Tomas
Allen

Tomb With A View

GeoCache GC1FHMR

  Tomas was a teamster (in the original sense), being one of those men responsible for managing teams of mules which hauled just about everything in the old West. Mule teams hauled ore out of mining districts to mills, where the ore was refined. They also hauled the finished product out of the mills to the towns where the finished product was distributed to a waiting country. Tomas had lived in Courtland since 1911, and was well known in Gleeson and Tombstone as well. He was a strong and healthy 45 year old working-man, who left behind a wife and step-son when he died. Sadly, a 16-year old boy, Jesus Costello, who lived with the Allen family and worked on their ranch, passed away from influenza at 9:00 a.m. the very next morning.

  Tomas passed away on Saturday, November 16, 1918 at about 6:00 p.m., from a brief but intense battle with the deadly influenza commonly referred to as the "Spanish Flu". He fell ill with the flu on Tuesday, and he passed away on Saturday. This was not an uncommon occurrence with this particular flu strain. The more commonplace flu strains of our time, virulent though they might be, tend to assault those with weakened or compromised immune systems. Children, the elderly, or those who are poorly nourished tend to have the roughest time with modern influenza. The most frightening thing about the "Spanish Flu" epidemic of 1918 was that it struck those with the healthiest immune systems, and it killed very quickly. Seemingly healthy 15-40 year olds were at the greatest risk. Seeing such specimens fall so quickly to this flu was the greatest cause of the panic which followed in the wake of this pandemic.

  Modern research suggests that the "Spanish Flu" caused an over-reaction of the healthy immune system, and switched off the signals which limit that reaction. This would cause an inflammation of the lungs (the immune response, out of control) which quickly and ultimately suffocated the victim. It was not uncommon for victims to feel perfectly healthy on Monday and be dead on Tuesday.

  For a time, Courtland residents felt they had escaped the ravages of the influenza epidemic. The first cases appeared in Kansas in March of 1918, and traveled with soldiers overseas, where it began to sweep across the world. When the soldiers returned at the end of World War I, so did the flu, and it mowed down more than half a million people in the United States alone. Despite hopes to the contrary,  the epidemic struck the Courtland area in October, 1918. Within two weeks, some 40 residents had contracted the disease, and concern became anxiety, which led some to panic. Courtland schools closed the week of October 12, and didn't re-open for months. A Sunday-School convention was cancelled, as was the regional fair in the town of Light (just east of Pearce). Many people took to the hills, to go "vacationing" away from population centers. The representatives of the Calumet and Arizona Mining Company, who had been living in the Germania hotel in Courtland, packed up their stuff and moved out of town. (All of this just in one week!)

  By mid-November, dozens of cases were cropping up on a weekly basis. The Courtland Arizonan, from which these accounts have been taken, reported the death of Tomas G. Allen during the height of this November slaughter. He was just one of the many who died during these months. In larger cities, such as Tucson, officials were debating whether or not to mandate the wearing of masks, as people became more and more frantic to avoid the disease. Judge Bolton, from Courtland, was on a crowded train leaving the Rillito station (modern-day town of Marana) towards Tucson, when the man next to him just snapped, started yelling at people to "stop crowding him," and began shooting fellow passengers. The judge tried to wrestle the gun away from him, and during the struggle, the deranged man was shot dead by a third passenger. Such was the fear instilled by the onslaught of this epidemic.

  In all, hundreds of people in the Courtland area contracted influenza, and the death rate was about 20%, according to national statistics. This GeoCache (and this web page) are dedicated to those who died in the pandemic (which circled the globe several times) and lasted until 1920. Some of those people are buried in this cemetery in graves that are all but forgotten, in an epidemic which (for most) is also forgotten.