52 Ancestors Week 30: Health

 Week 30's theme is "Health." A person's health has such an impact on everything in his or her life. Do you know of any health related events in an ancestor's life? What about an ancestor who worked in medicine or health care?

Please state the nature of the medical emergency.

In the summer of 2021, health is on everyone's minds as the coronavirus continue to spread worldwide. The pandemic is in its second year and while we have vaccines, a lot more work needs to be done in order to vaccinate everyone in even the most remote corners of our planet. Stakes have never been higher and doctors, nurses and epidemiologists are doing what they can to prevent more loss of life. If you've studied history, you've probably have read about this scenario before. History has a strange way of repeating itself.

Marie on WikiTree

    Let's go back in time to the early 1900s. The airplane was a new invention, telephones were not as widely used as they would be in the coming decades of the twentieth century and vaccines for diseases like Smallpox and Polio were not yet discovered. Life was very different back then. Lifespans were shorter and health was surely on everyone's mind the moment they stepped out that door. 

    This was certainly the case for my 3rd great-grandmother, Marie Eulalie Bibeau. She was born in  St-Francois-du-Lac, Quebec in 1830 and has the distinction for being the only one of her siblings who DIDN'T move to Minnesota. Maybe she was more of a Red Sox fan than a Twins fan? I don't know. What I do know is that she and her husband, Pierre Cadran moved to Haverhill, Mass sometime before the 1880 census. They lived with their son-in-law Antoine Legault and his family. Conditions must have been cramped in their house at 177 Water Street.

CRAMPED!

        As you can see, the house was pretty cramped. To date, I think that's the largest amount of people I've ever seen packed into one house. Thankfully, by the 1900 census the family was more spread out all over the city of Haverhill and surrounding communities. However, there were two tragedies that plagued the Legault and Cadran families around that time.

    Antoine Legault unfortunately passed away in 1901 due to phthisis bulbi AKA tuberculosis. Marie passed away in 1907 due to "La Grippe" or as we call it "The Spanish Flu" with senility being a contributing factor to her death. When I saw her cause of death, it caused me to wonder a few things and I began to ask myself some questions. The most important being: "The Spanish Flu Pandemic was in 1918, a good eleven years after her death. Was there a pandemic in Haverhill around this time? What happened?!

    I haven't been able to find anything about how she got the Spanish flu. I did find out that Haverhill suffered tremendously during the later pandemic. Over 45,000 citizens of the city lost their lives Check out this article for details: https://whav.net/2015/11/29/haverhills-very-own-disease-haverhill-fever/

    Don't lose hope just yet! I do have one theory. The virus was around people long before the 1918 pandemic. What if she just was unlucky and caught it from someone who was infected? Today we'd call that person asymptomatic. Let's also not forget that in 1907 Marie was seventy-seven years old! That was quite old for the time period she lived in! Perhaps we should apply twenty-first century thinking to this case and come to the conclusion that she got the virus from someone and at seventy-seven years old, her immune system was compromised and that led to her death. Senility would be a non-issue if your lungs were filling up with fluid. Sorry, William Comeau.

    Eulalie's untimely death likely sent shockwaves through the community and of course her family. At the time of her death, she had eight children and several grandchildren including my great-grandmother, Henrietta Legault. By all accounts the family stayed close afterward as everybody pretty much stayed in the Merrimack Valley. As for the community, I'm sure they took it hard as evidenced by her obituary from the Haverhill Evening Gazette:

"MRS. MARIE CARDRAN

The death of Mrs. Marie Cardran, wife of Pierre Cardran, occurred yesterday afternoon at her home on Eastern avenue after a short illness. Mrs. Cardran was well known in French circles and was one of the oldest residents of the city. She was aged 78 years. She is survived by her husband and six daughters, Mary Messier, Lucy Legault, Harriet Denault, Mrs. Joseph Bean, Mrs. Josephine Robideau of Lynn, and Mrs. Vina Birt of New York city. She was a member of St. Anne's society. The funeral will be held from her late residence, Sunday noon, at 12:30 o'clock. Services will be held at St. Joseph's church, at 1:30, and the interment will be in St. Joseph's cemetery."--Haverhill Evening Gazette, Saturday, December 21, 1907.

    Judging by the obituary, she left a huge impact on the community. She was well-known amongst the French-Canadian population in Haverhill. The St. Anne's Society was a Catholic church where people would meet, greet and discuss matters for spiritual enrichment. These days many of those centers are all over the Merrimack valley.

    I can safely say that after her death, the family thrived in the only way they could. They pressed on and kept her memory alive. Granted no one was named after her or anything. It didn't matter. But, perhaps her death was a sign of things to come and was a warning to the family?

    As far as I know, none of the other Cadrans passed away due to "La Grippe". Most of her children passed away well after the pandemic ran its course. They were the lucky ones. The jury's still out on whether or not the grandchildren did as well. I would have to look. There are many theories as to why.

Eulalie's stone at St. Joseph's.

    Today, we can learn a very valuable lesson from this story. We have made many great strides in the field of medicine since the early 1900s. Our lives are made better because now we can control or eradicate diseases that once plagued humanity with so much suffering. Why suffer needlessly these days? Science has proven time and again that as it advances the field of medicine, our lives become so much better. The Cadrans knew it and they thrived well into the 20th century. Long after Marie's death.

So, what can we learn from this story? A hundred years ago our world went through a catastrophic pandemic. Doctors worked hard to cure people and it worked. Our lives were improved thanks to science. We no longer have to deal with half of the diseases they dealt with.

    I'm not just saying all of this as a son of a dentist and lab supervisor. Our lives are made better with medicine. Don't think for one moment that our ancestors wouldn't jump at the chance to get a vaccine for something like Polio. They would.

See ya next time!