Mysterious Monday - Diagnosis: Pellagra

This Mysterious Monday is not about a picture.  Instead, it's about a disease, and the startling finding I've made of it in my family history  The name of the disease is Pellagra.  You can read all about it, here and here.

I have written before about my great-grandfather, Calvin Yarborough, Sr.  This post is about the wife of his son, and namesake - my grandfather, Calvin Yarborough, Jr.  My grandfather died decades before I was born, but it was a desire to know more about him and my grandmother, Anna, that actually started me on my genealogy quest 15 years ago.  Calvin was married twice - first to Toynetta Littlejohn, and then to my grandmother, Anna Green.  Calvin's first wife, Toynetta, is the subject of this post.

For many years, I've tried to find evidence of Toynetta's death, so that I could get a better sense of the timeline between my grandfather's two marriages, and of what life may have been like for him and his three oldest children.  Until last week, I could never find a death certificate for Toynetta, despite my searches on the Internet, as well as visits to the Franklin County Register of Deeds office, where the death certificates are housed.  In my research, I'd found that several members of Toynetta's birth family, the Littlejohns, had died of tuberculosis in the first decade of the 1900's, as had some of my Yarborough ancestors, so I've been assuming all this time that it was this same disease that took her from my grandfather, especially considering that Calvin, himself, was later consumed by it.  But, thanks to a surprise finding of Toynetta's death certificate (when I wasn't even looking for it), I know differently.  Toynetta did not have tuberculosis.  She died of pellagra.

Pellagra, for those who don't know, is a vitamin deficiency disease, which is characterized by the "4 D's": diarrhea, dermatitis, dementia, and death.  In the early 1900's there was an epidemic of this disease in the southern states.  Apparently, the disease appeared in 1902 and peaked in 1915-16.  Toynetta died of it in May 1914.

Ancestry.com. North Carolina Death Certificates, 1909-1975 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2007. Original data: North Carolina State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics. North Carolina Death Certificates. Microfilm S.123. Rolls 19-242, 280, 313-682, 1040-1297. North Carolina State Archives, Raleigh, North Carolina.

What is most interesting to me about this, and what presents the mystery, are the circumstances as presented by Toynetta's death certificate.  I've learned from reading about Pellagra, that its victims were isolated in hospital settings, away from the general population, so I guess this is how Toynetta ended up in St. Agnes' in Raleigh.  I'm aware that this was the Colored, or Negro hospital for decades.  But, still, it surprises me that Toynetta somehow ended up there from Louisburg, a town close to 30 miles from Raleigh.

On her death certificate, Toynetta is listed as single, though she was definitely a married woman.  The hospital seems to have no information on her.  It almost seems as if perhaps she went there on her own, or was left on their doorstep.  Where was Calvin?  Why wasn't he (or anyone) there to provide information about her to the hospital?  Surely, she was demented from the disease by the time she arrived there, just four days before her death, but why didn't anyone know anything about her?

Toynetta's body was returned to Louisburg for burial, but this was handled by a company out of Raleigh.  Why didn't the undertaker from Louisburg (Blount) who was handling most of my family's (and the Littlejohn's) handle the arrangements?

Toynetta Littlejohn Yarborough was born in 1884, and died May 3, 1914, possibly demented and seemingly alone.  She was survived by her husband, Calvin Yarborough, Jr., and four children, Vida (7), Priscilla (6), Felix (4), and Fredrick (9 mths).  Her son Felix, who turned 5 the month after she died, followed her to the grave in September 1914.

My grandfather, Calvin, remained a widower for five years after Toynetta's death, an unusually long time for a man of of that time period, who had small children to raise. He married my grandmother, Anna, in 1919.  I can only imagine the sorrow he must have carried in his heart after losing his wife, and his young son in the same year.  I hope to learn more about the circumstances surrounding Toynetta's illness and subsequent death, as well as Calvin's life as a single father, who ended up courting and marrying my grandmother-to-be.


Source information:  Information about the disease, Pellagra, was obtained for this post from the following articles:
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/985427-overview
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pellagra

Fearless Female - Anna G Yarborough - #AtoZChallenge

     A is for Anna.

This post was originally written in 2010, in response to a writing prompt encouraging the blogging community to write posts about "fearless females" from our family trees. I am resposting this on April 2, 2017 as a part of the A-Z Challenge, which began yesterday so I'll be posting A and B, today. 

This is a picture of my grandmother, Anna Beatrice Green Yarborough.  It is the only picture I've ever seen of her in her younger days.  I do so wish I could see her eyes under that hat!

Anna was "my" grandma.  I've written about her in several posts.  All my life I've been told that I look just like her, and I know that she has definitely passed on an abundance of her spirit to me.  We were so close, and though she passed when I was just a fifteen, I miss her still, and think of her constantly.

 Anna Beatrice Green was born January 18, 1891 in Wake County (Rolesville), NC, to parents John Wesley Green and Susan Georgiana Dunston. Her grandparents were Nathaniel M. Hawkins and Anna Green (her namesake).  In 1919, Anna married Calvin Yarborough, Jr., a widower with three children.  She went on to have three more children with Calvin - Susie, Calvin III, and Arthur (my father).  Sadly, my grandfather succumbed to tuberculosis, which had ravaged his family, just ten years after they married, leaving Anna to finish raising the six children alone.  Following what seems to be pattern of single women rearing children in my family, Anna never remarried.  Instead, she worked hard (and constantly) as a laundress, housekeeper, and nanny for several families in her little town of Louisburg.  "Miss Anna" (or Annie), as she was known around town, was under constant financial pressure to keep the beautiful family home which her husband had built, but she did it, and it is still in the family now.  (I've discovered records of letters and legal papers which document this struggle; otherwise, I would have never known.)  Anna, determined not to let her misfortune define her family, worked hard to feed, clothe, and educate her children to the best of her ability.  This was her priority, and, according to her daughter, Susie (who will be 90 in April) who passed in 2013, they "were poor, but they didn't really know it."  Additionally, Anna was one of the founders of the Mount Hebron United Holiness Church in Louisburg.  I have very fond memories of attending this church with my grandma, but I never knew that she was one of the founders until very recently.  My grandma was so very humble.  She was proud, but never boastful. She passed those traits down to my father, and subsequently, to me.

I chose this picture because, as I mentioned already, this it is the only picture I have ever seen of my grandma at a young age.  I don't know when the picture was taken, but my guess is that it was between the years of 1919-1929, because  I feel sure the picture was taken by her husband, Calvin. (She is not wearing a ring, but I don't know for sure if she even had one.  I will have to find out.)  What I do know is that in this photo, Anna is standing on the bridge over the Tar River in Louisburg.  This bridge used to serve as the proverbial "tracks", which divided the Black and White parts of town.  However, Louisburg's little "downtown" area is just beyond this bridge on the "White" side, so blacks had to cross it to do their business in town.  My grandmother, like so many others, walked across this bridge each day to get to the homes of her employers.  I like to try to imagine what took place on the day this photo was taken.  Had Anna and Calvin just gone on a date?  Had they, perhaps, just come from being married at the courthouse?  Was Anna just on her way home from work?  I pray that one day I might know the story and that eventually, someone will bless me with more photographic evidence of my grandma in her younger days.

My grandma

Grandma and me

Thanks for reading!

Renate


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