CONTRIBUTED GRAPHIC The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918 was the most severe pandemic in modern history, and Marshalltown was not immune to it. At 10 a.m. on Saturday, Riverside Cemetery General Manager Dorie Tammen will give a presentation at the Marshalltown Public Library about the flu’s devastating impact. Pictured is a T-R clipping about the city being under quarantine at the time.

The Spanish Influenza pandemic of 1918 was the most severe pandemic in modern history and Marshalltown was not immune to it.

At 10 a.m. on Saturday, Riverside Cemetery General Manager Dorie Tammen will give a presentation at the Marshalltown Public Library about the flu’s devastating impact.

An estimated 500 million people — one-third of the world’s population at the time — became infected with this virus, identified as H1N1. The number of fatalities is estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States, according to information obtained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Close quarters and massive troop movements during World War I helped spread the disease.

“Events that are historical in nature are popular at the library, so we wanted to give people what they want,” Librarian Katie Fink said. “We wanted to do this theme, since it’s the 100th anniversary of the Spanish Influenza pandemic.”

Tammen uncovered around 90 burials at Riverside Cemetery linked to the pandemic.

“I will tell their individual stories, show photos of some of the victims, and of their burial orders or graves, and we’ll have a packet of handouts,” she said. “We’ll have maps so people can come out to the cemetery and walk around and look for the graves themselves if they want to. Most of the burials are in a few sections, so I’ll have maps of the particular plots highlighted, and then I have a listing of all the burials chronologically and by section. There actually were three waves of Spanish flu — it was the second wave that was the worst — in the fall and winter of 1918-19, and then it came back the following winter, into 1920.”

Viewing the cemetery’s burial records provided key information for her research.

“It is hard to know exactly how many deaths here were caused by it, but I looked at the records from the start of the pandemic, into April of 1920,” Tammen said. “The cause of death might be listed as pneumonia, but that was usually what the Spanish Flu turned into and caused the death. Some of our burial orders says ‘Spanish Influenza.’ Some of them say ‘pneumonia and some say ‘pneumonia a result of Spanish Flu.'”

Tammen said quarantine notices published by the T-R during the pandemic show the extreme lengths in which people went to avoid exposure to, and spreading of the disease, including closing down schools, hotels, churches and many stores. Police also patrolled the streets to keep people indoors.

This event is free and open to the public. It had originally been scheduled to take place at the cemetery in October, but was canceled due to inclement weather. It is sponsored by the Friends of the Marshalltown Public Library. For more information, contact the library’s Information Desk at 641-754-5738, ext. 4.

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Contact Sara Jordan-Heintz at

(641) 753-6611 or

sjordan@timesrepublican.com