Death in 1926 Bexar County, Texas: An Un-Scientific Poll

The other day I was poking around in the Texas Death Certificates, and sort of got sucked into a straw poll of causes of death.

I had randomly browsed to Bexar County in 1926 and from there down to an individual record. Once I was at a record I used the filmstrip to randomly select images and see the kinds of things that were included. It wasn't long before I noticed some interesting things and some simple trends in the cause of death field.

My random sample painted a pretty clear picture of the progress that has been made in medicine since 1926. Some of the more common causes of death have been so effectively treated in the US that I didn't even recognize them. For example, Pellagra, which showed up frequently in my straw poll, is a disease related to a vitamin deficiency which was at epidemic levels in the South in 1926, but doesn't get much press today.

The most common causes of death I saw in Bexar County in 1926 were:

• Various types of Tuberculosis
• Pneumonia
• Premature birth
• Colitis
• Kidney problems

I was surprised to find several people in my small sample who were killed by trains and even a few who were killed in automobile accidents.

The oldest person I came across? Justa Baron who died of "Unknown Natural Causes" at the age of 108.

FrankOlynyk has been working with the Missing Air Crew Reports and sending us some great corrections.

One of the reports he contacted us about was for a B-25 that went down in the Mediterranean on 10 Aug 1943.

The report includes a couple of eye witness accounts of the crash including one from Sergeant Alan J. MacDougall, who was flying in another plane in the formation, and described it this way:

"About fifteen minutes out over the Mediterranean, the ship ... went into a steep bank apparently starting back, he was banked well over 60° and very low. His left wing tip dipped into water and he went in very quickly. As the ship's nose hit, something flew from the ship. I thought it was the tail. Shortly after the ship disappeared, water boiled over the spot he went down. Nothing was seen to float to the surface."

Initially the entire crew was listed as "Killed in Action," but later it was discovered that Sergeant Ellsworth E Meinke, the Radio Waist Gunner, "survived but was seriously wounded."

Sergeant MacDougall gives a dramatic account of the accident, but I would love to hear the story from Sergeant Meinke's perspective.

I did a search of Footnote for Ellsworth E Meinke and found this Footnote Page for him that was created from his WWII Army Enlistment Record. It includes information about him at the time he enlisted. We have another Footnote Page for an Ellsworth Meinke with the same birth year that was created from the Social Security Index. If this is the same guy, he died in 1962.

The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906

The other day, I noticed that we had added some editions of the The San Francisco Chronicle to the site that were pretty close to the time of the 1906 earthquake. I wondered how the local papers reported the quake, or if they were even still able to publish.

Here's the headline from Thursday April 19,1906.

It's not clear where they were publishing from since, as the paper says, "Newspaper Row Is Gutted" (page 2) and the fire threatened to leave the city "Without a Newspaper" (page 3), but this appears to be a special, combined edition of three San Francisco Papers, The Call, The Chronicle and The Examiner. It's just 4 pages long, down from a normal of about 16 for The Chronicle.

The Chronicle skipped April 20th, but by the 21st they were back:

And they published every day for the rest of the month, though it did take them a week or so to get back to the full length.

Of course, other major papers around the nation covered the story. Here's The Atlanta Constitution from April 19, 1906:

And The Chicago Tribune for the same day:

3 Interesting Civil War Era Titles

There are lots of titles on Footnote that don't get much attention. Today I was poking around in 3 from the Civil War Era.

This first one is from the Southern Claims Commission Approved Claims. During the Civil War, as the Union Army moved through the South, they commandeered and used supplies, food, transportation and other resources from local folks. After the war, a commission was established to allow people to claim redress for the items that were taken. To receive repayment, the claimants had to demonstrate that they were loyal to the Union and that the Army had taken and used, not just destroyed, the items. The vast majority of claims were refused, but this is a collection of claims that were approved. You can learn more here.

Here's an image from the case file of William Martin, a free African-American living in North Carolina who had two sons that fought for the Union. He was a boatman and also had a 1,ooo acre farm of "turpentine" trees from which he made rosin. The Union army took 51 barrels of rosin and used two boats belonging to Mr. Martin. This page of the file includes the commissions final decision about how much to pay out for the claim.

The next title you many not have heard of is the Confederate Amnesty Papers. In May of 1865, a proclamation by President Andrew Johnson gave amnesty to most people who fought for the Confederacy, but certain groups of people (for example, ex-confederate Governors) were not included in the general amnesty. People in those groups had to send a personal request to the president with an explanation of their situation and an oath of allegiance. You can learn more here.

This image is from the request of William Henry Fitzhugh Lee, the son of General Robert E Lee, who was ineligible because he served as a general in the Confederate army.

The third title is the Lincoln Assasination Papers, a collection of papers related to the investigation and trial of people suspected of being part of the plot to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. You can learn more about the title here.

Here's an odd little piece of the collection: a copy of the oath of office taken by President Andrew Johnson and the certification of the that oath by Chief Justice Salmon Chase.

World War I, Woodrow Wilson and William Jennings Bryan

Here are a couple of interesting interchanges between Woodrow Wilson and his Secretary of State, William Jennings Brian:

First, this coded message from Wilson to Bryan from Department of State records from WWI. It's interesting to see the code they were using. This is from a collection of correspondence related to Illegal and Inhumane Warfare and comes from 1914, long before the US entered the war.

This second, published in The Times of London, is an offer from Bryan to Wilson to support the war effort in any way he could.

French WWI Ship Found 1,000 Feet Down

There's a story on the BBC's website about the French battleship Danton which was torpedoed in 1917 by a German submarine. A team surveying for an undersea gas pipeline discovered the ship "in remarkable condition on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea."

The story includes some great video footage of the ship resting on the seafloor. I couldn't find an option to embed the video, but you'll find it here.

Here's the London Times' report of the event from the 24 March 1917 edition:

The Bomb Train

Another great upload from PAKOPAKIS

Old Newspapers Really Knew How To Sell It

Would the newspaper business be in trouble today if they still wrote things like, "Cloud-Funnels Daily Traversing the Continent, Seeking Whom They May Devour."

Half a Ship

Found on Footnote.com

Happy Birthday Abe

Footnote.com