Isolation and Resilience ~by Mark Blackwell
H
ere we are several months or so into a virus crisis. It’s not the first time, though. A little over a hundred years ago folks were dealing with the Spanish Flu. And when I was young, the country was in a panic over polio. This present situation makes me think back on my grandparents’ times. They were part of the generation born around the turn of the twentieth century. Back then folks were optimistic. The dawning century would bring amazing things such as airplanes and the more mundane, but life transforming, indoor plumbing and farm tractors. And then World War I happened. The country mobilized to help our European allies. Brown County sent its share of troops off to be cut down for a cause that nobody could quite define. The war ended, and the soldiers returned, but in 1918 the flu began its deadly advance.
I couldn’t find any reference to the flu in the Brown County history books. It’s like that event has been purged from the historical record. The worldwide death toll was devastating, and maybe people just wanted to forget that it ever happened. Or, maybe, the Brown Countians had something going for them. We know the flu is mainly spread by close person to person contact. That’s why we wear masks and stay away from crowds. During 1918 it wasn’t all that hard to stay away from crowds in Brown County. Since the better part of the population was living up in the hills on isolated farmsteads, being quarantined was already pretty much the norm. Travel from the outside world was limited. A sick person showing up from out of the county would be mighty rare. Isolation turned out to be a blessing.
54 Our Brown County • July/August 2020
Another blessing was a sort of “egg or chicken” situation. One characteristic of Brown Countians always has been their self-reliance. I have never figured out whether self-reliant people were drawn to the hills or whether the isolation forced them to be that way. Either way, being able to grow gardens, raise pigs and chickens, milk cows, build cabins from forest materials, and stitch up a wardrobe, kept folks from needing to go to town very often. In Brown County contact with the outside world was limited when the flu was running rampant elsewhere. A friend of mine, Dan Combs, shared some of his extensive research on the Spanish flu. In October of 1918 the Monroe County Board of Health issued lockdown orders stating that “All Public Gatherings are Forbidden.” They went on to specify that “schools, churches, theatres, lodges, and clubs must be closed until further orders
