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| TB Sanatorium in Colorado 1906 |
"Several of my ancestors died of tuberculosis, four that I'm aware of, but I'd be willing to bet there were others. It's been estimated that by the 19th century, TB had killed one in seven of all people who had ever lived. That's an astounding number. One particularly heartbreaking case was that of my third great-grandmother Sarah Charlotte Fowler Vincent. Sarah lived with her family in the rural community of Butler, New York. She died at her home in the summer of 1883 when she was fifty years of age, eleven days after the death of her twenty-year-old daughter Mary Ann from the same disease. Sarah left a husband and three other children none of whom, to my knowledge, ever developed TB."
I
wrote those words in early November of 2015. After years of research,
I've found I would have won my bet that others in my family had died from
tuberculosis, quite a few actually. In fact, the last sentence in the
above paragraph would prove tragically incorrect. Thomas Edward Vincent,
also known as Edward Thomas, was the second son of John Taylor Vincent and his
wife, the above-mentioned Sarah Charlotte Fowler. He was twenty-four when
consumption killed his mother and his sister Mary Ann. Thomas led a typical life after their passing, he married a young
woman named Antoinette DeVoe and the couple set off to Indianapolis to begin
their married life. In 1889 they were blessed with a daughter, Violet
Vincent, who was born in New York state. They had clearly returned home before her birth.
Local newspapers found no reason to publish any stories about the Vincents
until 1893 when this appeared in the 12 October edition of The Lakeshore News:
Thomas Vincent who returned from the west the last of June in feeble health, died at the home of his brother George Vincent in Butler on Tuesday. The funeral will be held from the house Friday at 2 o'clock. Burial will be in Butler Center cemetery.
The
article doesn't specifically say the illness that killed Thomas was
consumption, but the description of his feebleness and his returning from the west certainly hints at it. During that time, fresh,
dry air and high altitudes were believed beneficial to sufferers of consumption. Thousands traveled west as a result, earning Colorado the
nickname, "the world's sanitorium", due to the crowds of patients who
flocked to that state for treatment.
Things were beginning to make sense about this family. I'd always
wondered why Violet was an only child and why she lived with her maternal
grandparents? In New York's census done in 1892, three-year-old
Violet was with them in Owasco, New York while her parents were nowhere to be
found. Of course, I now know they were likely somewhere in the west, in a
state that didn't do a census in 1892.
Another question about this family also centered on Violet. She
died the 8th of June in 1908 at the age of eighteen, but the obituary I had for
her did not give her cause of death. Yesterday I did another search at a
different newspaper site and found a different obituary:
Miss Violet Vincent died at the family home in Owasco at 2 o'clock Tuesday morning. Miss Vincent was well known and highly esteemed both for the lovely characteristics she personified and as the daughter of Mrs. Antoinette Vincent. Miss Vincent was but 18 years of age and was a victim of consumption.
Twenty-five years after her grandmother Sarah Charlotte's death, tuberculosis still had this
family in its evil grasp. I can only imagine the terror that must have
enveloped Antoinette as her daughter's symptoms first appeared, then steadily worsened. She had watched, powerless, as her husband succumbed and she knew the
same disease had taken his mother, this time her only child was its victim.
Even in 1908 there were no effective drugs to combat TB, their development was
over thirty years away, so like her father, aunt, and grandmother before her,
Violet endured the slow decline until her passing at the home of her grandparents.
Antoinette later moved to nearby Auburn where she supported herself by teaching, she never remarried. She died herself in 1933 at the age of 72. Antoinette and her parents rest next to Violet in Soule Cemetery in Sennett, New York not far from Owasco.
There are several cases in my family tree of one or both parents contracting TB while their children seemingly escape it only to be stricken years later. The disease has the insidious ability to lie dormant inside the body only to flare up should the victim's immune system be compromised by stress, illness, or some other reason. Thankfully, like many of the diseases our ancestors had to contend with, TB is not the death sentence it once was in most cases.
