Elder and Sister Duke who are working in the National Archives in Boston have been between projects and so they have been coming up to New Hampshire and helping us get documents ready two days a week. It has been so nice to be able to spend time with them. On Monday we were talking about family history and he was telling me that two of his fathers uncles were twins and they married sisters. During the influenza epidemic both of their wives died one day apart. Because of the influenza outbreak they weren't allowed to attend the funerals because they were quarantined.
He told another story about working on some genealogy and seeing that a family group sheet listed the death of each family member on the same day. He thought that someone probably made a mistake. Upon further investigation he found that they had lived in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1889 when the Johnstown flood washed most of the town away after a dam failed. Over 2,200 people were killed.
Sister Duke then told about a relative who was a orphan. She asked one of his family members what had happened. They told her that when he was a small child he and his whole family had come down with the flu and in one day everyone in his family died but him. The same flu had killed the wives of Brother Duke's great uncles. According to Wikipedia between 20-40 million people died as a result of the great influenza pandemic in 1918 and 1919 which was more than died during World War I.
Truth is definitely more interesting than fiction!
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