Museum director writes about perilous times 102 years ago

I was thrilled to receive the Saxe Gotha Dispatch, the Lexington County Museum newsletter. It told me about what’s been going on at the museum and details about the 1918 influenza epidemic.

Museum staff has been tending to the county’s historic treasures. They remain busy at work providing answers to question for the public that can no longer come in person, at least until this pandemic is over.

J.R. Fennell and Patricia Shandor are compiling over 1,500 digitized slides and 600 images. They are working on a data base that makes it easier to retrieve information about the museum’s inventory.

Since quarantine began, they have digitized roughly 6 years of records amounting to information about 300 donors and 900 individual objects. Each record contains information that describes the object its condition, location, historic use, family histories and connections to an historic site.

This database will be invaluable to researchers and visitors in locating items related to Lexington County families.

This digitization may take a while. There are 44 more years of records to process.

J.R. wrote, “Throughout its history disease has spread through Lexington County causing suffering and death. In the antebellum period pneumonia and typhoid were prevalent. These diseases often ran rampant among the enslaved residents of Lexington.

“One of the most infamous diseases that hit Lexington was the Spanish Flu of 1918.

“The 1st case in South Carolina was reported in September 1918 and spread quickly from there. Within a month SC had around 50,000 cases.

“It is unclear when the 1st case was reported in Lexington County, but it was soon widespread.

“The State Board of Health instituted quarantine measures 1st on October 7, 1918, and again on January 21, 1919, after a 2nd wave hit. Schools and churches were closed during these quarantines and the Lexington County Fair was canceled.”

“Influenza was not as widespread in Lexington or as deadly as in other places, but it still ended up killing 131 people just in the period between October and December 1918. In total the disease killed 14,250 in the state of South Carolina.”

Follow the museum on Facebook and Instagram to see what’s going on during the pandemic. facebook.com/lexingtoncountymuseum and Instagram@lexcomuseum.