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1918 Carlisle Cemetery

Roll Call of the Dead

from the 1918 Flu

Anderson, Grace Prudence 74

Breezley, Wilford 20

Clement, Russell 18

Conklin, Eli G. 30

Fransworth, Baby 3 months

Killen, Horace

Overton, Matilda Bell 41

Owens, William Wallace 41

Paull, Raymond, M. Infant

Prall, Edith R. 21

Prall, Lola M. 25

Reynolds, Abitha Dorothy

Sharp, Wilford

Edith Rose Prall

Sept. 25,1897- Dec.2,1918

Row 9, Carlisle Cemetery

Edith Rose Prall died of Spanish Influenza at the age of 21. She died on December 2, the day following her sister Lola’s death of the same ailment and she, too, was a teacher.

Edith graduated from Indianola High School in 1916. She completed the High School Normal Training Courses which were taken in high school to prepare students for teaching and were required in order to receive a teaching certificate in Iowa. Exams in this curriculum for Warren County included the following categories: pedagogy (teaching skills), reading, orthography (spelling), writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, U.S. history, music, physiology (biology), civics, economics and physics.

From a newspaper we know Edith spent her first year of teaching at the Pleasant Hill School and ended a successful year with a class picnic. Edith was teaching at Elm Grove School at the time of her death. We know she spent the summer of 1918 looking for a teaching position because her brother Arthur, who was stationed in France, mentioned the fact in a letter home.

Like her sister, Lola, who died a day earlier, she would have had to be single in order to teach and like her sister Lola she was not allowed to vote. Her funeral services were also conducted graveside as their parents’ home where both sisters died, would have been quarantined.

Sources

Normal Training Course in Four Year High Schools State if Iowa Dept. of Public Instruction, 1913

Indianola High School Graduates 1876-1940 (missing 1908 & 1934)

Advocate Tribune, May 2, 1918

Advocate Tribune, Oct. 3, 1918

Advocate Tribune Dec. 12, 1918

Lola May PrallApril 6, 1893 – December 1, 1918

Carlisle Cemetery, Row 9


Lola May Prall was born on a spring day in 1893 and died 25 years later on a winter day, a victim of the Spanish Influenza Pandemic that ravaged the world a hundred years ago. From old newspapers, the social media of the time, we know bits of her life.

In a letter home, her brother, Arthur, a soldier in France, called her Lolo.

She was more highly educated than most women of her time. She was a graduate of Simpson Academy, afterward spending a year at Cedar Falls at the Iowa State Teachers College and then returned again to Simpson College, where she completed a normal course becoming a teacher.

She, and six other women, comprised the teaching staff in the Carlisle School.

She taught seventh and eighth grade in the school and we know she and her students enjoyed a Halloween party one fall evening.

We also know she wasn’t married because married women weren’t allowed to teach. We know she couldn’t vote because women weren’t allowed to vote yet.

In the months before she died, she had many of the experiences we have experienced today. Because of the Pandemic, the schools and churches closed and people were encouraged to wear masks.

She was survived by her parents, three sisters (one of whom died of the influenza the next day) and three brothers.

Her funeral services were conducted at the graveside as were those of many of the influenza deaths at the time.

Sources

Advocate Tribune June 7, 1917

Advocate Tribune, Sept. 5.1918

Advocate Tribune, Oct. 3, 1918

Advocate Tribune, Nov 14, 1918

Advocate Tribune, Dec 5, 1918

Anna Shaklee

1854-1870




My name is Anna Shaklee. I was born in 1854 and entered this cemetery for the final time in 1870. I was only 16 years old when I died. My parents David & Rachel Shaklee. lived here in Carlisle along with my grandparents Robert and Martha and their son Forrest. People just didn’t survive as easily then as people do now. Early illness and death sparked the life-long work of my family. Nutrition was completely unheard of in those days. Food was food. What it contained was of little importance. We know better now.

The Shaklee name became famous world-wide through the efforts of my Uncle Forrest C. Shaklee. He was born just east of Carlisle and was diagnosed with tuberculosis at a very young age. His parents moved him to the cleaner air of northern Iowa to get away from the soot and smoke of the Carlisle coal mines. His tuberculosis was declared cured. Forrest was always interested in natural healing and prevention. He graduated from the Palmer College of Chiropractic Medicine in 1915. He couldn’t help but wonder about the relationship between health, vitality, intelligence and nutrition. He discovered a new school of thought extolling the benefits of nutritional supplements. Vitamins! We all take them for granted today but this was something completely new. Forrest created a company called Shaklee’s Vitalized Minerals. That company formulated the first multi-vitamin in the United States. In 1918 Forrest opened a 15 bed sanitorium near Ft. Dodge and began treating people for nutritional deficiencies.

Today, located in California, the Shaklee Corporation is an American manufacturing and multi-level distributor of natural nutritional supplements with global operations in Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan. People now live longer and healthier lives thanks in part to advances in science made by my family! Don’t forget to take your vitamins!

Oliver Rule was a carpenter, joiner, bricklayer and a veteran of the Civil War. He was also Carlisle's first town marshal in 1861.

Oliver was born in Putnam County, near Greencastle, Indiana. He came to Warren County, Iowa, in the fall of 1852. On August 1st, 1861 he enlisted in Co. B Tenth Iowa Infantry and served three years. He then re-enlisted as a veteran and was mustered out of the service on August 5, 1865 at Davenport, Iowa.

Oliver served in some major battles including Corinth, New Madrid, Vicksburg, Champion's Hill, Chattanooga, Savannah and Atlanta plus some minor skirmishes.

On February 17, 1861 he married Leah F. Adkins. They had one daughter, Mary Ellen Rule (1861-1945). She married John Palmer. Their daughter, Mary Etta Palmer (1888-1985) married Harry Husted. Their daughter, Harriet Etta Husted (1907-1950)married Alva E. Adamson and their descendants are well known to many Carlisle residents.

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