Preach it, Lara…
On the second of March 1900, the Mullens family of Berk Creek, Kanawha County, West Virginia, lost two little girls.
Martha Mullens was six years old.
Her sister Myrtle was just 20 months old.1
Lawrence Jennings Bird of Welford, West, Virginia, son of W.H. and B.N. Bird, was one year old when he died in December 1899.2
Miggel May, daughter of W.H. and K.B. May of St. Albans, was two when she died on 31 August 1903.3
May White, daughter of A.C. and M. White of Clendennin, was two years, 11 months and 27 days old when she died on 24 July 1903.4
B.R. Young, son of H.G. and Annie Young of Weir, was two years and one month old when he died on 8 August 1903.5
On one page of volume 1 of the Kanawha County death register:
• William Gibson, son of George Gibson, was two years, one month, and 10 days old when he died on September 15, 1903.6
• John Shelton, son of Robert Shelton, was three years, six months and 1 day old when he died on October 20, 1903.7
• Nellie Rathie, daughter of Robert Rathie, was six years, two months and 14 days old when she died on December 19, 1903.8
• Jessie Drew, son of L.D. Drue, was one year, three months and four days old when he died on February 5, 1903.9
The cause of death, in every single one of these cases: measles.
The Legal Genealogist is hardly the first genealogist to note the true cost in human life among those in past generations because we didn’t have vaccines to protect against diseases like measles. Just yesterday, genealogy blogger Lara Diamond wrote a powerful post, “Genealogy & the Power of Vaccines,” that prompted this one.
A Baltimore resident, Lara is watching with alarm the growing number of measles cases there and noted: “While the majority of the people I know are vaccinated and vaccinate their children, there are those who think that measles and the like are innocuous childhood diseases. As a genealogist, I’ve seen how many children died before we had vaccinations.”10
Lara focused on records found in her research, showing children’s deaths in what was then Hungary and is now Ukraine. But lest you misunderstand — lest anyone get the idea that this was a problem of “those people” or “over there” — as you can see from the records above, it was not an isolated problem, not a European problem.
Here in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control website notes, right after measles became a notifiable disease here in 1912, “an average of 6,000 measles-related deaths were reported each year.” And, sadly, as late as the 1950s and early 1960s, before a measles vaccine was available, “each year, among reported cases, an estimated 400 to 500 people died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 1,000 suffered encephalitis (swelling of the brain) from measles.”11
These are not just numbers.
Just scan the Kanawha County, West Virginia, death registers, available online at the West Virginia Vital Research Records Project of the West Virginia Archives12 or on FamilySearch13 and look beyond the cause of death column.
His name was Robert Gibson. He was five years, 11 months and 10 days old when he died on 11 May 1911 in Charleston, West Virginia. The cause of death: pneumonia following measles.14
Rupert Hudnall was one year old when he died on 7 March 1912 in Cabin Creek District.15
And it was not only children. Nora Price was 33 when she died on 14 March 1911 in Union District.16
The lesson for today? Let me quote Lara Diamond: “Genealogists can and should learn from the past. Get vaccinated. Protect those who cannot get vaccinated–because of age or medical issues–from being exposed to these diseases. We don’t want to see modern causes and ages of death to mirror those of a just a century ago.”17
Preach it, Lara… Preach it.
Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Learning from the past,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 29 Apr 2019).
SOURCES
- Kanawha County, West Virginia, Death Record, 1: 188, lines 15-16; digital images, “Death records, 1853-1967,” FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 29 Apr 2019). ↩
- Ibid., 1: 183, line 5. ↩
- Ibid.,1: 211, line 1. ↩
- Ibid., 1: 207, line 14. ↩
- Ibid., line 15. ↩
- 1: 201, line 1. ↩
- Ibid., line 2. ↩
- Ibid., line 5. ↩
- Ibid., line 6. ↩
- Lara Diamond, “Genealogy & the Power of Vaccines,” Lara’s Jewnealogy, posted 28 Apr 2019 (https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com/ : accessed 29 Apr 2019). ↩
- “Measles History: Pre-vaccine Era,” Centers for Disease Control (https://www.cdc.gov/measles/ : accessed 29 Apr 2019). ↩
- “Search Death Records,” West Virginia Vital Research Records Project, West Virginia Archives and History (http://www.wvculture.org/vrr/ : accessed 29 Apr 2019). ↩
- Kanawha County, West Virginia, Death Record vols. 1-4 (1867-1937); digital images, “Death records, 1853-1967,” FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org : accessed 29 Apr 2019). ↩
- Ibid., 1: 295, line 1. ↩
- Ibid., 2: 5, line 2. ↩
- Ibid., 1: 302, line 11. ↩
- Diamond, “Genealogy & the Power of Vaccines.” ↩
I have a quick question for vaccine haters. How many of your friends or relatives have cancer or have recently had to undergo chemotherapy? It is important to realize those persons are at least twice at risk from measles because of a compromised immune system. Been there, done that, didn’t buy the tshirt and hated having to be extra careful about being in public.
Lara’s post, which sparked this one, notes that her baby niece got whooping cough when she was too young to be vaccinated. We vaccinate not just for ourselves but for all those at risk (“herd immunity”).
While researching my genealogy, I found two of my father’s brothers died as infants due to diseases that we now have vaccines. One died from whooping cough and the other was born premature due to my grandmother catching measles. My father, the youngest, knew nothing about them. This is probably common with most families, that they don’t discuss the children who passed.
Such sad losses… And utterly mind-boggling to me that anyone would be willing to take those risks (and expose others to those risks) today…
My dad’s family is from WV, so I’m familiar with the site you mentioned. It breaks my heart when I read of so many children dying so young. I cannot believe people choose to willingly take such chances and, worse, to foist such dangers on others who are medically unable to be vaccinated. It boggles the mind.
I chose Kanawha County because it was likely one of the places in West Virginia with reasonably good health care at the time, with Charleston there. And still so many deaths…
Having seen my baby grandson, too young for immunisation, catch measles and be so sick in hospital brought it home with a vengeance. Poor little lad was really battered by it and traumatised by being in isolation.
And this was a disease that … sigh … had pretty much been eradicated until the anti-vaxxers stepped in …
Unfortunately, the anti-vaxxers still quote a British doctor who was one of the first to advocate no vaccinations. He has since had his license to practice medicine revoked permanently for his faked reseach and blatant disregard for the health of children. There was also a group of lawyers who paid “researchers” to come up with “proof” that vaccines caused autism so they could sue the pharmaceutical firms. This group has also been discredited due to the falsified “research.” These two incidents probably did more to misinform than anything else in the early days of anti-vaccine rhetoric. And we all know how hard it is for myths to die.
I’d sure like to drive a stake through this myth’s heart… 🙁
There is another reason to be concerned about measles – something scientists just realized a few years ago. A bout with measles will cause IMMUNE AMNESIA. Basically, the measles will make your immune system “forget” how to defend itself against diseases you already had and should be immune to. This can last for 2 years.
My 3rd great-grandmother died in 1886 from measles at the age of 45. I wonder what her family missed out on because she died so young. I reflect on the fact that if she had gotten this when she was younger, my whole family line wouldn’t be here.
Was listening to an interview this morning with a sociologist. She said that one issue with the “vaccine hesitant” is the lack of concern for the community protection. My kid is the most important, and I’m not going to do anything that might cause her harm. Sad that we have become so self-centered.
in the bad old days before the messles vaccine became available, the daughter of one of my mother’s good friends contracted this evil disease. She was by all accounts a smart, vivacious and very popular teen-ager before becoming ill, but the measles morphed into encephalitis and left her with such serious and permanent brain-damage that she spent the rest of her life institutionalized in a condition many times worse than autism.
Now, it has been reported that at least two of the victims of the current epidemic in New York City are pregnant women. It is too soon to tell what effect this will have on their as yet unborn babies.
Even if the rumors about autism had any basis in reality, my personal feeling is that it would still be better to take that risk, rather than to watch my own child or one of his or her playmates die in agony or, worse yet, end up living a long life in a nearly vegetative state, because I refused to allow my child to be vaccinated.
I am old enough to remember a time before the polio vaccine (Thank you, Dr. Salk!).
If the anti-vaxxers continue to spread their deadly misinformation, I wonder how long it will be before polio returns to the US.
And now there are places where govt officials encourage the assassination of health workers caught vaccinating people against polio by telling their people vaccination is a sterilization plot in disguise.
I am old enough to remember that time as well……….in my case every class in my school was taken out into the hall, several classes at a time, and every single
one of us in that school received the polio vaccine on the same day.
My parents found out the location of the first available polio administration site, and they hustled me right down there. I do remember that the shot hurt, but even then, I understood that it was better than getting polio.
I am studying the anti vaxxers ( against smallpox vaccination) in 19th C Scotland for my PhD and there is so much resonance with what is going on today. Spreading untruths through the “socail media” of the time. Lessons of history not learned!
My sister had the measles when she was 3 months old–it left her with brain damage and grand mal seizures that affected her the rest of her short life. The mumps I had when I was 9 left me deaf in my right ear. There were no vaccines for these “harmless” childhood diseases when we were kids.