ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 14, 1996 TAG: 9607150079
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
The names of Wiley Ludwig, 13, James Poage, 13, and Clarence Berry, 14, follow one after the other in the crumbling volume where Roanoke deaths were recorded a hundred years ago.
"Drowning accident" was listed as cause of death. Time of death: late afternoon.
The date was Aug. 6, 1896.
Hot weather, most likely.
A swim with friends that turned tragic?
History emerges along with evidence of the progress and the failures of public health in death records for 1896-1897 and 1909-1920. The records were found recently in a Roanoke City Health Department closet.
Even the handwriting in the two books is revealing. The penmanship is beautiful enough to qualify as calligraphy.
However, most Americans now barely think about some of the diseases recorded with such flourish - cholera, malnutrition, dysentery, typhoid fever and measles.
From July 1, 1896, through July 1, 1897, these diseases killed 314 residents, including 30 infants who died of cholera. In the same period, another 28 infants were stillborn.
The No.1 killer in late 19th century Roanoke was pneumonia. Consumption, or pulmonary tuberculosis, was the second most frequent cause of death.
Roanoke, the name given Big Lick in 1882, was a fledgling community of 20,000, most of them people who had settled here from other places.
With more than 300 dead that year, only 74 were native Roanokers.
In the second volume, death records from October 1918 tell the story of the pandemic Spanish flu that hit young adults the harshest. That month, 18 people age 41 and younger died from Spanish influenza in Roanoke.
Some were husband and wife.
Albert Bobbitt, 32, died Oct. 12, 1918; his wife, Annie Bobbitt, 28, died on the 15th. Both deaths were attributed to pneumonia following flu.
When Lenora Nicely, 25, died Oct. 17, Letcher Nicely, 27, was listed as her husband. He was described as a widower on his death certificate filed three days later.
Death records are more in demand than ever because of the increasing interest in genealogy, which is one reason everyone at the Health Department was so excited to find the two volumes, said workers Sandra Brown and Judy Bond.
As office services specialists, they daily field questions from people wanting to find out about a relative. Their records only go back five years. Older records are in Richmond.
Eventually, the volumes just discovered also will be sent to Richmond, where the state Health Department has temperature-controlled archives in which to preserve them. However, the local staff hopes the information can first be copied for the Virginia Room at the Roanoke Public Library.
People have learned that information from a death certificate coupled with other records from a particular period can recreate vivid pictures.
For example, the Aug. 7, 1896, issue of The Roanoke Times ran a story on the drownings under the headline, "A Very Distressing Accident." It said the youths, who were all from Northeast Roanoke, died while "bathing" in the Roanoke River near the mouth of Tinker Creek. Only the Berry teen could swim, and he lost his life trying to save his friends.
An unnamed black man almost died in an attempt to save the boys.
Other youngsters, including Berry's 8-year-old brother, witnessed the drownings from the banks of the river.
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. Health Department officials recentlyby CNBfound the log book used to record deaths in Roanoke at the turn of
the century. color.