Tuberculosis’ Tragic Toll on Goode Family: 52 Ancestors 2022 Prompt “Free Space”

TB's Devastation in the Early 1900s

Charles Holmes Goode: 1870-1921
William Seaton Goode: 1877-1900
Ivy Louise Goode Settle: 1881-1901
Gertrude Goode Davis: 1887-1916
Irene Blanche Goode: 1889-1909

 

The family of Sarah “Fannie” Moseley, second great-grandaunt and sister of Susan Moseley Leachman, was devastated by tuberculosis early in the 20^th century. Between the years of 1900 and 1921, Sarah and her husband, James Thornton Goode, lost five of their adult children to the disease. Four were stricken in their early twenties, just at the point in their lives when they should have been forming families and establishing careers.

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw the first steps toward the treatment of “consumption” or more accurately, tuberculosis. Until 1900, doctors hadn’t really understood that TB was a contagious disease, and even into the 1920s there weren’t effective treatments other than fresh air, which helped to fight contagion and supposedly helped sufferers breathe more easily. Sanitariums were being established nationwide during this period to deal with those with severe infection, and many patients were sent to the desert Southwest in the hopes that the drier climate would help their lungs improve. Before 1900, one out of every seven humans had died of tuberculosis, showing how devastating the disease could be.

Tuberculosis was probably rampant in rural McLean County, Kentucky in the first two decades of the 1900s. According to Wikipedia, there was a severe outbreak in Jefferson County around 1900 that was referred to as the White Plague. The area around Louisville also had high caseloads, which were attributed to the damp, river-bottom air. A sanitarium was established in Jefferson County to handle the large number of seriously ill patients. However, most people still chose to nurse family members at home, as the Goode family did.

Quite probably, the Goode family members infected one another with the disease. They may have all been exposed during childhood, with the disease only becoming apparent as they grew older and sicker. Some TB sufferers were able to recover and lead a fairly normal life after infection, and it appears the Goodes hoped to do so. All of them had attended school as teens, and Charles, Ivy, and Gertrude all chose to marry.

Ivy Goode's marriage and death

Ivy, born in 1881, married in 1898 at age 16, dying just three years later at nineteen. She had no children. Fortunately, her husband, Frederick Settle, did not contract TB, and was able to remarry and have a family.

Marriage and death of Gertrude Goode

Gertrude was six years younger than Ivy, and in 1907 married James Davis, a funeral director and livery owner. By 1910, the young couple had a little daughter, Opal. They went on to have another daughter before Gertrude’s death in 1916 at only 28. According to her death certificate, her pulmonary tuberculosis had been present for eleven months, but I suspect she carried the disease for far longer.

Charles was considerably older than Ivy and Gertrude. He was born in 1870, and was a local farmer. He married an older widow with two children when he was 26. He succumbed to tuberculosis at age 51, on May 30, 1921. It is hard to know how many years he had been sick, or if he contracted it later in life from his much younger siblings.

Willie Goode's death and headstone

The final two deaths were very sad. Willie Seaton Goode, born in 1877, was only 23 when he died at his parents’ home. The youngest child in the family, Irene Blanche Goode, died September 8, 1909; she was barely twenty years old. They probably spent most of their lives as adults aware they faced a death sentence.

Irene Goode death and headstone

Surprisingly, Fannie and James Thornton Goode never seem to have contracted the disease, despite caring for at least two of their ill children. JT died at age 78 in 1923, while Fannie lived until 1940, dying at age 90.

With the introduction of streptomycin in 1943, tuberculosis patients received effective treatment that cut the death rate dramatically. Sadly, the Goode family was unable to take advantage of this new medical breakthrough. Their family had already been devastated.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tuberculosis

https://www.wave3.com/story/29253927/tuberculosis-in-kentuckiana-history-and-treatment/

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/plague-gallery/