Between 1913 and 1919 the American Falls Press followed the daughters of W. A. Nunnelley, a homesteader at Summit at the south end of Arbon Valley, as one after another went into nursing. By February 1919 it could say of four of them, Virginia, Mayme, Irene and Thelma, that the "sisters are all nurses." Their story runs through a wartime enlistment and the influenza epidemic to a diploma at Logan in June 1920.
The Nunnelleys came from Somerset, Kentucky. On August 14, 1909, the Press reported that W. A. Nunnelley and family had moved onto their homesteads in the Arbon valley that Tuesday, and their first winter is told among the site's Stories. Mamie, who also appears as Mayme, held a homestead of her own and received its patent in 1915, and the Highland school was built on her land that year. Another sister, Mattie, worked in town at American Falls. In September 1911 she married Herman Noth, a brother of the American Falls physician, Dr. R. F. Noth, and the doctor's household comes up again and again in what follows. The valley itself had no doctor on record then; the first doctor the site has found in the valley was reported at Pauline only in January 1918.
Virginia goes to Salt Lake
Virginia is the first the papers report going. In August 1913 the Press reported that she had gone to Salt Lake City and "entered the Holy Cross hospital to become a trained nurse." When she came home at the end of August 1915 to visit her father, her brother James, Mattie and her sisters Mayme, Irene and Thelma, the Arbon correspondent wrote that she had been "taking a course in nursing at Salt Lake City, graduating next year."
In July 1917 her brother James and Arlie King joined the Navy and were sent to California. The next June Virginia was visiting in American Falls, and the Press reported:
Miss Virginia Nunnelly, daughter of W. A. Nunnelly of Arbon, is visiting Dr. and Mrs. R. F. Noth for a few days. Miss Nunnelly, who is a nurse at the Holy Cross hospital in Salt Lake, has enlisted as a nurse in the navy and expects to be called any time.
The influenza
The call that came next was closer to home. In October 1918 Dr. Noth was at home with influenza and suffered a relapse, and Virginia was summoned from Salt Lake to help care for him. On October 25 the Press reported that she had arrived and was helping to nurse him. Early in November the paper reported the death of Lois Sargent, an American Falls schoolteacher who had volunteered to nurse influenza patients and then caught the disease herself. "Miss Nunnelly and Mrs. Noth gave all care possible to the patient," it said. The paper gave no first name, but Virginia is the sister known to have been in town that autumn, so it was probably she.
In January 1919 the Press had more news of her:
Miss Virginia Nunnelly came up from Salt Lake Sunday. She is a recent convalescent from a severe case of flu. She escaped contracting the epidemic while nursing Dr. Noth, and was just ready to leave for an army camp in Texas when she came down.
A month later the sisters nursed one of their own. Mattie Noth had been living with Herman "at Arbon on a ranch." She died at Dr. Noth's home in American Falls on Saturday, February 22, 1919, aged 28, after an illness of about ten days, leaving her husband and two small children. Her obituary named her four sisters, said that all of them were nurses, and said that they had cared for her. It did not name her illness.
Early in March the Press reported that Irene had left American Falls about ten days before to attend a patient at Montpelier. On Sunday a telegram had come saying that she was quite sick, the paper presumed with pneumonia, and Virginia and Thelma had taken the night train to care for her. Later that month Mamie was called to Bear Lake County, in Idaho's southeast corner, where there was much influenza. The paper said she "went into a locality where there are no physicians and about thirty flu victims."
Thelma's diploma
In June 1915 Thelma had been a Summit schoolgirl: the South Arbon column reported that she and Elmira Smith had passed the eighth-grade examination. She went on to train at the Utah-Idaho Hospital in Logan, Utah, in Cache Valley. The graduating exercises were held on Thursday evening, June 10, 1920. The Ogden Standard-Examiner put them at the Hotel Eccles in Logan; the Logan Republican placed only the dancing and refreshments there, after the program. Four young women received diplomas: "Miss Thelma Nunnelley of Arbon, Idaho," as the Ogden paper listed her, and classmates from Mendon, Smithfield and Richmond. The Logan Republican said the four "graduated from the Utah Idaho hospital with honors." President Joseph R. Shepard of the Logan Temple gave the address, and the hospital's president presented the diplomas. The Ogden paper added: "These graduates were trained at the hospital during the past three years."
What the papers leave open
The papers read for this post do not say whether the Navy ever called Virginia, or whether she went to the army camp in Texas. They do not say whether she graduated in 1916, as expected, or where Mamie and Irene trained. In the summer of 1915 both of them were at home at Summit, and by February 1919 both were nurses. The papers also do not report how Irene came through her illness at Montpelier, though she was living in 1931.
The family left Summit for Malad in 1922. When W. A. Nunnelley died there in September 1931, his obituaries listed five daughters: Mrs. Irene Baldwin of Tooele, Mrs. Thelma Netolicky of Magna, Mrs. Virginia Nelson of Durango, Colorado, Mayme Nunnelley of Garfield, and Beulah Nunnelley of Salt Lake City.
On this site: the Summit area history, the Nunnelley sawmill fire of 1916, and the Nunnelley family album with Mamie's 1915 homestead patent.
Sources
- American Falls Press, August 14, 1909, page 4
- American Falls Press, September 28, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, August 7, 1913, page 8
- American Falls Press, June 3, 1915, page 4
- American Falls Press, September 2, 1915, page 8
- American Falls Press, July 27, 1917, page 5
- American Falls Press, June 11, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, October 22, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, October 25, 1918, page 5
- American Falls Press, November 5, 1918, page 1
- American Falls Press, January 24, 1919, page 7
- American Falls Press, February 28, 1919, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 7, 1919, page 4
- American Falls Press, March 28, 1919, page 6
- Logan Republican, June 12, 1920, page 4
- Ogden Standard-Examiner, June 15, 1920, page 8
- Salt Lake Telegram, September 5, 1931, page 12
- Salt Lake Tribune, September 5, 1931, page 24
- Ogden Standard-Examiner, September 5, 1931, page 6