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1918 flu pandemic

Fletcher, Vermont: The Town That Escaped the 1918 Pandemic (This One, Too)

The 1918-20 influenza pandemic reached deep into every neighborhood in every town and city in the United States – well, almost. It turns out that seven communities pretty much escaped the deadly virus. Fletcher, Vt., was one of them.

What makes the case of Fletcher so puzzling is that the tiny Northern Vermont town didn’t do anything special to prevent the flu from spreading. And what could have easily turned into super-spreader events just didn’t.

Fletcher Meeting House

Researchers who studied the spread of the 1918-20 pandemic couldn’t figure out why, of the seven so-called “escape communities,” Fletcher pretty much dodged the flu. The others had taken drastic measures, such as barricading highways, quarantining all visitors and requiring masks. Fletcher, not so much.

But there must be something about Fletcher, which bills itself as “a nugget of beauty in Northern Vermont.” Because Fletcher has had the fewest cases of COVID-19 in Vermont, according to the state’s Department of Health.

Worse Than COVID-19

Estimates of the number of people killed by the 1918 flu pandemic range from 15 million to 100 million. In comparison, the COVID-19 pandemic killed 5.8 million people by Feb. 11, 2022, according to the World Health Organization.

The disease, known then as the Spanish flu, struck young adults hardest. By some estimates, it killed as many as 10 percent of all young adults in the world.

More people died from the 1918 flu epidemic in a year than from the Black Death in a century. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS killed in 24 years. It was probably the deadliest disease in history.

Victims of the 1918 flu epidemic

Waves of Spanish Flu

The flu came in four waves.

From February until May of 1918, the Spanish flu first popped up in several places, including Kansas, California, Michigan and New York. It didn’t kill an unusual number of people, though, and health officials treated it like any other flu.

U.S. Army Field Hospital, Hollerich, Luxembourg

Then it mutated into a virulent killer of young adults at the worst possible time — just as the United States mobilized for World War I. Millions of troops traveled by rail and ship across long distances and then lived in close quarters.

The mutated virus showed up in mid-August in Brest, France and Freetown, Sierra Leone. Then two soldiers reported sick on Commonwealth Pier in Boston on August 27. The flu rapidly spread to Camp Devens in Ayer, Mass., just 35 miles away. Devens became an epicenter of the second wave.

By September, 14,000 people at Devens caught the flu and 757 died. Bodies stacked up like cordwood in the morgue.

One doctor described how quickly the flu killed:

[W]hen brought to the hospital they very rapidly develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen. Two hours after admission they have the mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white. It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate…

Tending a patient at Fort Devens.

Flu Comes to Vermont

That deadly second wave from Camp Devens hit Vermont hardest. Just weeks after the two soldiers arrived on Commonwealth Pier, Vermont health officials declared the flu a “contagious and infectious disease.” That gave local health officers the authority to placard houses where flu patients lived. The state asked flu patients to quarantine for a week, their close contacts for four days.

People who had visited sick friends or relatives at Camp Devens brought the disease to Vermont. The flu arrived on the train and got off at railroad stations in St. Johnsbury, St. Albans, White River Junction and Rutland.

St. Albans train station, 16 miles from Fletcher

Some towns, like Stowe, Rutland and Shelburne, banned public gatherings, including school and church services.

The number of severely ill flu patients overwhelmed hospitals in Massachusetts and Vermont. By mid-September, Massachusetts Gov. Calvin Coolidge, a Vermont native, asked Vermont Gov. Horace Graham for doctors and nurses. Graham turned him down – Vermont had enough problems of its own.

Then on Oct. 4, 1918, Graham banned all public gatherings in the state. The closure order lasted until November 3.

Gov. Horace Graham

The third and fourth waves, scattered and less severe: the third wave spiked again from January to April 1919, and then a fourth and final wave in December 1919 to January 1920.

In 1918, the flu hit 13 percent of the population and was responsible for a quarter of all Vermont deaths that year.

But it didn’t kill anyone in Fletcher.

Escape Communities

In 2005, the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency went to the University of Michigan with a request. Would the university’s Center for the Study of the History of Medicine (CSHM) conduct a research project on communities that escaped the deadly 1918-20 flu epidemic?

The CSHM identified seven, including a military base, two colleges, a tuberculosis sanitarium and a home for the blind. And two isolated towns – Gunnison, Colo., and Fletcher, Vt.

Gunnison, like Fletcher, was a small, rural mountain town in Colorado, but along a major rail line. The town closed itself off from the outside world, barricading roads, restricting rail travel, closing schools and banning public gatherings. No one caught the flu in the town.

Gunnison, aerial view

Yerba Buena Island, the San Francisco Naval Training Station, sequestered its 6,000 inhabitants on the island. Anyone coming to the island had to wear masks, get their throats sprayed with argyrol solution and quarantine for several days. After the island reopened on Nov. 21, 1918, 25 cases of the flu were reported and five died.

Fletcher didn’t do any of those things.

Fletcher

In 1918, Fletcher was a farming town in northern Vermont with 737 residents, located 35 miles from Burlington.

As influenza spread across Northern Vermont in mid-September, Fletcher residents attended a Red Cross dance in town. Several days later, many went to the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction, 20 miles away. Then on September 18, a soldier arrived to get married in Fletcher — from Camp Devens. At the reception, 120 people showed up.

By September 27, flu patients overcrowded the hospital in St. Albans and the town closed its schools. But Fletcher, 16 miles away, didn’t report its first case until October 13. There would only be one more that year, and both survived.

Then during the next wave of flu in 1919, two more came down with the flu and school closed – but no one died from the disease.

Why? It remains a mystery. The federal government investigated the seven municipalities — and concluded the town may have been lucky.

“The tiny village of Fletcher, Vermont proved to be the most provisional of the provisional escape communities we studied,” CSHM researchers wrote. “Fletcher’s experience during the 1918–1920 influenza epidemic may simply have been shaped by good fortune, remote location, and viral normalization patterns.”

Fletcher Today

The mystery continues to this day.

In 2020, Fletcher had a population of 1,346, certainly a small town. Vermont, however, has many smaller towns. And none have had fewer COVID-19 cases than Fletcher.

The Vermont Department of Health reported six cases of COVID-19 in Fletcher from March 5, 2020 to Feb. 9, 2022.

Only Ira, which has one-third of Fletcher’s population has had as few cases. Norton, with 169 residents, reported 21 cases of the virus. Lemington, with 104 people, had 10. Brunswick, with 112, had 16.

A crossroad in Fletcher today.

In 2020, reporters Erin Petenko and Mike Dougherty from the VTDigger went to Fletcher. They asked local residents why they thought the town escaped the flu back in the day.

Nancy Cardinal, who runs the general store, credited the farmer’s homebound and outdoorsy lifestyle.

“It’s very simple out here,” she said. “We kind of live in our own little world.”

Images: Fletcher Meeting House By Mfwills – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8687703. Sick soldiers By Name not stated – Images from the History of Medicine (IHM), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47633085. Aerial view of Gunniston By formulanone – https://www.flickr.com/photos/formulanone/50637863171/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114360935. Fletcher crossroads courtesy Google Maps.

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The New London Race Riots of 1919 Follow a Pandemic

The New London race riots broke out in 1919, a season of violence throughout the United States known as the Red Summer. White mobs killed somewhere between 180 and 300 black people during riots in just three places: Elaine, Ark., Washington, D.C., and Chicago. Elsewhere during the Red Summer, whites killed blacks by stoning, hanging and burning them alive.

Reasons given for the outbreak of violence vary. Historian Jan Voogd argues for two. One, the Great Northern Migration of poor black people to better-paying jobs in the defense industry. Northerners got competition from black workers and Southerners lost cheap labor on their plantations.

Two, World War I. Black soldiers and sailors not only had weapons, but they received better treatment in France than they did in the United States. They came home emboldened, and they fought back against their white persecutors. President Woodrow Wilson expressed his concern that black veterans would demand equal rights when he said “the American Negro returning from abroad would be our greatest medium in conveying Bolshevism to America.”

A Pandemic and Anarchy

Somehow, summer race riots and pandemics seem to go together. In 1919, the flu pandemic wound down, after wiping out as much as 20 percent of the young adult population.

Geoff Ward, a professor of African and African American studies at Washington University, explained how a pandemic inspires rioting: “These are moments of extreme precariousness, where people are suddenly uncertain about their fate, economic prospects and the social order,” he said.

White men looking for African Americans during the Chicago race riot of 1919.

Other factors led to the season of violence in New England. Two anarchist bombs went off in Boston on May Day, and in September the Boston Police went on strike. Immigrants from Europe and African Americans took the blame for the labor strikes and anarchist bombings that added to the turmoil.

Not every race riot that erupted in the summer of 1919 appeared in a newspaper. But Voogd believes at least 50 took place. One happened in Maine. The New London race riots numbered at least two.

An Attack in Orono, Maine

The Ku Klux Klan had all but disappeared in Maine in 1919, but within five years it would rise again. An ugly incident during the Red Summer foreshadowed the KKK’s regeneration.

Hamlin Hall

A Continental Press story reported on May 22, 1919, that a hazing party at the University of Maine turned into an angry mob. Roger and Samuel Cortney, the “only students of dark skin” attending the university, fought back against white intimidation.

It started when three freshmen tried to break into their room in Hamlin Hall while a student mob waited outside. The brothers knocked the freshmen unconscious. When the three young men didn’t return, the mob went to the Cortneys’ room, where they found them unconscious. The Cortney brothers had escaped.

The student mob divided into three groups to search for them, according to the paper. Some went off campus in Orono, some went to Oldtown, a Penobscot reservation. They found the Cortney brothers at Oldtown. The white students then brought them back to campus and formed a ring around them. First they made them explain why they attacked the freshmen. Then the mob forced the brothers to pour two jugs of molasses on each other and threw feathers on them, according to the news report. The Cortneys, it said, had been “exceedingly popular” among the students up until then.

Returning Home From War

New London, Conn., has always had a large military presence, and it led to trouble in 1919. Fort Trumbull, which dates to the American Revolution, hosted a Coast Guard installation. The U.S. Navy had a submarine base on the Thames River, with offices and housing in New London. The Groton shipyard lay just across the river and military fortifications dotted Long Island Sound.

African-American soldiers in World War I. Images courtesy Library of Congress.

Black and white sailors, home from World War I, mixed uneasily on the streets of New London. African-American servicemen had experienced a much different treatment in France than they had in the United States. They could move freely throughout French society, wrote Voogd. They could go to any business and associate with anyone they wanted, including white women.

African-American scholar W.E.B. Du Bois wrote that, when the black servicemen returned, the reaction of white people in 1919 was ‘almost unbelievable.’

“During that year 77 Negroes were lynched, of whom one was a woman and eleven were soldiers; of these, fourteen were publicly burned, eleven of them being burned alive…That year there were race riots large and small in 26 American cities.”

Du Bois probably counted only half the number of incidents and missed the New London race riots.

New London Race Riots

According to a local newspaper report, bad blood had existed between black and white seamen for some time. The story, typically, blames the African Americans for the trouble. Ward has argued the news media’s complicity in blaming the victim prolonged the summer of violence.

Fort Trumbull

On May 29, the headline screamed, “Negro Sailors Attack White at New London. Worst Riot in Years–U.S. Marines, with Loaded Rifles, Press Crowd Back.”

“Between 15 and 20 sailors and soldiers connected with the New London naval base were arrested by local police,” the newspaper reported. Police called it the ‘worst riot in years. ‘

“The trouble began when negro sailors went into the Coast Guard Academy and attacked white sailors,” according to the story. Six or seven colored sailors went to the Coast Guard Academy at Fort Trumbull and beat a white sailor, the newspaper reported.

Bank Street today

A number of white sailors pursued them through Bank Street, and they took refuge in the Hotel Bristol. The riot call sounded on the fire department whistle. Five thousand civilians “watched” the melee, and the marines came to quell the riot.

The Hotel Bristol

But other versions of the story found in the Visualizing the Red Summer archive tell a more sordid tale.

Twelve days after the riot, the Associated Negro Press reported black sailors complained white sailors attacked them. The white seamen charged the black sailors lay in wait for them at night when they walked over Long Cove Bridge. Then, police arrested two white sailors for fighting. That arrest inspired their white friends to raid the Hotel Bristol, a popular spot for African-American sailors. The whites grabbed the blacks, threw them into the street and beat them severely.

The U.S. Coast Guard Academy

Sailors on both sides, as many as 5,000, then showed up on Bank Street and fought for several hours. The police and fire departments armed with hoses couldn’t stop the melee, so armed marines rushed to the scene. In the end they arrested 15 people, though the news reports don’t identify them by skin color.

According to another news story, “much property was damaged and dozens of negroes were mobbed and severely beaten.”

And Yet Another

But Voogd said another New London race riot went largely unreported. That suggests even more violence occurred in New London, though the military suppressed the information.

A Navy memo revealed that marine guards from the base answered another riot call on June 29. A truck full of marines sped down Smith Street and hit a fire hydrant. The city billed the Navy for the fire hydrant, and the disagreement over that supplied the only paper trail of the incident.

No Riots Here

Meanwhile in Hartford on August 4, “colored clergy yesterday deplored the race riots in Washington and Chicago,” while Hartford police assured the public “there was no likelihood of a dispute between white and colored residents here.” News of a disturbance in Windsor reached police, who dismissed it as ‘phoney.’

With thanks to Race Riots and Resistance: The Red Summer of 1919 by Jan Voogd and Visualizing the Red Summer archive by Karen Sieber.

Images: Hamlin Hall CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1405898. Fort Trumbull By JERRYE AND ROY KLOTZ MD – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26599988. Bank Street By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=34773845. This story was updated in 2023.

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Leverett Saltonstall Worries About Nora Seeing Men in Pyjamas

Nora Saltonstall got a chance to visit her brother on the Western Front during World War I. She, for nearly a year had served as a Red Cross volunteer. Her brother Leverett Saltonstall served as a lieutenant with the 301st Field Artillery Regiment in the 76th Division of the U.S. Army.

As young Boston Brahmins, they belonged to the Lost Generation that flocked to Europe during World War I out of a sense of patriotism and adventure. Their parents, Richard and Eleanor Brooks Saltonstall, reluctantly let their daughter go.

Nora Saltonstall in her Red Cross uniform.

After the war, Nora Saltonstall took a trip to the West Coast with friends. She contracted typhoid fever in Portland, Ore., and died on Aug. 2, 1919 at the age of 24. Leverett would win election as Massachusetts governor and U.S. senator.

Leverett Saltonstall

U.S. Sen. Leverett Saltonstall

On Sept. 15, 1918, Nora Saltonstall wrote a letter to Leverett’s wife, Alice, from the Hotel de Bordeaux in Bordeaux France:

Dearest Alice

I don’t know whether it will make you too jealous when I tell you that I have just been seeing Leverett. He looks very well, tremendously tall for some reason, & I should say that his clothes were of the most perfect cut. In other words I was quite proud to be his sister. It is so long since I have seen a lot of Americans, particularly ones whom I know, that it seemed to me like a class day or boat race.

She wrote that they “swallowed their Unitarian pride” and ate fried eggs, white bread and butter at the YMCA. Then they went on a shopping spree, Leverett speaking French. He “declaims in a loud & impressive voice, uses many gestures & usually manages to make himself understood.”

Men in Pyjamas

Nora reported to her sister-in-law on the young men she and Leverett visited in the hospital. The 1918 flu epidemic felled them, rather than the enemy. “All the boys seem interested & [brave?] — they most of them are a trifle homesick but that is natural,” she wrote. ” I saw Dunbar & Jimmy Lowell in the hospital — neither seriously sick but down with the local epidemic of Spanish flu which Everyone has over here.”

She thought Dunbar glad to see her. “[B]ut Leverett of course was Embarrassed at having me there & rushed me off as hastily as possible. He made me laugh to myself because he wondered whether I ought to go into the hospital on account of convalescents walking about in pyjamas. I hate to admit that I am not affected by any costume or lack of such that any man can wear. The French hospitals get you accustomed to that & the poor convalescents have to wear pyjamas because no one will give them anything else….

This letter is not nearly as interesting as I meant it to be — I don’t know when I will see Leverett again but probably not for several months.

Much love,
Nora

With thanks to “Out Here at the Front”: The World War I Letters of Nora Saltonstall, edited by Judith S. Graham. This story was updated in 2022. Image of military hospital By https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/28/0f/a75787318c29d98f16fde2891ae1.jpgGallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/L0026323.htmlWellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-23): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/hpkq3zqc CC-BY-4.0, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36011644.

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