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A Woman Who Witnessed a Historical Movement

March is Women's History Month! It's time to shine a spotlight on the ladies in our family trees. I'll be writing all month on women I've researched. I encourage all family history lovers to take the month to seek out the stories of our foremothers!       Our local genealogical society features the "Ancestor Question of the Month" in our newsletter. For the month of March one of the prompts was, "Which of your female ancestors witnessed a historic American event? What was it? What was her experience?" I looked through my tree to find a female ancestor whose life intersected with an historic event. Since many of my women ancestors are still under researched, I can only image their experiences of events like the Civil War, the Great Depression, plagues, or natural disasters. But I did light upon one ancestor who experienced not so much a historic event but a historical  movement in the medical field. I've written many times about my second great-...
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GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 - Obituary


 

GENEALOGY CHALLENGE 2021 

Obituary - January 20th entry of a 31-day challenge to post a document, photo or artifact on social media every day in January.  

by Nancy Gilbride Casey

 

Any death would be a shock, but her cause of death—sleeping sickness—made the death of my great aunt Anna Simonik even more tragic and mysterious. I discovered the fact in a yellowed and tattered obituary in the crumbling pages of a family scrapbook kept.1

Sleeping Sickness or enchephalitis lethargica, is an atypical form of encephalitis (and distinct from a more well-known type transmitted by the African tsetse fly). It was first described by physicians in 1917. A wave of the illness swept the world between 1915-1926, when an estimated one million people or more contracted the disease, and 500,000 died.2

Anna Clara Simonik, older sister to my grandmother Margaret Simonik Kozlina.

Anna's obituary called it the "dread sleeping sickness," and with good reason. The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a catatonic-like state, speechless and motionless. Sufferers may have high fever, sore throat, headache, lethargy, double vision, altered sleep patterns, and in severe cases, the afflicted may become comatose. 3

While it is impossible to understand now exactly how the condition affected Anna, the obit notes she was ill for at least three weeks in the spring of 1933 before she died on 7 May 1933. I can only imagine how her family must have worried, prayed and tried to care for her, likely knowing there was no cure. It must have especially affected my grandmother, Margaret Simonik Kozlina. She and Anna were very close, and even lived together while working in Providence Hospital in Beaver Falls in the early 1930s, away from their family.4

Anna's death at age 29 was clearly a tremendous loss to the Simonik family.  In addition to the obituary, poignant memorial remembrances were published annually on the anniversary of her death between 1934-1939 in the local newspapers, and were also saved in the scrapbook. 

In Memoriam, published in 1934, one year after Anna's death.

The Simonik family published this poem in memory of Anna in 1938.


NEXT UP: A Record Not Found Online


1 Anna Simonik obituary, undated clipping from unidentified newspaper, in Simonik scrapbook, ca. 1933-1940; privately held by N. Gilbride Casey, Tioga, Texas, 2021. Scrapbook was passed to me by my mother Anna Kozlina Gilbride, who received it from her mother Margaret Simonik Kozlina. It is unclear whether Margaret Kozlina or her parents Anna/John Simonik created the scrapbook.
2 Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica#CITEREFSacks1990: accessed 19 January 2021), "Encephalitis lethargica," rev. 14:37, 18 January 2021.
3 Ibid. 
4 1930 United States Census, Pennsylvania, Beaver County, sheet 22-A (penned), Supervisor District 7, ED 4-29, Beaver Falls City, 1st Ward, Line 35, Anna C. Simonik, age 26; digital image, Ancestry  (https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7884/images/4449767_00778 : accessed 19 January 2021); citing NARA microfilm publication T626, Washington, D.C.; FHL microfilm: 2341730, image 43/43.
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