Marshall County's Battle with Spanish Influenza 1918-1920

While some have succumbed to hyper-fear of the coronavirus, nothing could reach the fervor of the fever feared most: Spanish Influenza in 1918-1920.  While the worldwide epidemic reached its most aggressive spread in 1918, strains remained into 1920 and in some local communities claimed more victims during the later period of the virus.  For example, Clinton County suffered twice the deaths from the flu in 1920 than in 1918.  The height of the flu's toll reached our local communities about September and October 1918.  By October 17, 1918, there were over 23,000 cases reported in Indiana.   Remarkably, Marshall County accounted for more than 10% of Indiana's cases with 2,453 people reported that same week.  The flu hit young people into their early 30s particularly hard which seemed to contradict normal understanding of viruses.  It was estimated a quarter of the world's population was affected.

During those two months, our local newspapers carried article after article of the grim reaper's harvest, including young soldiers who had enlisted from Marshall County to fight in WWI only to be stricken with the flu as they trained in military camps.  By mid-October, county health officials met with elected officials and school leaders and called for an outright quarantine across the county.  Schools, churches, theaters, and other areas of public gatherings were ordered closed.  This lasted for more than a week.  The quarantine occurred again in the early months of 1920 with deaths resulting from the virus well into the late part of that year.

Spanish influenza took the lives of a few of our enlisted men during the war, but it also took the life of Hannah Burden, the only woman counted among the county's war dead.  She enlisted as a nurse with the Red Cross and was infected with the virus at Camp Sheridan in Ohio while caring for infected soldiers and died on October 26, 1918.  The late bloom of the virus that occurred in 1920 also took the life of my grandmother's sister, Blanchie, who was just two years old, and her aunt who was in her 20s.  During the harsh winters when the virus raged, my great aunt told me that the small farming community around their home decided to use their barn as a make-shift morgue until the ground thawed and loved ones could be buried.  The bodies of the flu victims were wrapped tightly, fitted in pine boxes, and stacked in the barn in which I played as a little kid.  These relatives stricken by the flu were buried at Mt. Zion (County Line) Cemetery near LaVille Schools.

My Great Aunt Blanchie Crothers (1918-1920) late victim of the flu

Crothers Barn on Marshall/St. Joseph County Line Road, makeshift morgue during the pandemic

Not unlike what we've seen with other pandemics, there was misdirected fear and reprisal.  Many people, even newspaper editors, feared that it was germ warfare distributed by the Germans.  This only fueled anti-German sentiment during the war, which led to recent immigrants to the U.S. to halt using their native tongue-something that was reflected in the end of sermons given in German in Bremen area churches.  Men were encouraged not to spit (must've been a thing back then) and onions were pushed as a natural remedy to the flu.  And of course, there were plenty of other remedies promoted to protect against the bug.  After that outbreak, all other flu epidemics were measured by the Spanish flu for decades after, including a particularly severe one in 1932 which was "much less egregious to the general population's mortality."