Sunday Favorites: Consequences of the Pandemic Hit Close to Home

My great-great grandmother Julia Valeria Tillet (1879 -1907), was born in Florida, according to a 1900 census, she married John Cullen Rowell (1862 -1934) in 1895, when he was 33 and she was 16.

Cullen was from Georgia, but traveled to Florida and moved to Terra Ceia at some point during the late 1800s. The two birthed three girls, my great-grandmother, Wealthy Ann Safronia (born 1896), Mary Elizabeth ”Mollie“ (born 1897), and Fannie Mae (1899).

Life was hard back then and a series of epidemics swept through the area. In 1888, yellow fever found its way to Palmetto, carried by a salesman aboard a ship from Tampa. So many people died during that epidemic, Palmetto’s only cemetery located on the corner of Fifth Street West and 14th Avenue West became known as the Ôyellow fever cemetery.’

In 1903, Fannie Mae died at the age of four. Julia died four years later at the age of 27. Both were buried at the Gillett Cemetery.

Life continued on Terra Ceia and John raised Wealthy and Mollie into bright young women. John had a successful farm on the island and could afford to give his daughters a nice life. Both women were well educated and attended business school at a university in Tampa, according to family reports.

In 1915, Wealthy married John Edward Anderson, of Ocala. The two lived on Center Road in Terra Ceia next to the Village Improvement Association, or VIA, and ran a successful farm. (The house is still located there).Mollie married Walter Lowrimore, of Terra Ceia.

In 1916, Wealthy became pregnant, and named the baby Julia Elizabeth after her late mother. Unfortunately, the baby died. Wealthy was devastated by the loss. In 1918 tragedy struck again when Mollie died in the influenza pandemic of 1918. Since Wealthy had no children of her own, she adopted Mollie’s only son Trevor.

(Wealthy probably didn’t realize at that point she’d go on to have 8 more children including my grandmother Alice Irene Anderson Sutton!)

The flu pandemic of 1918 hit six of the seven continents, infecting 500 million people in almost every corner of the globe. Unlike most other influenza outbreaks, this virus particularly affected the young and healthy, during a time when the workforce was already compromised by WWI. Millions of soldiers living in cramped conditions throughout the far reaches of the globe sped up transmission of the virus.

Recently finding out this information really hit home for me. It’s now 100 years later, and we are going through a similar outbreak. It made me re-examine my situation and think about what would happen to my family and children if something were to happen to me. Let’s all stay home, stay safe and wait for this pandemic to pass!