I discovered a court case that was appealed to the Illinois State Supreme Court while searching on Google books. I have included part of the summary here in this post. The parents died within ten days of each other in 1920. I am not certain what they died from, but will have to add getting death certificates to my list of things to do. The mother is a first cousin of my great-grandfather Trautvetter.
My great-grandfather Trautvetter’s sister and her husband died during the 1918 flu epidemic and their children were raised by family members after the parents died.
Have you considered if the 1918 flu or other epidemics impacted your family members? Leaving minor children with no parents created a problem and in some cases those problems might have resulted in court or other records.
Another great-grandfather had a sister and brother-in-law who died during the flu. Now I’ll have to get on that and research that family as well.
The image in this post was from:
Reports of Cases at Law and in Chancery Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of Illinois
By the Illinois Supreme Court
Published by Supreme Court, State of Illinois, 1921
Item notes: v. 297
Original from Harvard University
Digitized Aug 15, 2007
located on http://books.google.com/
3 Responses
I always like to read about events that impacted, or may have impacted, my family. I’m currently reading a book, “The Great Influenza” by John M. Barry. I knew that an ancestor was discharged from the army with complications from the flu, but I didn’t realize the extent of the epidemic until I started reading this book. It has alerted me to look for clues regarding other family members, also. Newspapers were not supposed to print “bad news” during the war so many usual sources are not as good as they should be.
My grandfather told me that his mother died of the flu during the epidemic. I have just started researching this and have not yet been able to find any records on her personally. I have found a few newspaper articles from the area she lived in regarding the flu and some of those who have died. Thanks for the book suggestion, Janice. I will check it out!
Just heard a great speech on this at MoSGA this weekend. Gives a researcher many other ideas on what other records to find.