Spanish Influenza: Nineteen Days in 1919
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In the winter of 1919, the entire town of Mendota, Illinois was stricken by the third wave of the Spanish Flu. German baker Henry Zapf, forty-nine, was working sixteen-hour shifts a day to support his family.
Hilda, his daughter, was nineteen at the time, and as the eldest daughter she was given the immense responsibility of holding down the fort at home. At the time, Hilda had eight siblings, seven of whom (along with her mother), were all in bed, coughing, sneezing, filling bedpans, wearing nightgowns drenched with sweat, delirious with high fevers, and unable to walk without assistance.
The amount of work needed to be done each day to provide quality care must have been overwhelming. Hilda was forced to switch from her role as her mother's cooking and cleaning assistant to becoming a 24/7 caregiver. With the help of a hired nurse, Miss Schueller, and Hilda's beloved live-in Aunt Lizzie (Elizabeth Langlitz Kratsch), the entire family survived the deadliest pandemic of the twentieth century.
Hilda documented how her family and community survived the virulent flu in her descriptive diary entries. Hand washing, lockdowns, mask wearing, and daily visits from Dr. E. P. Cook, Jr. (who had lost his wife a year earlier) were all recorded by Hilda in her diary, along with town gossip-- and a few giggles-- which are shared in this book.
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Spanish Influenza - Denise D'Angelo Jones
Spanish Influenza:
Nineteen Days in 1919
(From the Diary of One
Who Survived)
by
Denise D’Angelo Jones
Copyright and Credits
Spanish Influenza: Nineteen Days in 1919 (From the Diary of One Who Survived)
Copyright © 2020 Denise D’Angelo Jones.
ISBN 978-0-578-71666-4
Library of Congress 1-8999853322
Disclaimer: The author of Spanish Influenza: Nineteen Days in 1919 is a health professional. The written content is of historical significance and is written for informational and educational purposes only. Any health decisions considered by the reader involving the contents of this book ought to be reviewed first by each individual's personal doctor or health professional. This information is in no way meant to be interpreted as actionable advice by chiropractor, nutritionist, and personal trainer Denise D'Angelo Jones.
Exterior photos of Zapf home in 1915 taken by fourteen-year-old Eddie Zapf.
All other photos taken by Henry Zapf.
Sitting room looking into the parlor.1920s,
Zapf kids doing homework in the parlor,
and Parlor music. 1923
are used courtesy of Linda Robin-Austin. Copyright © 2020 All rights reserved.
Photo of Dr. E.P. Cook, Jr., is used by permission of the Mendota Historical Society.
All other photos used courtesy of Shirley Conner Baxter Estate. Copyright
© 1995 Shirley A. Baxter. All Rights Reserved.
Additional research: Linda Robin-Austin.
Copy editing and book design by Laura Stiles and Lisa Blackwell of Draft Works (www.DraftWorks123.com)
Dedication
Dedicated to the memory of
Henry and Mary Zapf, their children,
and beloved family friend, Dr. E.P. Cook, Jr.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments.................................................................................v
Spanish Influenza: Nineteen Days in 1919...................................7
Beginnings..............................................................................................9
Pandemic: Then and Now through the Lens of a Small Town11
Humble Living with Granny by the Tracks.................................15
The Zapf Family’s Medical Team...................................................19
Brave Nurses, Amazing Selfless Service.....................................22
Henry’s Children and Aunt Claire.................................................24
Love Stories and Parenting Nine Children.................................38
Zapf Family Photos—circa 1919....................................................41
Nineteen Days with the Flu Seven................................................46
Life After the Flu................................................................................98
A Memorable, Painful September...............................................104
The Good Doctor..............................................................................113
Zapf Family Photos—circa 1923..................................................119
A Legacy of Service and Love......................................................123
East Side, West Side, Bloody Third............................................125
Neighborhood Jitters.......................................................................126
What Happened to the Zapf Family?..........................................129
In Memory..........................................................................................135
References..........................................................................................139
About the Author..............................................................................141
Acknowledgments
To my mother, Shirley Conner Baxter.
This book is for you.
Thank you for flawlessly preserving our family history.
To my precious aunt, Hilda Dorothea Zapf, our family scribe.
Thank you for meticulously documenting your life.
You must have had an inkling that we would one day enjoy your observations. Your memory lives on eternally in every child that you loved and mentored
in your life, including me.
To my aunt, Claire Zapf Segall.
Thank you for writing so beautifully about your childhood.
Your honest revelations as a then twelve-year-old
brought comedic insights to a very difficult life and death encounter.
Thank you for reminding us that a wild child is needed in every home.
And lastly, to the entire Zapf family, Henry and Mary’s descendants,
and the beautiful township of Mendota, Illinois—thank you!
Spanish Influenza: Nineteen Days in 1919
From the Diary of One Who Survived)
THIS ALL STARTED OVER one hundred years ago. Times were simple then, very simple, and yet very complex. There was a great war, World War I, followed by a pandemic, which was labeled as the Spanish Influenza, or the Spanish Flu. Families were separated, and people died in great numbers, wiping out more lives than the war.
I wasn’t living in 1918–1919 during the time of the pandemic, but my Great-Aunt Hilda Dorothea Zapf, with whom I spent much of my childhood, told me stories about how she and her family of eleven survived. Aunt Hilda was the eldest of nine children and raised many of her siblings by helping her mother and father around the house. The tradition way back when was to have the eldest daughter stay home, keeping house and mentoring the younger children. Hilda was the family historian and recorded everything that happened every day in her life from the age of twelve in 1911 until she was ninety in 1989. Hilda was my grandmother Ella Zapf Conner’s older sister, my favorite mentor, and the anchor for ninety-five years of our extended family.
After Aunt Hilda died in 1994, she left her diaries to my mother, Shirley Conner Baxter. My mother loved genealogy and even explored the family tree all the way back to the 1600s, writing several books on various family lines. When my mother started to lose her memory, she kept the struggle to herself, but, to my surprise, one day in 2010 I received a very large UPS delivery. It was my Aunt Hilda’s diaries. (Not all of them but most of them. There are some missing, possibly with family members.) I never put two and two
together at the time with mom’s failing memory, but I knew that my mother recognized how much I treasured my Aunt Hilda and how much I wanted to one day have the diaries to share with others. Needless to say, I was thrilled with this package and its wonderful surprise!
Two things that I was not aware of when I received my Aunt Hilda’s diaries from my mother back in 2010 are very clear to me now that she is gone. Firstly, I wasn’t given these diaries to keep to myself, packed away on the shelves of my closet, and, secondly, these diaries were passed down to me from someone who, because of dementia, was terrified of losing them forever. Although my mother and I never talked about why she sent them to me when she did, I do know that her deepest desire was to have the contents of Hilda’s writing displayed in the readable form of a book one day to share with others.
And so, to our beloved mother, Shirley Conner Baxter, who treasured family history by saving Hilda Dorothea Zapf’s diaries, for transcribing Claire Zapf Segall’s manuscript of Henry’s Children after Aunt Claire’s death, for preserving our great-grandfather Henry Zapf’s one hundred-year-old picture negatives from his photography collection, and for donating family artifacts to the Mendota Historical Society so that members of the community could appreciate their local German heritage, I say, Thank you. You did the heavy lifting, and now with this book and others yet to come, we will continue your journey of honoring our ancestors.
Beginnings
ON APRIL 26, 2019, just one year short of the COVID-19 pandemic, my mother, Shirley Conner Baxter, lost her battle with vascular dementia. I was my mother’s caregiver, and for the five years that mom lived with me, she would reminisce daily about Aunt Hilda, her mother, Ella, who was Aunt Hilda’s sister, and all of the amazing people in the Zapf family. I had my mother’s book, Shirley’s Legacy, to read back to her about her life. I also had Henry’s Children, a book written by Hilda’s sister (my Aunt Claire Zapf Segall), transcribed by my mother, Shirley, to read to her. The third piece of writing that mom enjoyed hearing me read to fill in the blanks of her fading memory was a twenty-three-page transcription that my mother put together from Aunt Hilda’s 1919 diary. My mother herself entitled it Flu Epidemic of 1919 from One Who Survived.
This particular work, Spanish Influenza: Nineteen Days in 1919, is an expansion of the twenty-three pages Hilda Dorothea Zapf wrote in her diary about her experience with the 1918–1919 Flu Pandemic, and I am including a few insights that Claire Zapf Segall wrote in her book Henry’s Children, as well as memories, thoughts, and quotes from my mother’s early life in Mendota, Illinois, borrowing excerpts from her book Shirley’s Legacy.
And so, in writing this I am creatively collaborating with my Aunt Hilda, Aunt Claire, and beloved mother, Shirley Conner Baxter. Their deeply rooted connections with me are unbounded by the limitations of time. But the irony here is that once again, as the world endures another pandemic a century later, I find myself in real time connecting with my ancestors on an even deeper level than ever before. It is either that they are still with me or that Hilda’s writing is a reminder to me that there is life after COVID-19.
This book is an account of how one family survived the Spanish Influenza of 1919. It is a snapshot from the past. My Aunt Hilda lived in the town of Mendota, Illinois from 1899–1994. She was the eldest daughter of Henry and Mary Zapf (often referred to as Pa and Ma), a German family who lived close to Main Street and who were busily raising nine children.
In the winter of 1919, the entire town of Mendota, Illinois was stricken by the third wave of the Spanish Influenza. My great-grandfather, German baker Henry Zapf, forty-nine, was working sixteen-hour shifts a day to support his family. Hilda was nineteen at the time, and as the eldest daughter she was given the immense responsibility of holding down the fort at home. At the time, Hilda had eight siblings, seven of whom (along with her mother), were all in bed, coughing, sneezing, filling bedpans, wearing nightgowns drenched with sweat, delirious with high fevers, and unable to walk without assistance. The amount of work needed to be done each day to provide quality care must have been overwhelming. Hilda was forced to switch from her role as her mother’s cooking and cleaning assistant to becoming a 24/7 caregiver. With the help of a hired nurse, Miss Mary Schueller, two of Hilda’s healthy sisters, and Hilda’s beloved live-in Aunt Lizzie (Elizabeth Langlitz Kratch), the entire family survived the deadliest pandemic of the twentieth century. Hilda documented how her family and community survived the virulent flu in her descriptive diary entries. Hand washing, lockdowns, mask wearing, and daily visits from Dr. E.P. Cook, Jr., (who had lost his wife a year earlier) were all recorded by Hilda in her diary, along with town gossip and a few giggles, which are all shared in this book.
Pandemic:
Then and Now through the Lens of a Small Town
QUESTIONS TODAY ON the Internet about the origins of flu pandemics abound. We have seen many of them over the years. Humanity has survived the deadliest viruses known to mankind even without vaccines, as the Zapf family of eleven did in the years directly following 1919. Likewise, even though the subject of pandemics is never something to be taken lightly, the number of cases and tragic outcomes of a virulent novel strain, like the 1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak, which claimed the lives of millions in a short period of time, are rare. And by rare, I am not speaking of smaller pandemics (also very serious), which were eventually controlled. I am speaking about the catastrophic consequences of global health implications, such as changing norms and bringing economies to a complete standstill. We are seeing these global health implications today with COVID-19 with practices such as sheltering in place directives, quarantines, massive panic and fear, and loss of life by the thousands from an extremely contagious microorganism with exponential replication patterns. What we are seeing today, the extent of this pandemic, is unprecedented and hasn’t been seen in over one hundred years!
History sites, such as history.com on the Internet, report that when the Spanish Influenza outbreak began to evolve a hundred years ago, there were attempts to keep the truth from the public. Supposedly, in 1918 the first wave of the Spanish Flu was circulating around Europe, but reports of it were kept silent. In March of 1918, when the first spawning of an outbreak in the US reached Camp Funston in Fort Riley, Kansas, one hundred soldiers were infected. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the US, this spread of one hundred cases soon quadrupled