What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. | |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 08:45 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 08:49 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. Alabama was hit very hard by the pandemic of 1917-1918. In the old cemetery in downtown Birmingham, AL there is a large mass grave with a statue of those that died due to the "Spanish" Flu in 1918. It is in a bad part of town now and very few even know that it exists today. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 08:53 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. My mother was a tough, loud, outspoken, proud, loving woman. Her life was not easy raising 3 kids alone, but she was always too proud to give up or to take welfare. Those people and the way that they lived is completely lost today. We lose SO much when previous generations die out. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 79789227 United States 12/28/2020 08:59 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 09:00 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. And they all also fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. They were all hard working, tough, crude, loyal, good, honest people. Their lives were so different than what we live like today. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 09:10 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. Right in the middle of the Civil War in 1863, my mother's whole family, except the men off fighting in the army, all moved from North Carolina to Alabama to escape how the southerners were being abused by the Yankee troops. They were also mostly Freemasons. My great-aunt wrote in her diary that when they had to pass through Union lines, they would flash the secret Freemason sign and the Union sentries stopped harassing them and let them pass freely. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 73445971 United States 12/28/2020 09:16 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Renaissance Woman
User ID: 78438561 United States 12/28/2020 09:16 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 46766471 United States 12/28/2020 09:18 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 09:20 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. They were all iron workers, coal miners and machinists. Short, stout, huge arms and always ready to fight anybody. Today these same ancestors are engineers, cooks, drunks, pilots, drug addicts, truck drivers and school teachers. And none of them know anything at all about their family history or even care... |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 79781594 Australia 12/28/2020 09:22 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 09:26 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. How did that keep the family from getting sick ? You didn't even explain it lol Quoting: Anonymous Coward 73445971 From what I understand, because there was very little travel to the western plains in those times, the pandemic had not spread to West Texas. At least not to pandemic levels. The pandemic today has spread over the whole world simply because of mass travel (cars, trains, airplanes). Back then there were no planes and few trains, with none in that area of West Texas and the only roads were dirt trails. So, you could run from the virus back then. That is not possible today. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 09:27 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Texan Buckeye
User ID: 22937658 United States 12/28/2020 09:33 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. How did that keep the family from getting sick ? You didn't even explain it lol Quoting: Anonymous Coward 73445971 From what I understand, because there was very little travel to the western plains in those times, the pandemic had not spread to West Texas. At least not to pandemic levels. The pandemic today has spread over the whole world simply because of mass travel (cars, trains, airplanes). Back then there were no planes and few trains, with none in that area of West Texas and the only roads were dirt trails. So, you could run from the virus back then. That is not possible today. That's true. Back then Wichita Falls would've barely been a small town with no public services at all. |
Clon
User ID: 76412999 United States 12/28/2020 09:35 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Southern Patriot
User ID: 17342157 United States 12/28/2020 09:44 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. In 1918 the "Spanish" Flu was ravaging Alabama very badly. They were worried about the children dying from the pandemic. So, he decided to take his whole family including his wife and four kids from Florence, Alabama to Wichita Falls, Texas in a covered wagon pulled by a pair mules. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 71883211 My mother, before she died still remembered riding in the wagon, since she was the smallest child, while the older kids walked. My grandfather was a machinist by trade and later moved on to Port Arthur, TX during the oil boom of the 1920s. Wow, I have a neighbor who also reads Glp. Small world The day the governments admit Ufo's,the end is near. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 09:49 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. My Welsh family sailed to Philadelphia as part of William Penn's English Royal land grant that later became known as Pennsylvania. He came as an indentured farm worker. After working off his indentured service(several years), he was given free land down in South Carolina if he agreed to harvest "Naval Stores" for the Penn Plantation Colony up north. All wooden sailing ships used to need to be caulked with cotton and pine tar pitch to seal the ship hulls. He and many others would harvest pine tar from Yellow Pines in SC by cutting deep channels in the pine trees to collect the pine sap. That pine sap was then turned into pitch or pine tar and also distilled into turpentine. It took him and his family several years to earn the title to the land in SC. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 10:04 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. After my grandfather and the family moved to Port Arthur, TX in the early 1920s, he was a construction foreman that helped construct the first refineries in Port Arthur, TX to refine the oil coming from the Spindletop oil fields. He died when he fell from a tall wooden scaffold erected to weld the refining tower, when the scaffolding collapsed. Leaving his wife with five kids to raise alone. No insurance of any kind or "Social Security" back then. The company that he was working for just paid for his funeral. All of the kids then went to work as teenagers to support the family. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 10:16 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. In North and South Carolina during the Civil War, armies from both the North and the South were constantly passing through causing damage, stealing livestock and crops. The known Confederate sympathizers in the Carolinas suffered terribly. One of my young ancestors was hung after he was caught stealing corn from a Union grain storage silo. They were starving and he had no other choice. He was fifteen years old. It was after this that they all decided to move the family to Alabama deep in the South where they had relatives living. They also decided to quickly leave after a couple of the troops that hung the boy were found dead... |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 10:27 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. Those beautiful green fields are there because MILLIONS of starving share cropper families either died during the potato famine or were forced to immigrate to Australia, Canada or America as indentured slaves to survive! The land was then just taken over by huge land owners that were mostly English aristocrats! I see those beautiful pictures of the Irish countryside and it makes my blood boil. I could never go to Ireland today. It would be too painful to see. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 76891554 United States 12/28/2020 10:30 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 75463899 United States 12/28/2020 10:31 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 10:35 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. My grandmother, born in 1933 says there was no talk of the pandemic by her elders whatsoever, about it. Quoting: President-Elect BFD Take it for what it is. Tell that to those people in that cemetery mass grave in Birmingham, Alabama. 1933 is 15 years after the pandemic when your grandmother was born. That would be at least 20 years before she could be old enough to understand what a pandemic was. Believe what you want. Everyone usually does. |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 10:38 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. My grandmother, born in 1933 says there was no talk of the pandemic by her elders whatsoever, about it. Quoting: President-Elect BFD Take it for what it is. Tell that to those people in that cemetery mass grave in Birmingham, Alabama. 1933 is 15 years after the pandemic when your grandmother was born. That would be at least 20 years before she could be old enough to understand what a pandemic was. Believe what you want. Everyone usually does. By the way, people from those times rarely talk openly about their troubles like they do today! |
Anonymous Coward (OP) User ID: 71883211 United States 12/28/2020 10:39 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 78619133 United States 12/28/2020 10:41 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 79508218 United States 12/28/2020 10:41 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. People think that they have things so rough today. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 71883211 They have lost all knowledge of what real hardship used to be. [link to www.woodslawyers.com (secure)] Asselin’s gaze shifts from Alabama to Vietnam where, during the long war against the Viet Cong, US troops sprayed 123m gallons of Agent Orange over huge swathes of the country between 1965 and 1971. Asselin cites evidence that about 10% of South Vietnam was contaminated and that between 2.1 and 4.8 million Vietnamese were directly exposed [link to www.buzzfeednews.com (secure)] In 2002, the people of Anniston suddenly learned from a 60 Minutes investigation that theirs was one of the most toxic cities in the nation. PCBs are widely disseminated in industry products, so widely in fact, that the average American has PCB blood levels of 2 parts per billion (ppb). But the mostly black victims of Anniston suffered huge exposures. Howard Frumkin, M.D., told me, “Anniston has the highest levels of PCB exposure of any town in America, of any town that I’ve ever heard of.” |
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SmoothSailing
User ID: 72926534 United States 12/28/2020 10:47 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Re: What my grandfather and his family did in 1918 to escape the pandemic that was killing hundreds in Florence, Alabama. All of my ancestors from both sides of my family fought in the Revolutionary War of 1774-1778. Quoting: Anonymous Coward 71883211 And they all also fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. They were all hard working, tough, crude, loyal, good, honest people. Their lives were so different than what we live like today. "A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear." Marcus Tullius Cicero |