Lauraville History
Lauraville: In the Beginning
By Bobbie Laur
Lauraville is situated in the once heavily wooded, hilly Herring Run Valley, home to colonial era iron furnaces and later water-powered mills and merchant estates. This area stands on the fall line between higher Piedmont and lower coastal flatland, geological conditions for falling water that powered early Colonial and later Maryland industry. The area later included farmland for truck farmers who “trucked” their wares to markets in City. Harford Road was once Darley Path and a toll road that followed a Native American hunting trail. Cross road towns, including Lauraville, emerged around the farms near Harford Road.
The town of Lauraville originally referred to many of what are now different Northeast Baltimore neighborhoods, based on the Harford Road post office named for an early settler’s daughter Laura. The Lauraville community was part of Baltimore County until the City annexed it in 1918.
Civil War in Lauraville
By Bobbie Laur
150 years ago the nation was divided by a terrible conflict that killed and maimed more Americans than all other wars that the country has been involved in since. The peaceful green farms and the mills in the Herring Run Valley, which was then part of Baltimore County, was a rural countryside. It must have seemed far away from the cruel war fought over intractable sectional differences about slavery. Although Maryland was a slave state, strong differences of opinion divided Marylanders even among neighbors and family members.
Then as now Baltimore County was a mix of people. Even then, as seen in census records, the Lauraville area had some diversity with many recently naturalized German families perhaps fleeing political wars. Some names sounding of the British Isles and at least two free African Americans are listed in the September 1863 Civil War Draft Records kept by Provost Marshall Robert Cathcart. John List from Germany was a 41 year-old shoemaker listed on Ancestry.com and his family remained here up to the 1940 census when their trade was a pickle factory on Grindon Avenue. Not far from the Immanuel Lutheran Cemetery where the List family is buried is a street named for them which crossed the List farm.
For John List as for Joshua Johnson, a 43 year-old African American Lauraville farmer, being drafted might mean service in a nearby state militia guarding trains or the Capitol or might mean service in a distant area of combat.
The draft in the North was passed by Congress in the Enrollment Act of 1863 on March 3, 1863 (one year after the Confederacy had done so) and met fierce resistance including acts of violence, attempts to run away and self-mutilation. The fact that a wealthy family could purchase for $300 a substitute draftee further aggravated controversy and is said to have harmed the morale of volunteer forces.
What past Lauravillians felt is not known but it is interesting to note that, unlike areas of Baltimore City or elsewhere in Baltimore County, all listed for Lauraville seemed to be very near the age of 40 or older. One can guess that this is because the younger men had already volunteered for the Union cause as many German farmers had done. Or it is possible that a fair share of younger men had gone South to join one of the Maryland Confederate units as occurred in other parts of the state. Perhaps the resistance to the draft caused some to run away and skewed the age of the Lauraville draftees. Less likely is that the population was somehow older or had a tendency to have female children.
Still, it must have been an anxious time to be called for a military duty with the possibility of family at home trying to live and run a farm in your absence. Maryland had been invaded by a large Confederate Army in September of 1862 during the Antietam Campaign. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued soon after that battle. Gettysburg was invaded via Maryland in July 1863 and then the Draft was instituted in response to dwindling volunteers. What awaited ahead for those who were here before us was not yet known.
The 100-Year Anniversary of the 1918 Flu Pandemic
By Christine Muldowney
What event affected the world 100 years ago that can mean the difference between life or death for you and your family today? No one wants to think of fear filled events but what you don’t know literally can hurt you. You may know that by 1918 World War I had been raging for four years but it was the World Flu Pandemic that killed, in recent estimates, between 50 and 100 million1 mostly healthy young people. Let that number sink in for a moment and further realize that many of those deaths went from fever to death in 48 hours.
Imagine the emotional, social and practical effect on families when they lost spouses, children and siblings as local societal conditions went into crisis mode—limited medical staff, bodies piled up waiting for burial, people dying on the street seeking help and other traumas that make any modern horror film seem tame. The effect of war and desire of flu survivors wanting to move forward with their lives, combined with limited recording of medical knowledge or history by medical students drafted to care for the sick and dying while trained physicians and nurses were sent to war2, may have resulted in this worldwide tragedy being little known outside of medical community.
The Baltimore area suffered second only to Philadelphia among US urban areas. During the September to December 1918 peak, one in four died. By the end of 1918, Baltimore had a total of nearly 24,000 reported cases of influenza (Blake estimated the actual count at closer to three times that number) and had lost 4,125 residents to the epidemic3. Hospitals were so overwhelmed in the Fall of 1918 most, including Hopkins, closed their doors to patients. The rapid onset of lungs filling up with fluid caused cyanosis, making patients appear bluish and adding to the fear. Public officials hesitated to hurt the war effort or business and refused to close public events. News was censored during early weeks of the epidemic and referred to as the Spanish flu, implying the cause as unrelated to the war and not recognizing it as a world pandemic.
Early reports of deaths from the flu and other complications were listed without detail while newspapers urged attendance at public war bond rallies in September 1918. Eventually, as the situation became critical a few weeks later, Health Commissioner Blake closed all public gatherings. Obits used phrases like “died suddenly” or to be buried “from parents homes” about young adults. Children, like 5 yr old Wm. McIntyre of Luzerne Ave. and pregnant women were particularly vulnerable. In Overlea, young parents Harry and Agnes Macey buried their 4 year old daughter, Hilda, at the tiny Biddison cemetery in Gardenville near Oaklyn Ave. Her small marker reads “Our darling”. Decades later people recall being too weak to attend family funerals and watching from the window as horse carriages with makeshift coffins took loved ones directly to burial since churches were closed4. Carl Flagle of Lauraville told of seeing unburied coffins piled in a nearby cemetery as he walked by and how it frightened him even though his family stayed well.
Most areas of NE Baltimore were still sparsely populated with truck farms(farms on outskirts of town that “trucked” produce and meat to town markets) and some housing developments. Roads were empty and families stayed away from work and schools as the flu spread. Transportation was disrupted on the United Railway and Electric Company system as staff sickened and regular service was interrupted. When running, streetcars were under strict ventilation rules to keep all windows open. Local oral history told of workers hiking miles to work even when streetcars ran so they could avoid contagion5.
Local flu cases spread from Camp Meade and Ft. McHenry to SE areas of Baltimore City, which were heavily infected through contact with defense and shipping industries. Reports and letters in the paper blamed “foreigners” and overcrowded conditions. Town centers added and enforced laws against spitting and other sanitation violations. An understanding that close contact was spreading germs was just coming into medical awareness and health codes were not yet as refined as they would become later in the field of Public Health.
The epidemic peak time in the Greater Baltimore area was Sept.-Dec. 1918 but illness, breathing complications and fatalities continued into 1920. Families and neighbors struggled to do their best to take in orphans, some with many children and limited income. Male widowers tried to find care for their children so they could work and widows worried about losing housing or having to step in to run deceased husband’s businesses while trying to recover from loss, lingering illness and helping their children get well. The after effects impacted families financially and psychologically for decades. New housing including cottages with green space along Harford and Belair Rd. were advertised as having more space promoting health and fueling the 1920s boom for those
that could afford it. Those of more modest means moved to Novak houses north of Patterson Park from Canton and Fells Point, growing our city into the northeast areas.
Medical science 100 years later has many new drugs, vaccines and flu surveillance teams in an effort to keep ahead of infectious mutations. But public awareness and cooperation are equally important. Your entire family should get an annual flu shot and follow handwashing and other recommendations for infection control. Understanding history allows you to learn from the experience of others (as does science). The suffering and grief of those that came before can help us be wiser today. Those that survived the flu pandemic went on to live fully and passed their wisdom on to us. I leave you with a family photo of survivors of the Great Flu: Lillian Barnes on left recovered from Illness after losing a younger sister and father. On her left is her stepfather, Thomas McCord, who lost his first wife and daughter, her mother Mary Agnes, sister Annabelle and young half siblings celebrating a beautiful summer day with her blended family ten years after the Great Flu changed everything.
