Baptists, so it is probably safe to assume that James Henry had been raised in that faith.  Why he flew the religious coop is anyone's guess, but it would end up having catastrophic consequences for his family.  In 1905, James Henry  and his wife, Victoria, had 3 children.  George Dewey had been born in 1898, Grace in 1901, and Freda Lois in late 1904/early 1905.  

In July 1905, Freda became ill. If her father were still (presumably) a southern Baptist, he would have called a doctor.  After all, southern Baptists consider it part of their missionary work to build hospitals and clinics as a way to minister to the needy, so they must also believe in the power of medicine.  Sadly for Freda, her father's new religious beliefs precluded him from seeking/accepting medical aid.  The following headline, consequent bylines, and partial article were taken from the July 18, 1905, Bluefield Daily Telegraph.

The article went on to say that the townspeople had more or less turned a blind eye when adults died as a result of adherence to this sect, but they drew the line at defenseless children. Mr. Pearson was arrested but posted a $500 bail thanks to his wife and a friend and neighbor, F. E. Godsey.  The next day, Pearson's case was dismissed.

With some assistance from Cuzzin Heather and a later article that refers to Pearson's sect as "the Holiness," it was determined that James Henry had likely joined the Pentecostal Holiness Church.  In its early years of existence, members of the Pentecostal Holiness were against medical intervention.  Thankfully, this is no longer the case.