In October 1918 the Spanish influenza reached Arbon Valley, part of Oneida County until 1913 and of Power County since. The American Falls Press, the county paper, followed it week by week, on its front page and in the Arbon Valley News column sent in from the valley. On October 22 its front page put the valley's position plainly: "The disease has gotten a start in the Arbon country with no doctor within forty miles."
The doctor gone
When Dr. L. F. Castle of Pocatello toured the valley in the fall of 1917 looking for a place to practise, the Press noted, "The valley at present is without a doctor." By January 1918 Dr. Leo Castle, formerly of Pocatello and probably the same man, had opened an office and drug store near Pauline, the first doctor this site has found living in the valley. On September 27, 1918, the Arbon column reported that he had closed his Pauline office and returned to Pocatello. The paper gave no reason.
October
The column of October 22 reported two deaths. Charles C. Myler, a pioneer of the Pauline district a mile north of Arbon, died in a Pocatello hospital on October 16; he had been in poor health for months and caught the Spanish influenza a few days before he died. The Press printed his age as 75 and the Ogden Daily Standard as 57; 57 agrees with the birth year this site records. That Saturday the baby of Mr. and Mrs. Eric Young, who lived a few miles northeast of Arbon, died of influenza in a Pocatello hospital.
The Central school, opened two weeks earlier with Perry H. Howell as teacher, was closed "until further notice," although there were no cases in the school yet. The Press column dates the closing Friday, October 18; the Ogden Standard, October 21. Richard Bandy and the J. R. Bailey children came home from Pocatello, where the schools had closed too.
At American Falls Dr. R. F. Noth was himself so ill on the night of October 23 that hope for his life was given up, and his brother at Arbon was sent for. The doctor rallied. Dr. C. F. Schiltz, with a driver for his car, was "virtually sleeping on the road between patients." That Wednesday the Cotant threshing crew of eight men was brought in from Arbon, all ill with influenza; they had fallen sick at the Bullock place.
"An influenza epidemic here in Arbon"
The Arbon Valley News of November 1 began:
There is an influenza epidemic here in Arbon. Several families of six and eight to a family, are all down.
In lines scrambled in the digitized page, the column seems to say that the doctors, busy with influenza at Rockland, American Falls and Malad, could not come when first called, and that Dr. Schiltz and Dr. Ray of Malad came out whenever they could. Dr. Ray came over on Sunday morning to the home of George Bandy, whose son Richard was seriously ill with pneumonia, his left lung badly affected. A Dr. Hartviggen, as the paper spelled it, had been summoned from McCammon to attend Mrs. Floyd and several others. The column reported:
Mrs. Mable Catherine Floyd wife of E. L. Floyd, of Arbon, died last Thursday at their home here of pneumonia, after an illness of short duration. Remains were taken to Pocatello, where funeral services were held Friday afternoon. Deceased was a lovable woman, wife and mother and is survived by her husband and five small children: also a brother, Harry Hill of this place.
The Thursday was probably October 24.
Household after household was down. All of Frank C. Turner's family were sick at once, and Mrs. Arbon and, it seems, a Mrs. Davis were doing what they could for them. At the Porter home Mrs. Porter, ill in bed herself, had to get up and nurse the others. The family of E. H. Davis were "taking turns with the 'flu'," and the Davis store was closed until they recovered. The Paynes, the Brahmstadts and Emmett Lee's children were ill, and so was Perry Howell, probably the teacher.
Heber Wood had taken over the mail route from Pocatello to Arbon by way of Crystal by mid-September. Now all of his family had the flu, so Rennie Evans took the U.S. mail to Pocatello. Mr. Cotant brought two of his threshing crew back, recovered, but the machine had stood idle for two weeks, with farmers still waiting for it.
From outside came word that T. B. and L. B. Evans's brother I. B. had died of pneumonia at Preston, and that John Daniels of Pauline had died of influenza at Camp Fremont, California (his story). On its front page that day the Press summed up: "In the Arbon country there are several entire families ill, and single cases in many others."
Election day and after
On election day, November 5, the Press reported that sickness had more than halved the expected vote in many places, and that "in Arbon and Pauline reports at 4 o'clock indicated that not a third of the vote would be polled."
On November 19 the Press reported that Bert Noble, son of Mr. and Mrs. John Noble, had died at home of pneumonia and was buried in the Pauline cemetery. The paper called him eleven (the Pauline and West Fork history gives nine) and the "third child in the Noble family to die in a little less than two years."
A week later the valley was mending. Dr. Schiltz was in Arbon on professional business. Mr. Fallon had influenza but was not seriously ill, "having taken precaution in time by calling a physician and staying in bed." Rennie and Joey Evans, the two eldest boys of L. B. Evans, were a little better, and Newell Leishman and Richard Bandy were out again after "a long siege of pneumonia." Now the epidemic was serious at Malad, and Mrs. John Lusk and her daughter had come out from there because of it. The county commissioners decided to "keep the lid on for a few days more," because new cases had developed.
At Crystal families were still recovering from weeks of flu at the end of January 1919, as the influenza of 1918–19 tells. When influenza came round again in February 1920, the Arbon items reported "very little sickness." When John Bullock's little son had pneumonia that month, Dr. Schiltz was again called out from American Falls.
On this site: the Evans family and the Bailey family.
Sources
- American Falls Press, October 2, 1917, page 2
- American Falls Press, January 22, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, September 17, 1918, page 8
- American Falls Press, September 27, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, October 22, 1918, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 22, 1918, page 4
- Ogden Daily Standard, October 22, 1918, page 12
- American Falls Press, October 25, 1918, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 25, 1918, page 5
- American Falls Press, November 1, 1918, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 1, 1918, page 5
- American Falls Press, November 5, 1918, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 19, 1918, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 26, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, January 31, 1919, page 8
- American Falls Press, February 20, 1920, page 3
- American Falls Press, February 27, 1920, page 4