Influenza and Brothers-in-Law Leonard Ford and Herman Ley

The influenza pandemic overwhelmed the world’s population in 1918, 1919, and into 1920, during which as many as 500 million were infected and an estimated 50 to 100 million lost their lives. Unlike seasonsal flu that disproportionately kills infants, children, and middle-aged and elderly adults, owing to their weaker immune systems, this variant of the virus triggered an overzealous immune response in young adults that ravaged their bodies and caused rapid progressive respiratory failure.

Two brothers-in-law, unbeknownst to each other, succumbed to influenza on the same day, Tuesday, October 1, 1918. After a double funeral that was officiated by Reverends Charles H. Elder, William D. Thatcher, and J. Wesley Wainwright, they were borne to their graves by the same pallbearers and interred on the same day, Saturday, October 5.

Twenty-four-year-old Leonard Leroy Ford (1893-1918) was employed as a chauffeur by the F.S. Katzenbach and Company, hardware merchants.

USS Connecticut.
U.S. Navy / Naval History and Heritage Command.

Twenty-two-year-old Herman Henry Ley (1895-1918), who had been married just five weeks earlier, was a Boatswain’s Mate, Second Class, on board the USS Connecticut. He was stricken while the ship was docked and later quarantined in Philadelphia, and subsequently died in the city’s Municipal Hospital for Contagious Diseases. His remains did not have the benefit of a military escort owing to the ship’s quarantine.

Ford lies in an unmarked grave in Section T, Lot 517, where only a pair of corner posts bearing the letter “F” delineate the lot; Ley, whose name is recorded on the bronze plaques at the Trenton War Memorial, is interred in Section M, Lot 772. Their graves are but a few hundred feet apart.

Ford rests in an unmarked grave in the Ford lot,
and Ley in a marked grave. Photographs by author.