Author
Meguey Baker studied early American textile history and material culture at Hampshire College. She is a member of the Mohawk Trail Quilt Guild, on the board of the Historical Society of Greenfield, and does textile repair and conservation for private clients.

Guest post by Rob Wilson
Hatfield Historical Society volunteer

This Dec. 23, at Hatfield’s Annual Luminarium celebration, thousands of flickering homemade candle lanterns will line sidewalks and driveways and shine from front door stoops. Once the wicks burn down and splutter out, however, it will be back to using electric-powered lights to push back the winter night. To truly appreciate that luxury, look back for a moment on the times before a click of an electric switch could turn darkness into light. The history of illuminating Hatfield—from Colonial-era candle and lamp light all the way to the electrical service we all enjoy today— offers some interesting examples of how evolving science and technology have significantly changed our lives.

From the time pioneers of European heritage settled in the area and eventually founded Hatfield, in 1670, and all the way into the 1850s, town residents lit up their homes with candles and lamps that burned oil. The various lamps made light from animal fats (oil derived from beef and sheep fat, when mixed together, burned best), beeswax, fish oil and whale oil. Candles were used less as lamps became more efficient and brighter. Whale oil, which burned brighter and cleaner than its counterparts, was the high-end lighting choice for much of that time period, but because of its cost was  mostly used in wealthier households.  
 
In the mid-1800s, scientists developed a process for making lamp oil from coal, and kerosene was born. As manufacturing processes were improved, kerosene became more affordable and its use for lighting became widespread. As they lit their lamps, however, Hatfield residents, wished for a brighter and easier means of lighting their homes. “The lampshade or chimney had to be washed daily and the kerosene filled when necessary,” observed Nellie Donnis Gutfinski in her memoir about Hatfield life, Times Remembered: Growing Up in the Donnis Household. “One could smell the kerosene when the lamp was in use.” That odor permeated her house until the early 1920s, Nellie remembered, until electric lines finally reached her neighborhood and her house was wired.
 
A brighter, cleaner and less odoriferous alternative to the kerosene lamp actually had been introduced to town residents in the late 1860s: gas lighting. Small gas-producing systems usually were utilized to light a single building. There was one catch, however. Only Hatfield’s well-off households and businesses could afford to upgrade.

The Lowell Mansion, built in 1868 on Elm Street, utilized one of the expensive home-based systems. The machinery used gravity-driven technology to pump air through a petroleum-based liquid, producing a burnable gas that it collected and pushed through pipes to wall fixtures and ornamental sconces. Gas flame was considerably brighter than the light of an oil lamp. Although the system was replaced by electric lights a century ago, the mansion’s gas fixtures remain as a reminder of a largely forgotten past. 
 
A much more affordable form of gas lighting became available to some Hatfield residents in the early 20th century. Coal gas had been produced in commercial gasworks, delivered to customers in underground pipes, and used to light large American cities and towns since 1816. Later in the century, the more flammable and brighter burning acetylene gas was introduced. As large-scale gas-making technology advanced, small towns began installing systems and laying pipes.
 
It’s unclear exactly when that type of gas lighting first was utilized in Hatfield. According to A History of Hatfield in Three Parts, by Daniel White Wells and Reuben Field Wells, published in 1910, the town’s first streetlights were erected in the 1890s, “at intervals along several of the streets in the center of the village and the lamps were lit and cared for by property owners on whose places they were located.” However, the author did not mention if they burned gas or some other fuel.
 
The first Hatfield gas-making facility that Wells mentions began making acetylene gas in 1901, to light the Congregational Church. Perhaps inspired by the success of the church’s system, Wells teamed with several wealthy peers, in 1903, to finance and build an acetylene gasworks on Prospect Street.

 Incorporated as the Hatfield Gas Works in 1904, the facility used a process that forced calcium carbide through water, captured the resulting gas, and then piped it to customers. Awarded a contract to provide gas for the town’s streetlamps, the company laid underground gas pipes and also began to service some homes and businesses.
 
Electric power arrived in Hatfield in 1907, delivered by lines spanned across the Connecticut River by the Amherst Gas Co., one of the many American gas utilities to expand into delivering electrical service. Streetlights burning incandescent light bulbs began to supplant the town’s gas lamps and, as Wells noted in his History of Hatfield, the new and ever-growing electric infrastructure soon extended beyond the reach of his company’s acetylene gas pipes.
 
The expansion of electric service in Hatfield was costly, however, and it proceeded slowly. Hatfield Gas Co., taken over by the larger Massachusetts Lighting Co. in 1909, was able to expand its customer base, as more households within reach of the plant’s delivery system adopted gas for cooking and some lighting. A statewide report on electric utilities revealed that the company jumped its 1912 sales by 36% from its 1909-1910 figure, to $46,550. Adjusted for inflation, today that amount would translate to about $1,244,000.
 
Yet the heyday of localized production of coal and acetylene gas for lighting purposes was over. Over the next three decades, more and more Hatfield households began lighting with electricity. Once electric power was delivered to a home, it was carried room-to-room by “knob and tube” (K&T) wiring (see illustration).

Electric current traveled to a light fixture or a wall outlet in one insulated copper wire and returned on a separate parallel wire. The wires were three or four inches apart and each was secured to walls and ceilings with a series of non-conducting porcelain knobs that were affixed with a nail. The wire ran through walls and wooden beams and joists in a porcelain tube.
 
Although K&T signaled a revolution in home lighting and living, the service it provided was Spartan compared with today’s electrical wiring. Pat (Labbee) Cady remembered visiting her grandparents’ house (now 60 School St.) as a child. It featured “one ungrounded outlet upstairs, and sconces in the living room that were originally for kerosene,” as well as “extension cords under carpets.” Hatfield resident Al Rejniak, in another interview, described the early electrical setup in his home: “All we had was one pull chain, hanging in the middle of each room, no outlets.” 
 
Many residents of outlying Hatfield neighborhoods had a decades-long wait for electric lines and service. Others waited until they could better afford it. North Hatfield’s Paul Vachula family wasn’t able to trade their kerosene lamps for electric lights until 1928. At least some homes on Dwight Street and the Marcinowski Farm on Valley Street didn’t get electric lights until the mid-1930s. But electricity had arrived and was here to stay. And as a result, life in Hatfield – in spite of all the pull chains and extension cords – got a whole lot easier.
 

Rob Wilson is the former executive director of the Veterans Education Project, a nonprofit based in Amherst, MA, and resides in Hatfield, MA.

Guest post by Rob Wilson
Hatfield Historical Society volunteer
 
In observance of the 77th anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into World War II, we highlight the important contributions women from Pioneer Valley communities — including Hatfield — made on the home front at the Springfield Armory. The author drew on his research as an educational consultant for the Springfield Armory National Historic Site, as well as interviews Hatfield Historical Museum volunteers conducted with WWII-era Hatfield residents in 2015, in conjunction with our 2015 WWII exhibit in the Historical Museum.

Marion Howes felt she needed to do something. Pearl Harbor had been bombed Dec. 7, 1941. The United States responded by declaring war upon Japan Dec. 8. War declarations on Germany and Italy followed Dec. 11. “I’ve got to do my part. Where can I do it?” Marion remembered asking herself as the nation mobilized for a long struggle on two fronts, across the Atlantic and in the Pacific. She wanted to do something significant yet stay close to home, and “the Springfield Armory was the only place around.”

A Greenfield resident at the time (she would later marry WWII veteran Walter Root and move to Hatfield with him in 1988), 20-year-old Marion traveled to Springfield and began training to become one of the Armory’s more than 5,000 Women Ordnance Workers (WOWs) making weapons parts and accessories. The federally-run Springfield Armory was the largest military weapons manufacturer in the region.  When the war ended, she continued to work for the Armory, on an off, for 20 years.
 
Marion spoke with Hatfield Historical Museum interviewer Marta Bilodeau in 2015 about her post-Pearl Harbor decision to work at the Armory.  She was 96 years old when she passed away earlier this year.

Founded in 1794 as the nation’s first armory, the Springfield Armory already had a storied legacy by 1941 (various models of the Springfield rifle had been a staple of U.S. Army infantry gear since 1855). During WWII, more than 3.5 million M1 Model Springfield Rifles were designed and manufactured there, surpassing the facility’s rifle production total since its founding. Closed in 1968 as weapons manufacturing transferred entirely to the private sector, the Armory became a National Historic Site (NHS) and a museum managed by the National Park Service in 1978.
 
Breaking gender barriers
There never had been so many women on the Armory payroll.  During World War I, for example, only 15% of the employees were women, many of them assigned to office positions. At the peak of World War II, they comprised 42% of the 12,000-employee workforce and most were helping to manufacture weapons.  On the factory floor, many WOWs wore red bandanas with the distinctive markings of a flaming bomb, one of the insignias for the U.S. Army’s Ordnance Corps. The bandanas were both a safety precaution and a symbol to help instill camaraderie, pride and achievement in their contributions to the war effort.

And proud of their work they were. Talking about her job to Marta Bilodeau in an interview on Sept. 11, 2015, Marion recalled “it wasn’t that enjoyable, but knowing you were doing [a war-related] job, that was the whole thing.” She worked making ammunition clips for the M1 semi-automatic rifle. Each clip held eight rounds of ammunition. Describing the manufacturing process, she explained how she and the other WOWs in her department would run flat metal stock “through a big press where it’s formed into clips, then goes through various stages,” dipped in rust preventative then inspected, packed and shipped out. She and the other women in her department “did the whole thing, beginning to end.”
 
By working in skilled manufacturing jobs, Marion and other WOWs were breaking gender barriers that, until the late 1930s, had always existed in American industry. Traditionally, the machine shop and the factory floor were the exclusive province of white men. As America geared up for war in 1941 and faced a labor shortage, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an Executive Order that barred job discrimination on the basis of gender or race in federal workplaces.  It was an exciting time, remembered Harriet Atwood, a former WOW who spoke to me in an interview for a Springfield Armory NHS oral history project.  “Women learned to do things they didn't know they could do," the Springfield native said, adding that some men remained critical of women taking industrial jobs. As the war progressed, however, and WOWs often excelled at their jobs, many of the skeptics began to accept the women as the skilled workers they were. 
 
The female presence in manufacturing shops, the Armory February 1942 newsletter noted, rapidly triggered noticeable changes in workplace culture. In the prewar all-male manufacturing departments “the air was often dark blue, shot with flashes of lightening,” the reporter wrote, with a touch of tongue-in-cheek humor. “But now that the ladies are here conversation is kept low and business in the jobbing shop office is conducted in peaceful, churchly quiet.”

Margaret Barrett was about 18 years old when the war started. She went to work in the metal finishing department at the Armory in 1943. I had read about the department’s supervisor, Wilbur Ancrum, one of the few black machinists at the Armory prior to the war. During a visit with Margaret’s sister Ruth Barrett Drury in Hatfield (who was very active with the Hatfield Historical Society in the 1970s and ’80s and who passed away in 2017), I learned about the young WOW’s experience working in the shop. Ruth was donating her deceased sister’s most treasured memento to the Springfield Armory museum: a set of heavy candlesticks, milled out of the brass used for shell casings and weapons parts.  Wilbur Ancrum, her boss, had custom made them for her when she left her job at war’s end. A gesture of comradeship and thanks for a job well done, the candlesticks also seemed to be symbols of the barriers of de facto gender and racial segregation that began to come down within the Armory workplace. 

While interviewing former WOWs for the Springfield Armory NHS, I heard more stories of the working relationships and friendships between whites and African Americans, as well as between male and female Armory workers. As WWII wound down, and armaments demand decreased, many women left voluntarily or were laid off. Some went on to skilled positions in domestic industries or, others— like Marion (Howes) Root— went back to work at the Armory during the Korean War. She also worked there one more stint after that. Significant color and gender barriers had been breached by home front workers, and local women were part of this big step toward workplace diversity.

Rob Wilson is the former executive director of the Veterans Education Project, a nonprofit based in Amherst, MA, and he resides in Hatfield, MA.

Last Saturday I attended a behind-the-scenes tour of the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in Worcester along with some of my museum work associates. I’ve wanted to check the place out for years, so when I saw that History Camp was hosting this tour, I didn’t hesitate to sign up. Our tour was given by Jim Moran, AAS director of programs and outreach (left), who answered all our questions (but sheepishly admitted he didn’t know how to turn on the lights since tours aren't usually given on the weekend when AAS is closed.)

Founded in 1812 by Revolutionary War patriot and printer Isaiah Thomas, the AAS is both a learned society of 1,100 members and one of the largest independent research libraries in the country. They hold about 4 million items in Antiquarian Hall , including the first item printed in America in 1640, and, according to Jim, two-thirds of all material printed in this country before 1820. The bulk of their holdings go to 1876 (with some collections into the early 1900s), and all the pre-1820 items have been digitized. Wow.

Jim showed us the printing press on which Isaiah Thomas worked as a boy as an indentured servant, and he held aloft a facsimile of the Massachusetts Spy, a Patriot newspaper published by Thomas during the Revolution (see pics below).

What a fabulous place to do research, with wide empty tables, book cradles and the world of early American print at your fingertips. (I fantasized after leaving of taking an intellectual retreat this summer by renting a room across the street at WPI, and spending my days at AAS, researching local history...) I was also coveting their reading tables and miles of storage shelves (their website says 20 miles?!) – my dream for Hatfield’s Historical Museum includes smaller versions of both.

Tours similar to the one I took happen Wednesdays at 3pm – also for FREE (though donations are encouraged). Reservations are not needed, but they require advance notice if your group is more than 10. Or, you can read and meet their requirements for doing research there, any day of the week, also for free.

Want to search the online catalog to see what might interest you? Check it out:
http://catalog.mwa.org

My quick search for Hatfield references turned up an early history of Hatfield written in the 1860s, plus some interesting notes: Justus Forward (1730-1814) taught at Hatfield Academy (on Hatfield’s Main St.), likely from 1754 to 1756. Eliza Ann (Washburn) Moen (1826-1853) wrote to her parents about boarding school life in Hatfield in the 1830s or ’40s. (Since Smith Academy wasn’t started until 1872, and Hatfield Academy operated much earlier – in the 1750s-1760s – I wonder what school it was she attended? Then there was a Hatfield meeting of Hampshire County house joiners and cabinetmakers in March 1796, at which time they set prices for work. I must see all of these!

For more detail, here’s another blog post about our tour from a fellow participant, genealogist Beth Finch McCarthy.

Oh, and the headline? It was one of the questions on the AAS FAQ page -- as some people apparently get them mixed up with an aquarium! Too funny.

You might have read about the grants we received last summer from Mass Humanities and Mass. SHRAB to rehouse and inventory a large collection of business records from Hatfield’s Porter McLeod machine shop (formerly the Porter Machine Works) from the late 1800s to the 1920s, and how it all ended up in clean, tan, acid-free boxes with neat labels and an electronic Finding Aid. But how did we get from point A to point B?

Here’s a photo slideshow to give you an idea of all the people and stages required to make it happen, most of them behind the scenes before the official work of the grant had even begun. And just so you know, that is usually the case. (It’s like when you spot a mouse in your basement -- if you see one, there are usually a lot more scurrying about out of the limelight).

If you'd like to learn more about the Collection, or how it came to us, check out this article in the Daily Hampshire Gazette from Dec. 11,  or this one, from Dec. 26, 2016. And we're not stopping there. This spring, the Hatfield Historical Society will apply to Mass Humanities for a Scholar in Residence grant to bring Prof. Robert Forrant to Hatfield to delve into the collection and make sense of it for us, as well as to put it in context of the greater precision manufacturing movement that was taking place in other cities and towns in the Connecticut River Valley.

Guest post by Cher Nicholas, board member of the Hatfield Historical Society, and member of the Association for Gravestone Studies Western New England Chapter. If you missed this fascinating event, we hope to give you a taste here. My apologies for taking so long to get this posted!

On Thursday, May 12, 2016, the Hatfield Historical Society held their annual meeting at the Hatfield American Legion on Elm Street in Hatfield.  The guest speaker for this meeting was Jonathan Appell, a gravestone conservator and a Trustee of the Association of Gravestones Studies. Jonathan gave members and guests an excellent presentation and a conservation update of  “The Hill” cemetery gravestones.  He also provided an extensive walking tour of our historic Hill cemetery.

This presentation was the result of Jonathan’s restoration work on the gravestones during the summer of 2015.  The Town of Hatfield, through a Community Preservation Act (CPA) grant, was able to fund repair work to many broken and damaged gravestones in the Hill cemetery.  Jonathan spent many weeks at the Hill, performing conservation work on some beautiful historic stones that had fallen into disrepair.  The Hill has many Colonial and Victorian Era stones and is the oldest cemetery in town.  The oldest gravestone in the cemetery dates to 1680 (one of the oldest gravestones is pictured here).

Jonathan started his discussion with a 30-minute walking tour of the Hill graveyard.  He described the conservation work he performed on more than 70 stones.  He showed the group examples of repaired fractured stones (see image below) and described his process for resetting sunken and leaning stones to their proper height.  During the walking tour, he pointed to the many different material types used for gravestones at different times, including marble, brownstone, slate and granite.  We also have a gravestone made out of schist. 

During the walking tour, the group learned many interesting facts about gravestones and cemeteries.  For example, the Hill is not officially a ”cemetery” -- it is a graveyard, and Jonathan explained the difference. A cemetery is a plot of land established by the town or city that is dedicated for burials.  Families and individuals can preselect lots or family lots for future use.  A graveyard, however, is land in which burials took place, but no pre-lot planning occurred.  We can see how that occurred in the Hill graveyard where burials and makers of very different periods are intermixed.

After the cemetery tour, the group returned to the Hatfield American Legion building to hear the rest of Jonathan’s presentation and view his slides. He showed us numerous pictures of his conservation and restoration work on the Hill stones.  In addition to the conservation work, he also cleaned many discolored stones.  The before and after photographs of these stones made it very apparent how discolored the stones were before this process.

Jonathan also showed examples of his restoration work in cemeteries across the country.  He explained how he goes about the work to repair the stones and the professional conservation standards he follows.  It was interesting to hear that not all grave markers are made from stone.  He showed examples of old wooden markers, in the western part of the country, that are still standing and readable after close to 100 years.  Another interesting gravestone material he talked about was soapstone. Yes, soapstone!  Jonathan said soapstone is actually a very durable material for a grave marker since it is impervious to acids or other environmental situations, like snow, heat, or cold.  On the negative side, however, it is soft and can be easily scratched.

Jonathan also showed us examples of marble “sugar” -- which is what it’s called when marble deteriorates due to weather conditions like snow, acid rain, and wind.  Over time, the surface of the marble can turn into a fine white dust that resembles sugar.  This condition tends to occur in the colder and wetter parts of the country (like New England) and not in the dry southern states.

One point Jonathan stressed to the group, is that even if you see gravestones that are broken, you should not remove broken pieces from the cemetery.  He said many pieces of gravestones get lost that way, and gravestone conservators can then never fully repair the stones or relocate them to their proper location.
 
The audience had many questions for Jonathan after his presentation, which he graciously answered. The Hatfield Historical Society extends their gratitude to Jonathan Appell for his quality restoration work in our oldest cemetery (OK, graveyard) and  for his excellent walking tour and presentation.

Cher Nicholas is also a former member of the Hatfield Cemetery Commission, and one of the several volunteers who has taken on mapping Hatfield cemeteries (she’s mapped the Bradstreet and the West Brook cemeteries). She has also just finished her PhD in Engineering at UMass Amherst, so we hope Dr. Nicholas will again find time to indulge her love of cemeteries and perhaps integrate her photos with her cemetery maps!

Last week was a busy – and somewhat momentous – week at the museum. Thanks to some generous donations to the Hatfield Historical Society by the Zahn Family Foundation and others, we were able to get some much-needed electrical upgrades. These included the following:

• Energy-efficient LED console light fixtures to replace our 4 oldest T12 fluorescent tube fixtures (pictured above, most of which had broken fittings because the bulbs are so darned hard to change!). Not only are the displays and the work area on the east side of the museum now much better lit, but LED lights use much less energy and give off no damaging ultraviolet (UV) light, which will help keep our artifacts safer.
  
• Energy-efficient adjustable, dimmable LED track lights at top of stairs, providing directed light on the stairs, the walkway, and the two exhibit cases. You can now actually see what’s in the cases (yeah!), and we can dim the lights when the museum is not open to the public so we’re using less energy.
• A ceiling fan to push warmer air down during the cold winter months, decreasing the need to turn up the heat in the building overall, and hopefully making it more comfortable for visitors and workers. The fan will also help during the most humid times of year to keep air circulating (the lack of which can combine with humidity to fuel mold growth).
  
• A 20amp circuit so we can run the mobile AC that was donated last winter (by Mary Averill of Montague) without blowing fuses – as we did this past summer.
  

Of course, to have this work done, we needed to move all the artifacts on the east side of the museum, and much of the artifacts along the north and west perimeters, somewhere else in the museum, so it was a large Rubik’s Cube-like moving project. We took the opportunity, though, to 1) clean the artifacts and the museum, 2) photograph all the artifacts moved along with their accession numbers, and 3) pull select items off exhibit so we could better group remaining displays.
 
**If you’re wondering if the museum is still moving to the 2nd floor of the Town Hall, the answer is YES! But it won’t be for another three years (approx.winter/spring 2019), as that space will need to be upgraded after the elevator is installed. The electrical upgrades just installed on the 2nd floor of the library will either go with us, or better serve the library after we leave. Please vote YES for the elevator and other elements bringing the building up to code at this May’s Town Meeting, not only because the museum can’t move without it, but also because it’s the right thing to do. How can we justify not making the Town Hall handicapped accessible when the Americans With Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 – 26 years ago – shame on us! There are a lot of seniors (visitors and volunteers) who can no longer make it upstairs to the museum, and it's just not right.
 
In my next post, I’ll tell you about a few artifacts we discovered during the temporary move that had gotten separated from their partners and some others hidden away that we didn’t even know we had. Come visit and check out the new fixtures and revamped exhibits.

By Deb Blodgett
 
If you were a child skipping rope in Hatfield in 1918, you might have recited this popular rhyme:
 
I had a little bird,
Its name was Enza.
I opened the window,
And in-flew-enza.
 
The year 1918 marked the beginning of a worldwide epidemic that later became known as the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-1919. While it is easy to think that this epidemic only impacted large overcrowded cities, this simply was not the case. Hatfield, like many small rural towns, was not left unscathed.  
 
Although the disease was called the “Spanish Flu,” the name was a misnomer. During World War I, the United States and several European countries censored news about the influenza epidemic, fearing additional panic or adverse impact on soldier morale. During the war, Spain remained neutral, which resulted in its newspapers freely reporting news of the influenza epidemic. This incorrectly led many to believe Spain was the origin of the disease, or more severely impacted than other countries, which was not the case. In fact, an estimated one-third of the world’s population, about 500 million, became infected and the total deaths due to influenza were tallied between 50 and 100 million people during the approximately six months of the pandemic spanning late 1918 and early 1919. About 675,000 of these deaths occurred in the United States.

In Massachusetts, it was conservatively reported that 400,000 became infected between September and December of 1918. As many physicians and nurses were enlisted in the military, the number of available medical professionals available to battle this illness was reduced. In addition, hospital facilities throughout the state were sorely unprepared to accommodate the sizable number of cases, prompting the establishment of about 50 emergency hospitals throughout the state. The most dramatic impact occurred in October 1918 with an average of 418 deaths occurring per day. The total Massachusetts deaths attributable to influenza in 1918 totaled 13,783. However, an additional 4,643 deaths listed influenza as a secondary cause of death, bringing the total impact of influenza-related deaths to 18,426.  In 1919, there were 2,872 deaths attributable to influenza. The expense to the Massachusetts government in fighting the influenza outbreak amounted to about $100,000 in 1918. (That would be about $1.6 million in today’s dollars.)

Beginning in 1884, Massachusetts law required town board of health officials to keep a record of residents infected with diseases deemed dangerous to public health. Bound books were provided by the state printing office to each town for this purpose so as to provide consistency in data reporting. These log books included spaces to record the disease contracted, as well as the impacted individual’s name, age, occupation, address, reporting individual, and disposition. However, before September 1918, influenza was not one of the reportable diseases as it was not considered dangerous to public health before the 1918 strain.

Fortunately, the Record of Dangerous Diseases, Town of Hatfield, still exists, thus allowing us to examine how the town was impacted by the epidemic. Hatfield’s first reported case of influenza occurred on Oct. 8, 1918, infecting a 26-year-old male. By Dec. 31, a total of 364 residents had contracted the illness, nearly 14% of the town’s population. An additional 53 cases occurred in the first few months of 1919, with the last cases being reported on March 24, 1919. A total of 417 residents became ill during the six months of the epidemic (see below):

One of Hatfield’s two in-town physicians, Dr. Charles A. Byrne, treated 82% of the town’s infected residents with the remaining residents being treated by doctors from Northampton and other area towns. The town’s other in-town doctor, Dr. Alfred Bonneville, was away serving in World War I in the Medical Corps. While not all of the residents’ ages were reported, of those that were, the youngest patient was 9 months old and the eldest patient was 50 years old. It is likely that most infected patients were between the ages of 20 and 40, which is the typical age group that this strain of influenza affected.

Hatfield was fortunate that the majority of its impacted residents recovered.  Influenza-related deaths were low, with six deaths having occurred in 1918 (although, as discussed above, an additional five deaths may have had influenza as a contributing factor) and no deaths by influenza in 1919.

Deb Blodgett is a volunteer at the Hatfield Historical Museum. She enjoys historical and genealogical research, and her interests include the study of artifacts, industries and family life of rural 19th century New England.

*For more information about health care in Hatfield in the first half of the 20th century, check out the following post about our Mass Humanities Scholar in Residence Grant as well as a guest blog post by our summer Scholar in Residence, UMass PhD candidate Ann Robinson, and visit the Hatfield Historical Museum’s current exhibit “From House Calls to Hoaxes: The Changing Face of Health Care in Hatfield.” 

Sources:
1. Jeffery K. Taubenberger and David M. Morens, “1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics”, Emerging Infectious Diseases, 12:1 (2006): 15-22.
2. Laura Stephenson Carter, “Cold Comfort,” Dartmouth Medicine, (Winter 2006): 36-57.
3. Harold D. Wilson, ed., Seventy-Seventh Annual Report on the Vital Statistics of Massachusetts…for the Year 1918 (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1920), 94, 180, 190, 199, 241.
4. Annual Report on the Vital Statistics of Massachusetts…for the Year 1919 (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1921), 99, 191.
5. The Revised Laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Enacted November 21, 1901 … (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1902), Chapter 75, Section 51, 666.
6. Fourth Annual Report of the State Department of Health of Massachusetts (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1919), 3-6.
7. Record of Diseases Dangerous to Public Health, Town of Hatfield, 1915-1944, original manuscript, Hatfield, Massachusetts.