Local history: Spanish influenza hits Pemiscot County

The Spanish influenza pandemic hit the United States hard in the fall of 1918. The pandemic caused cities to shut down and shops to close. The city leaders in Cape Girardeau ordered public gatherings at churches, schools, conventions and theaters to cease from Oct. 11 to 21. Patients who had symptoms of the virus were quarantined in their homes to curtail the disease spreading. Southeast Missouri was not immune to the pandemic. Several counties in the region had outbreaks of influenza including Cape Girardeau, Scott, Mississippi, Dunklin and Pemiscot.

L.Q. Reeder, age 7, was the first reported death from influenza in the Pemiscot County on Oct. 9. He was the first of 126 people, mostly children and young adults, to succumb to the virus during the month. Alvah A. Sides and wife, Hattie, lived in Pascola, Missouri, with their six children. Sides managed farm property for Robert B. Oliver Sr. Correspondence between Oliver and Sides revealed the following. On Oct. 17, Sides wrote to Oliver "On my return from Marston (Missouri) I found Ira suffering very much with influenza, and this morning our little Daughter Blanche has it. Very few people feeling well in this country."

A week later Sides wrote that he was taking care of seven family members. He never states whether he got sick. All members of his family were able to recover. Other tenants on Oliver property in Pemiscot County came down with the virus as well. Sides also mentions that at least seven Mexican farm laborers died and 20 were sick over the course of three days.

Oliver paints a similar desperate picture in Cape Girardeau, when he responds on Oct. 22. He writes that "This epidemic is raging frightfully and it stands every one in hand to be very guarded and keep away from public places -- in fact keep away from all people who go into public crowds." Astonished by the number of cases in Pascola, Oliver wrote to Missouri Gov. Frederick D. Gardner requesting that a doctor be sent to the town.

Pemiscot County residents continued to suffer with the virus until March 1919. Of the 301 deaths reported to the state of Missouri from the county, 135 had influenza listed a result or contributing factor for their cause of death. Additional deaths from influenza may have occurred, but their deaths were listed as pneumonia. Sides and his family survived the pandemic. After his initial letters in October discussing the outbreak, he returns to focusing his reports on the activities of the farms he managed for Oliver. The letters continue until August 1919.