GREENSBORO, N.C. — In the fall of 1918, a young man by the name Edward North Hoyt of Hammonton, New Jersey was away in France after being drafted into the military to fight in World War I. During that time the world was being ravaged by the spreading H1N1 Influenza, popularly known as the Spanish Flu.
Corporal Hoyt’s family and friends back in the United States, worried for him, wrote him several letters concerned about his welfare. They also wrote to him to tell him about the havoc and death the Spanish Flu was causing. The various correspondence to Hoyt, who was with the 828th Aero Repair Squadron, and several other century-old letters, as well as photos, were handed down to his grandson who now lives in Greensboro.
“They are from three different people, but they work quite well together. The last is difficult to read and feel at the same time. Aunt Evelyn North was very eloquent and her words are powerful,” George Hoyt of Greensboro said.
Hoyt got the letters and other family memorabilia preserved by his uncle about a year ago. He said he had not spent too much time with them until recently, when the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, brought activity to a halt worldwide.
The impact of the pandemic, which has infected nearly four-million people and killed more than 270,000 since December 2019, has undoubtedly been historic. The pandemic shutdown economic activities across the world, forcing people to remain indoors, working, and schooling from home, wear masks, and practice social distancing when outdoors.
With more time available, Hoyt has been able to look further into the boxes with several letters from a grandfather.
“He died in 1950, only 53 years old and my father was 18 at the time, so I never knew him,” Hoyt said. Hoyt, however, would learn more about his grandfather and the Spanish flu as he began to pull the letters out to compare with things happening in the present
“I looked at this a while ago and knew there was some reference to the Spanish Flu and just really got them out recently to see what was there specifically regarding that because obviously that's pretty germane to what we're going through here,” said Hoyt.
The letters revealed what it was like living in the small township of Hammonton New Jersey during the peak of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic with World War I raging as well. Many of the letters written between 1917 and 1919 told of mundane everyday activity, as well as the grim hardships of life at the time. Hoyt said lots of letters from his grandfather’s aunts, his dad, a cousin, and some from girl “friends” as well.
“They are difficult to read as they are in handwritten cursive and have aged a bit, but I’m getting better at making it out with practice. They are from three different people, but they work quite well together. The last is difficult to read and feel at the same time,” said Hoyt of the letters that specifically reference the Spanish flu.
"All had to be laid in trenches which were dug by steam shovels in there and they were left until the graves can be dug in their proper place," read a letter from Edward Hoyt’s Aunt Evelyn North.
"And the dear boys at the camps, they died in the thousands those big healthy lovely boys only sick a few hours," the letter continued.
One letter was from a teenage girl named Anita Bakely who Hoyt said was a friend and school mate of Edward’s cousin, Mary. She also wrote a letter to her cousin about the impact of the Spanish Flu.
“His cousin, Mary Hoyt, and her friend, Anita we're really just high school kids. Anita at the time was probably about 15 or 16 years old, so it's really interesting to read her letters because she really liked my grandfather,” he said.
According to Hoyt, Bakely’s letters expressed concern and anxiety and also revealed the teenager’s crush on his grandfather who was about 18 at the time.
"The people are dying by the thousands in the city, Hammonton is also under heavy quarantine. I know at least 50 that have died from it. I had it too but the best of care, in the beginning, saved me,” wrote Bakely in the letter read out by Hoyt.
"These are high school kids writing about their experience of wartime and beyond wartime also is this pandemic and the whole city is being quarantined similar to what we know of today," he added.
The letters also told of how people were also going through economic hardships because of job losses and scarcity of necessities.
"Some worried and were talking about their work experience and how it was impacting them, my grandfather‘s dad, my great grandfather goes into great detail about how difficult it was to buy coal that particular winter which was 1917, it was a very cold winter in that area and the temperatures were down below zero and they could not find any coal to heat the house at all," he said.
"The economy was really hard at that time, so there are a number of people who are leaving jobs and being fired so there’s a lot of talk about finding work sometimes," added Hoyt about the letters.
As he has started to look through the letters, Hoyt said there are lots of parallels to be drawn and lessons to learn as we live through the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I think as this plays out over time, I don't think there'll be very many people in our area that haven't been impacted by it, but we're not alone I guess, in history, we are not alone.”
The Spanish Flu killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans according to historians.
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