Lex Anteinternet: Pondering the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic

Lex Anteinternet: Pondering the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic:

Pondering the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic

The 1918 Flu: A Pandemic Sweeps Wyoming

We've posted this once before, but as I'm going to refer to it again on the site I'm posting it again.  It's an excellent article.

Part of the reason I'm posting this is that this article has been getting a lot of renewed attention due to the COVID 19 pandemic.  Like everything by Roberts, it deserves the attention its getting.  I was going t repost it about a week or so ago, but as I'd posted it before, I didn't at that time.  however, as I'm referring to it in an answer to a question that's been posted yesterday, I thought I'd note it again.

I'll also note that the 18/19 Flu is getting a lot of attention in the press due to current events, and one of the things that is locally drawing attention is the steps taken to combat it.  The Wyoming Tribune Eagle (which occasionally quotes our This Day book), recently ran an article stating, about quarantines that first appeared in Kemmerer:

As precautionary measures, the health officials sanctioned the cancellation of all parties and the closure of churches, movie houses and theaters – anywhere that large groups of people congregated together. 

Most people took these sanctions to heart, but there was no penalty for not doing so. It wouldn’t be until the crisis got worse that the recommendations would become orders.

In the meantime, doctors made recommendations that might sound familiar: If you are sick, stay home in bed, stay at least five feet from people, cover your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, and stay away from people who are noticeably ill. Droplets from coughing, sneezing, talking and laughing were the source of the disease’s spread. There was an immediate effort to ban public spitting on sidewalks, stairs and streetcars.

Some folk wisdom crept into the papers as well: Refrain from wearing tight clothes and shoes, keep cool while walking and warm while sleeping. These had little effect on the disease, but some, such as warnings not to use public towels or drinking cups, seem like common sense today. One thing neither professionals nor good Samaritans mentioned was to wash your hands, especially after caring for a sick family member. 

On Oct. 8, the Spanish Flu arrived in Cheyenne. At first, only 10 people were stricken with the disease. Not taking any chances, Superintendent A.L. Jessup followed health officials’ recommendations and closed the city’s schools Oct. 9. He asked parents to keep their children close to home and not let them loiter in the neighborhoods, something parents were reluctant to do. Pool halls and saloons remained open, although loitering in the depot lobby was banned. 

On Oct. 10, the cases in Cheyenne sprang up to 50 persons. In response, all libraries and club reading rooms closed. Civic organizations cancelled meetings. To prevent loitering, cigar stores were ordered to pull their seats or box them up. Soda fountains had to remove their chairs and stools. On Oct. 11, Gov. Frank Houx ordered all saloons, pool halls, Red Cross work rooms and night schools across the state closed. By public order, all funerals would be private family affairs. 

By Oct. 15, the increasing count of flu cases jumped by 100 in less than 48 hours. Police chased children off the streets, while doctors pleaded with restaurants to change the worst of their habits.

County 10 News had an interesting article regarding events in Fremont County (hence "County 10", it's license plate number), in which it noted that the local newspaper was complaining about orders put in place by that county's health official in October, 1918.  None the less, local quaranties there soon expanded, as it reports:

 A little more than a week later, Dr. Thomas Maghee, the doctor serving at the State Training School was appointed the health officer of Lander. He issued a quarantine order that read as follows: 

A quarantine, with all its objectionable features, is imposed for the object, to stamp out and terminate an epidemic, thus preventing much suffering and even loss of life. 

The prime necessity is to PREVENT CONTACT of infected persons with those who are well. Therefore, a person will not be permitted to assemble on the street corners, in places of amusement or in business houses. 

TWO PERSONS are an assemblage under the law. 

Persons who have symptoms of the Influenza or who have recently had it, must remain at home or suffer arrest. 

Visiting between families and acquaintances must cease at once. Ladies with children must remain at home and keep their children with them. 

Children are absolutely forbidden to be on the streets or to visit neighbors. Special arrangements will be made by the authorities when necessary to use a child to send on errands. Children found on the street, without a permit will be arrested. 

Hotels are permitted to allow only the guests from out of town to remain about the lobbies. And the people of the town must not congregate there. 

Merchants will deliver supplies to the quarantined houses when requested.
Crowds assembling at the newsstand, the depot or post office will no longer be permitted. Until further orders, one person ONLY at ANY ONE TIME will be permitted to enter or remain in a saloon as long as it is necessary to get a drink, nor can persons frequent cigar or candy stand except under the same circumstances.

The Powell Tribune also recently looked back at the 1918/19 flu in this context, noting:

There was good news with the end of World War I hostilities a week later, but no end to the flu quarantine. In fact, the Powell Tribune of Nov. 22 recorded even stricter quarantine rules issued by the town council. The post office lobby was closed for two hours at mid-day. Stores could remain open for business, but it became unlawful for anyone to be in a store except to transact business. And children were required to stay home. 

The town council stated flatly “an emergency exists.” 

Quarantine regulations made it unlawful for parents to allow their children “to congregate or play with other children in this town, or allow or permit them to congregate or play on the streets or property within town except on the premises where they live.” 

As November drew to a close, the Powell Tribune still expressed hope the quarantine was doing its job. 

“According to the report of our local health authorities this morning, there are now only about a dozen cases of influenza in Powell, and as none of the patients are seriously ill, it is taken as a hopeful sign that the situation is improving,” the Tribune reported on Nov. 29. 

But it was not to be. Nor would there be public festivities for Christmas. For many Powell homes there was profound grief and gloom during the Christmas season. According to research by Park County Archives Curator Brian Beauvais, 187 cases of the flu were reported in Powell that December, on the heels of 89 cases in November.

 Elsewhere events caused advertisements to appear that are reminiscent of what we're seeing now, in our own era.  Hard hit in 1918/19, and hard hit again in 2020, Teton County's paper of a century ago had merchants noting business restrictions as follows:

Yes, a century ago we're seeing curbside due to quarantines. . .  just like we've been seeing this past month.

Things went further:

So what to take away from all of this?

Well, even though the 1918/19 Flu is something we posted on here well before we started daily entries on events 100 years past here, we've done a really poor job of what it was really like. We just rolled right over the news of the era, noting it, but not really digging deep into it.  World War One was our focus. But for people enduring the 18/19 Flu, it was more than something playing in the background, it was the major daily event of their lives.

And those lives were hugely disrupted by it, then as now.  Quarantines were put in effect all over the state.  Then, like now, there were some in some places that objected to the restrictions when they first came in.  According to at least one Wyoming newspaper, relaxing things too soon caused the disease to advance, although with a titanic viral wave of the type faced at that time, before there was any vaccine, that's pretty debatable.

It's common in these retrospectives to note, if a lesson is supposed to be drawn, that "we've been through this before", but most of us really haven't.  Therefore, we can't really claim that we should be encouraged by the suffering endured in 1918/1919.  Indeed, I've heard some pretty bad attempts at that including one just the other day by somebody who noted that in his family they'd kept on keeping on, but entire family groups had died.  That's not exactly something that encourages us now.  If anything, should comfort at all, it's the long pause that's given by the fact that to some extent such events are the human norm, the species will get through it, and we're all just passing through anyhow, something that gives few people comfort.

But for historians and fans of history, there's something else here.  And that is this. We're living through history right now.  The current pandemic dominates our thinking and the news right now, and soon a major recession will, and is already starting to.  Locally, the absolute crash in oil prices is on a lot of our minds.

So are cancelled high school graduations and weddings, birthdays for children that are on Zoom, and a gloom that settles over everything we do.  It must have been like that during the winter of 1918/1919 as well.  We look back and think of the Spring Offensive of 1918, the Battle of Belleau Wood, the end of the German and Austrian Empires, and the like. But for people living at the time, there was a lot going on, and a lot of it was pretty bad.  Maybe there's some odd comfort in that, and maybe that's a lesson on taking in our sense of history a little less compartmentalized than we tend to do.

Blog Mirror. Lex Anteinternet: Two Casualties of Belleau Wood, Taking a Closer Look. Part One. Frank O. Engstrom.

Two Casualties of Belleau Wood, Taking a Closer Look. Part One. Frank O. Engstrom.

Note, all of the research for this entry, all of the original work on the entry, and all of the inspiration for it, and the original photographs, are all the work of Marcus Holscher.

Recently on our companion blog, Some Gave All, we posted a photo essay on Belleau Wood, France.  We linked that post in here the other day.

Like the poem In Flanders Fields related, in the photos you can see "row on row" of crosses marking the graves of the lost.  Each one of those combatants has his own story of a life that was cut short.  Here we look at just two such lives, however, and for particular reasons.

We start with Pvt. Frank O. Engstrom of Rawlins Wyoming.

Indeed, we posted a little on Pvt. Engstrom the other day on another of our companion blogs, Today In Wyoming's History. We'll start again with that entry.

Some Gave All: Belleau Wood, France. Frank O. Engstrom.

Some Gave All: Belleau Wood, France:

This is a selection of photographs from a much larger entry on our companion blog, Some Gave All.  These feature the chapel at Belleau Wood and are linked in here to note the listing of a Wyoming soldier, a member of the 1st Division, who lost his life at Belleau Wood.

Frank Engstrom entered the service from Rawlins.

Lest we forget.

So there we have a little more, but still not much.  Who was Pvt. Engstrom of Rawlins and what was his life like?

It's not all that easy to tell much about him, but we can tell a little. To start with, he was a 21 year old native of Rawlins Wyoming who was employed as a fireman for the Union Pacific Railroad when he entered the Army as a conscript.  And he'd lived a pretty hard life, by modern standards, up until that time.

Fireman. This photograph is from 1942 and isn't of Frank Engstrom, who had been dead for over twenty years. But the job was the same in 1942 on coal burning steam locomotives.  This fireman in 1942 appears to have been about the same age as Engstrom was when he entered the service in 1917.

According to his draft registration card, Frank Engstrom was born on April 15, 1896, in the town of Rawlins.  He was, according to that draft card, of medium height and medium build, with light brown eyes and brown hair.  He was a single man, but according to his draft card, attested to in Laramie County (not Carbon County) he was supporting his mother when registered for the draft.

In the twenty-one years that passed between his birth and death, Engstrom saw his share of tragedy.

By the time he was conscripted his father, August Engstrom, had died.  We can't easily tell from what, but he was still alive at the time of the 1910 census and was about 43 years old at that time, not all that old.  He didn't make it to 53.  While I can't tell for sure, given the names of the children and the last name, August was likely born in Sweden and had immigrated to the United States.  He died sometime between 1910 and 1917 leaving his wife, Mary, and four children.  The ages of the children at the time of his death are unknown, as the date of his death is unknown.

In the 1910 Census August and Mary reported their son Frank's name as "Franz", although that may be a handwriting glitch.  Both names are fairly Nordic and either could be correct.  In 1910 the August and Mary Engstrom family had two other children, Olga (1899) and Effie (1896).  A John and "Ostrend" would come later, with John being born in 1901 or 1902.  "Ostrend" was younger than that, and that odd name wasn't her name.  Her name was Astraid and she was born in 1906.*

The November 4, 1915 Rawlins Republican reported that Frank was at the wedding of his sister Effie, who married a Wyoming State Prison Guard, Alex Gordon just before then.  He was accompanied by his sister Olga, then 14 or 15 years old.  That prior July the Republican reported that Frank had been in Laramie as a "business visitor", at which time he would have been 19 years old.  His sister Effie was about 15 or 16 at the time of her marriage to Alex.

There were quite a number of Engstrom's in Carbon County Wyoming, and indeed there still are an appreciable number.  Chances are high that Frank is related to some of the Engstrom's still there, although none of them would be his direct descendants.  His sisters had strongly Scandinavian names and that suggests his parents, as noted, were from Sweden, given his last name.  Indeed, a John Engstrom, but not his younger brother, was a wine merchant in Rawlins at the time and did sufficiently well to return to Sweden for a year with his family after World War One. That Engstrom was still living in Rawlins at the time of the 1940 census, then age 63.

In 1915 Frank's sister Effie married Alex Gordon, a  guard at the penitentiary in Rawlins.  She was two years younger than he was, having been born in 1898.  She was a young bride at about 15 or 16 years of age (more likely 16).  While that seem shockingly young, its worth remembering that its quite likely that by 1915 Frank was supporting his mother, brother and three sisters.  One sister marrying at that time probably didn't seem unreasonable under the economic circumstances of the day.

By August 8, 1917, Frank was notified to report for a draft physical at the Carbon County Courthouse.

He was apparently found physically fit for service, but applied for an exemption on the basis that he was supporting his mother and younger siblings.  That request was granted by the local draft board.  Indeed, it seems only reasonable that this be done.

Frank Engstrom was notified that he was likely to be conscripted, however, by October 18, 1917.  Apparently his exemption has been waived or reconsidered in some fashion.  It's hard to know what, given that two of his siblings remained quite young.  Apparently he either reconsidered his circumstances himself, or perhaps other family members were deemed the proper parties to take up the economic burden of the young Frank.

He departed Rawlins on Saturday November 8, 1917 on a train owned by his employer ,the Union Pacific, with fourteen other men who were entering the service and who were bound for Camp Lewis, Washington.

The Union Pacific Railroad station in Rawlins Wyoming. This is the same station that existed when Frank Engstrom left for Camp Lewis, Washington, and the same station he reported to for work.

The prior day the band from Hanna Wyoming traveled over to send them off after a banquet at which they played and which was held at the Ferris Hotel. The Elks Club served the men and their families.  That night they could view, if they wanted to, the movie The Slacker for free, as the theater owner had opened up attendance for them.  We don't know if Engstrom went or not.

The Strand Movie Theater in Rawlins.  It was the theater in 1917.

On September 28, 1918, Pvt. Engstrom was reported Missing In Action, with that news released to the public after the war was over, on December 7, 1918.

Frustratingly, only a few days later he was reported as only "slightly wounded".

The May 8, 1919, Rawlins Republican reported the sad news that Frank was confirmed killed in action.  It would later be determined that he was the first man in Rawlins to have died in action, with his death coming on July 19, 1918.  The slowness of confirming news of battlefield casualties, which was already a topic of controversy late in the war, is shown by the fact that Engstrom died on July 19, but was reported as missing in action as late as September, with his death not confirmed until after the war.

It must have been awful for his sisters.

By that time, his mother and his sister Olga had already died before him. We don't know of what, but we do know that it occurred after he left for service in France.  His mother Mary was likely in her 40s.  Olga was three years younger than Frank.  Chances are high that they both died of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic.  Their ages and circumstances would have been right for that.

In November 1919, the newly formed VFW post was named after him.  Sometime prior to 1926 another Rawlins serviceman by the last name of Duncan had his name named to the post.

Effie Gordon continued to live in Rawlins after the war.  She and her husband had a son in 1919. They named him Frank.  Alex became the County Coroner for Carbon County.  Effie became active in Democratic politics and still was as late as 1960.

A John Engstrom was reported in the 1940 census still living in Rawlins at age 63, but that was certainly not Frank's brother and more likely the (former?) wine merchant who had returned to Sweden for a year after the passage of the Volstead Act in which to tour it. Was he related.  He may well have been, given the propensity for immigrants and immigrant families to settle near their fellow expatriates and family. But there were a lot of Engstroms in Carbon County and its not easy to tell.  Another John Engstrom was reported living there as well who was 33 years of old,  having been born in 1910.  That was likely Frank's brother.

Today the VFW Post in Rawlins is the Independence Rock Post.

It seems they forgot him after all.

So is this a sad story?

Well, maybe, maybe not.  Maybe its the story of how life was at the time.  This seems to be how veterans of the war viewed it themselves.

_________________________________________________________________________________

*There's some slack in the details as to John and Astraid (Ostrend) Engstrom, and more slack as to Astraid/Ostrend.  Ostrend would be a very unlikely name and is more like a place name, when naming people after locations would have been highly unusual.  Astraid, on the other hand, was a name then in use and which sounds somewhat similar.  There was an Astraid Engstrom of the right age living in Rawlins at the time and she was young enough to have been in 8th Grade in 1921.  She wasn't, we'd note, the only Astraid living in Rawlins at the time as an Astraid Peterson also was.

In the 1920 census both John and Astraid are simply listed without parents, which would have been common for orphaned children.

Capping it off, however, the social notes of the Wyoming Times of Evanston reported that Mrs. Alex Gordon and her sister "Miss Astraid Austin", both of Rawlins, were reported visiting her brother, "Alex Engstrum" of Evanston.  We are totally unaware of there being an "Alex Engstrum" in this picture and we suspect that Alex Engstrum was John Engstrom, and that the first name was a typographical error.  If it was, we also suspect that John moved back to Rawlins. Alternatively, there could have been an unreported male relative in this scenario.  It's pretty clear, however, that "Mrs. Alex Gordon" of Rawlins was Effie Gordon who had one sister, and therefore its pretty clear that the sister's name was Astraid.  The new last name would suggest that she was adopted into a family named Austin in light of her still being a minor.  The degree to which that might have been informal would be reflected by school notes from the following year reporting her name once again as Astraid Engstrom.  On the other hand, the reporter might not have been great and may have confused Engstrom with Austin.

Regarding John, there were a number of John Engstrom's living in Rawlins at the time and therefore there are additionally a number of possible birth dates, although we are certain that this was his name.

All of these individuals trails are ultimately lost. There are enough Engstroms left in Carbon County to make us suspect that the descendants of these folks are still there, but we can't tell from the slim resources we had to make this post.

October 20

1803  Louisiana Purchase ratified.

1889  Oil discovered near Douglas.

1906  Southeast Wyoming hit by a three day blizzard.

1913  The Burlington Northern arrived in Casper.

1917   Louis Senften  was murdered near Leo.  This resulted in his neighbor, John Leibig, who was the only one to witness the death, being accused of murder.

The accusations against Leibig seem to have been motivated, at least in part, by his being of German origin.  Senften had just purchased his ranch after a long effort to do so but there were details concerning that purchased that may have caused Leibig's neighbors to wish him gone.  Be that as it may, he was acquitted of murder but was also held on an additional eleven counts of espionage, a fairly absurd accusation against somebody who lived in such a remote location.  Leibig, perhaps wanting to simply get past the matter, entered a guilty plea to those charges as part of a plea bargain.  He was accordingly sentenced to a year and a half in a Federal Penitentiary, but President Wilson commuted the sentence to one year.  The short length of the sentence would suggest that both the Court and the President doubted the espionage claims' veracity.

Wyoming's U.S. Attorney continued Quixotic efforts to strip Leibig of his citizenship until 1922, although he had in fact lost it by operation of his sentence.  He ultimately would relocate to Colorado after being released from the Federal Penitentiary at Ft. Leavenworth Kansas.

More can be read about his trial on the WyomingHistory.org webiste.

1918  Countdown on the Great War. Sunday, October 20, 1918. The Allied advance keeps on keeping on, New American Divisions keep on forming, German Submarines and mines keep on sinking ship, and the Spanish Flu is still on a rampage.

American troops getting newspapers from the back of an American Red Cross truck.

1.  The British occupied Roubaix and Tourcoing.

2.  The U.S. 96th Division came into being, showing how the Army had grown and was continuing to grow.  It never left the states.

3.  The British schooner Emily Millington was sunk by a surfaced submarine without loss of life.   The British mointor HMS M21 hit a mine and sank in the English channel.

4.  The Spanish Flu was on a "rampage":

1958  Northeast Wyoming and Southeast Montana hit by a severe blizzard.

2009  Clifford Hanson, former Governor of Wyoming and Senator from Wyoming, died.

October 19

1848  John Fremont moved out from near Westport, Missouri, on his fourth Western expedition.

1867  Ft. Caspar, Wyoming abandoned.  It would be subsequently burned by the Indians. Attribution:  On This Day.

1890   Troop A, 1^st Cavalry Rgt, relieved from assignment to Yellowstone National Park  The Army patrolled the park until 1915.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1915  US recognized General Venustiano Carranza as the president of Mexico, and imposed an embargo on the shipment of arms to all Mexican territories except those controlled by Carranza.  Ironically, Carranza, who was a strongly leftist political theorist, held the US in disdain.

1918  Countdown on the Great War: October 19, 1918. Empires and monarchies of all types continue to fall apart, the Allies continue to advance, the German Navy continues to sink ships, and the Flu remains uncontained.

1. The Allies captured Bruges, Courtrai, and Zeebrugge, Belgium.  In the process, 12,000 Germans surrendered.  The Belgian Army engaged in the last cavalry charge of World War One when the Guides Regiment successfully charged at the Burkel Forest.

2.  The Portuguese sailing ship Aida sunk by a German U-boat. The British ships Almerian and the HMS Plumpton struck mines, sinking the Almerian and damaging the Plumpton. The German submarine UB-123 also hit a mine in the North Sea and went down with all hands.

3. The West Ukrainian People's Republic was established in the Ukrainian provinces of the Austro Hungarian Empire.

4.  A flu hospital was established in Casper.

5.  Old allegiances of all types were seemingly being modified everywhere.  Icelanders voted overwhelmingly for becoming a separate kingdom with the Danish king as their sovereign.

1944  A bomber from the Casper Air Base crashed killing three crewmembers.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1951     Harry S. Truman signed an act formally ending the state of war with Germany.

1973  Friday, October 19, 1973. The Oil Embargo spreads.

Libya announced that it would completely halt oil exports to the United States.  The U.S. Federal Reserve regards this as the beginning of the full Arab Oil Embargo.

President Nixon rejected the Appeals Court decision that he turn over tapes to Federal investigators.  Instead, he proposed to have them transcribed, and then reviewed by Democratic Senator John C. Stennis.  Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox rejected the offer and resigned the following day.

Solutions for the Yom Kippur War were being discussed on an international level.

1996  A 4.2 earthquake occurred 85 miles from Gillette.  Attribution:  On This Day.

October 16

Today is National Boss's Day.

1889  Emma Howell Knight, future dean of women at the University of Wyoming and Wilbur Clinton Knight, future UW professor of mining and metallurgy, and the future parents of future legendary UW Geology Professor Samuel Howell “Doc” Knight, married in Omaha, Nebraska.

1909  Following on his success of the prior month, August Malchow fought again at the Methany Hall in Thermopolis, defeating challenger Johnny Gilsey in a draw.

1912  Clifford Hansen was born in Zenith Wyoming.  The Teton County rancher was Governor from 1963 to 1967 and then Senator from 1967 to 1978.

1916  Cavalry withdrawn from Yellowstone National Park.  Attribution:  On This Day.

 Cavalry in Yellowstone, 1903.

Cavalry escorting President Arthur in Yellowstone, 1883.

1916The Wyoming Tribune for October 16, 1916: Carranza's family in flight. . . or were they?
 

Readers if the always sensational Wyoming Tribune learned, in the afternoon Monday edition, that the family of Carranza was in flight, suggesting he was about to fall from power.

Well, he wasn't.  He'd remain firmly in power, and in fact at that time was working on his proposals for a new Mexican constitution.  Readers of the Tribune, however, were probably pretty worried.

On other matters, Charles E. Hughes declared himself to be a man of peace, and the Wilson Administration denied that the US was somehow responsible for the execution of Roger Casement, who was sentenced due to his role in the recent Irish Nationalist's uprising against the United Kingdom.

1918  Countdown on the Great War, October 16, 1918. British advance everywhere, Dumas struck by lightening, the Kaiser abdicates?, Flu advances.

The front as to Belgium and part of France, October 16, 1918.

1.  The British crossed the Lys.

2.  The British occupied Homs, Lebanon.

3.  The Allies took Durres, Albania.

4.  German submarines sunk the cargo ships Pentwyn and War Council while the British sunk the German submarine UB 90.  The American SS Dumaru, nearly new wooden steamship, was struck by lightening off of Guam and her cargo of munitions caught fire.  Her crew evacuated two two lifeboats and a raft, with the five passengers of the raft being rescued several days later.  One lifeboat drifted to the Philippines over a course of three weeks. The other badly provisioned lifeboat had to resort to cannibalism of the dead in order for the survivors to live.

SS Dumaru

5.  Wild rumors of the Kaiser abdicating and Germany capitulating were starting to circulate.

6.  The Flu Epidemic was undeniable.

The Cheyenne State Leader was correct in this assessment of the Spanish Flu.

Hmmm, do these two newspapers seem rather similar?  Must have been a morning and evening edition of the same newspaper.  Both were reporting that the Flu Epidemic had become just that in the state.

1919  October 16, 1919. The Air Derby's Toll

Air racers continued to pass through Cheyenne, but not all of them were making it out of the state alive.

This demonstrates the different calculations of risk in different eras.  In the current era, any event with this sort of mortality rate would be shut down..  In 1919, even the government, which was losing flyers right and left in the Air Derby, wasn't inclined to do that.

Meanwhile, the Reds in Russia were reported to be on the edge of collapse, and in the U.S., there were fears of a Red uprising.  Neither would prove to be correct.

1940  "R Day", the deadline for all men aged 21 to 36 years old to register for conscription.

1993  Lusk becomes the first town in the United States to have a community wide fiber optic telephone system.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

October 14

Today is Columbus Day for 2013.

1066. Duke William of Normandy defeats King Harold Godwinson as the Battle of Hastings.  The result of this battle would bring feudalism into England and result in the birth of English Common Law.

The Bayeux Tapestry depicting the vents of October, 1066.

1884  State Democratic Convention held in Carbon County.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1912. John Schrank, suffering from delusions about the late William McKinley, shoots Theodore Roosevelt at a campaign stop.

1916   Bull Moose Carey goes for Wilson: Cheyenne Leader for October 14, 1916.
 

Illustrating the ongoing split in the GOP, and perhaps providing us something that sounds a little familiar for us today, the Cheyenne Leader for October 14, 1916 lead with a story about respected former Republican Governor Carey supporting Woodrow Wilson.

Joseph M. Carey was born in Delaware and studied law at the University of Pennsylvania before coming to Wyoming as its first, territorial, Attorney General.  He went very rapidly from that post to being a Wyoming Territorial Supreme Court justice, and just as rapidly left that post to start ranching, founding a large ranch near what is now Casper Wyoming, the CY Ranch. The ranch house, indeed, still exists in a much updated form near today's Casper College.

Almost as soon as he took up ranching, he took up politics, first serving on the  Cheyenne City Council and then as the Territorial Representative to the U.S. House of Representatives.  He served in the U.S. Senate from 1890 to 1895 but lost that position thereafter.  At that time Senators were elected by the Legislature and there was a great upheaval in the Wyoming Legislature following the Johnson County War which, for a time, threatened the Republican hold on the state.

He returned to politics in 1911 and was elected Governor, but he was one of the Republican Governors who followed Theodore Roosevelt out of the GOP in the 1912 election, at which time he joined the Progressive Party.  He was sincere in his Progressive convictions and like some of the more dedicated Progressives he did not make peace with the GOP like Roosevelt himself did in this election year.  He remained in the Progressive Party until his death in 1924.

The 1916 election year saw quite a few instances like this.  While Roosevelt made peace with the GOP and returned to it, after some indication that he might run as Progressive against Wilson, not everyone did. And some of those Progressives were leaning towards Wilson, with some even going more leftward than that.

1918  Countdown on the Great War. October 14, 1918. Saying no to the Boche, Sinkings in the Atlantic, Americans resume the offensive in the Meuse Argonne and the British in Flanders.

Camp Funston, Kansas, which some believe if the locus of the origin of the Spanish Flu.

1.  The Battle of Courtrai commences in which the Groupe d'Armees des Flanders, made up of twelve Belgian, ten British and six French divisions under the command of King Albert I of Belgian attacked German forces in the hopes of continuing the Allied advance as far as possible before the oncoming winter made further advances impossible.  It was still anticiapted at the time that the war would drag into 1919.

British forces found, to their expectation, that the Germans offered much reduced resistance and they had achived all of their objectives, reaching the Scheldt, by the 22nd.

The Germans were basically collapsing while still offering resistance.  The nearness to a complete German disaster was not apparent, but it was coming.

2. The U.S. resumes the offensive in the Meuse Argonne with assaults near Montfaucon.

Senencourt (Muese) France. "Kamerad," a figure by the soldiers in the yard of the American Red Cross Canteen at Senencourt. The Red Cross girls are, from left to right: Miss Louise Adams of 10 Arlington Place, Brooklyn, N.Y.; Miss Alice Birdall, of 310 Third Ave. Reselle Ave., N.J.; and Miss Gertrude Nichols, #849 West Galen Street, Butte, Montana; Capt. Beverly Rautoul of #17 Winter Street, Salem, Mass., and Private Geo. St. Clair Preston, both of the American Red Cross Evacuation Hospital #8, are on the extreme left

3.  The air wing of the United States Marine Corps engaged in its first all Marine air action by bombing Pitthem, Belgium.  Marines Ralph Talbot and gunner Robert Guy Robinson won the Medal of Honor for heroism associated with holding off German air attacks on their Airco bomber when they became separated and had to return to attempt to return to their base alone.

Airco DH4, which was used in the tactical role.

4.  The provisional government for Czechoslovakia formed.


5.  The U-139 attacked the Portoguese steamer Sao Miguel and its escort the Portuguese Navy trawler NRP Augusto de Castilho on the Action of 14 October 1918.  The trawler was lightly armed and while it fought for several hours, it was actually outgunned by the submarine and surrendered to it, and was thereafter scuttled by the German submariners.  The engagement is regarded as the only high seas naval battle of the Great War to take place in the North Atlantic.

On the same day, German submarines sank the Bayard, a French fishing vessel, the Stifinder, a Norwegian barque, which was scuttled due an engagement with the U-152 and the British passenger ship Dundalk, with the loss of 21 lives.  The German minsweeper SMS M22 was sunk by mines.

6.

1919  October 14, 1919. Missing the Mark and Other Dangers

There was already a winner, but the 1919 Air Derby, which saw plans stationed in the east fly west, and planes stationed in the west, continued on and continued to make news inWyoming.

Two of those planes that arrived over Cheyenne in the dark had to come down, with one missing the field.

In other news, things in Gary Indiana were getting out of hand, in terms of labor strikes. And two members of the Arapaho Tribe were recounting their experiences at the Battle of the Little Big Horn to interviewers.

And an interesting observation was made about not owning a car.

1943  Hunters were asked to donate animal skins to the war effort.  Attribution: Wyoming State Historical Society.

A Wisconsin deer camp in 1943.  I couldn't find a Wyoming example and this one was available for use. The rifle on the wall appears to be a nice Mauser with a set trigger, perhaps a rebuild of a World War One prize rifle.  Photograph courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Fish and Game, which retains all rights to the same.

If this seems like an unusual request, we have to keep in mind that the leather requirements for the service during World War Two were quite high, and moreover various uniform items used different types of leather.  Cowhide was the most common leather in use, of course, but elk hide was specifically required for mounted service boots, which were used by cavalrymen, horse artillerymen and other mounted soldiers.  While its common to believe that mounted soldiers did not exist in the U.S. Army during the Second World War, this is in fact incorrect and only horse artillery was actually phased out during the war.  Mounted service boots continued to be made for service use as late as the late 1940s.

1963  The State Penitentiary's Shaw High School graduated its first class.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.