Spanish flu first appeared in Wilcox County a century ago this month

The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. This deadly disease infected an estimated 500 million people around the world and killed between 50 and 100 million people, that is, three to five percent of the world’s population. With so many people infected by this deadly disease, it should come as no surprise that Wilcox County did not escape its lethal clutches.

This month, October 2018, marks 100 years since the first reports and deaths of the Spanish flu in Wilcox County. One hundred years ago this week, on Oct. 3, 1918, The Wilcox Progressive Era reported that a “full-fledged Spanish flu has been discovered in Camden in the person of Percy Young.” The newspaper went on to report that Young had been sick for several days before he was seen by county health officer Dr. Ernest Bonner and Dr. W.B. Jones, who both agreed that Young had the Spanish flu.

Elsewhere in that week’s paper, under the headline “Spanish Influenza at McWilliams,” it was reported that Bonner and Jones traveled to McWilliams on the previous Sunday to investigate the “epidemic of Spanish influenza which were reported prevalent there.” Fourteen cases of the flu were verified at McWilliams, including that of Dr. W.P. Roberts, a local physician who no doubt contracted the disease while treating his own patients. Bonner and Jones reported that several of these cases were “very serious,” and a “street quarantine” was established at McWilliams to prevent the spread of the disease.

The first reported influenza death in Wilcox County appeared in the Oct. 17, 1918 edition of The Wilcox Progressive Era, which reported that “Mrs. Tom Pruitt of Pine Hill died during the past week with influenza. The family have the sympathy of many friends throughout the county in their bereavement.”

Research revealed that Mrs. Tom Pruitt was actually Clara Nabers Pruitt, a 36-year-old native of Comanche, Texas. She was born in Texas on June 27, 1882 and died in Wilcox County on Oct. 13, 1918. She was buried in the Pine Hill Cemetery, and if you visit that cemetery today, you’ll find her grave there beside that of her husband, Thomas, who died 21 years later, in 1939.

The Wilcox Progressive Era played a vital part in informing readers of the flu’s progress in the county and informed them of a wide variety of closures and quarantine measures due to the disease. The newspaper let readers know that the symptoms of the disease included sneezing, coughing, red eyes, chills and high fever and advised them to use nasal sprays and throat gargling as precautions. The newspaper also reported that a vaccine had been found to counteract the disease, but that the vaccine was unavailable in Wilcox County in early October 1918.

In the end, the Spanish flu pandemic wasn’t declared over until December 1920, and there is little doubt that many more Wilcox County residents lost their lives to this disease. More than a few of these deaths, including Wilcox County soldiers fighting overseas in World War I, were reported in the pages of the newspaper, but it’s likely that many more passed quietly away from the disease with little fanfare. I doubt that a complete list of Wilcox County Spanish flu deaths has ever been compiled, but one thing is for certain: Wilcox County, like the rest of the world, felt the impact of this historic pandemic for many, many years to come.