Newton During the Time of the Spanish Flu
This is from my old neighbor who has done a lot of research tracking his ancestors. He shares a historical perspective of the last pandemic on the residents of Newton — the Spanish Flu.
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I was curious about the impact of the last pandemic on the residents of Newton. I decided utilize my experience gained from researching cemeteries to learn the hardships that people faced from the 1830s to the 1930s. The attached data was taken from the Newton Records of Deaths located on Familysearch.org
The information, highlighted in red, primarily notes multiple deaths in a family. The other items concern causes of death that I found interesting. The cause of death as “probably” is not uncommon, as I discovered during my other projects.
Six of the people that died resided in Wellesley. Also one each at Weston and Pittsburgh.
You can see that many people died at home. I don’t know the reasons for that. One guess is that Physicians often treated their patients at home. Perhaps the cost of treatment at a hospital versus the home was a consideration.
There is a site, Findagrave.com, owned by Ancestry.com. There are over 180 million memorials posted there. I have created over 28,000 memorials.
I shall add the names attached.
The following is an example of a high school friend who was included in a project that I did memorializing the almost 2,000 Veterans buried at the Belmont Cemetery. I am still in touch with his sisters.
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