CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (WHDH) - The coronavirus is not the first pandemic the United States has gone through and one Cambridge family came face-to-face with that reality when they uncovered an unexpected piece of history locked away in their attic.
An old tinted water damaged photo of a man unlocked a fascinating story that dates back over a hundred years to the most severe pandemic to rock the nation in recent history.
Juliette Kayyem is a professor at Harvard University and a Disaster Management Expert involved in COVID-19 planning who moved into a Cambridge home built in the 1840s about 15 years ago.
Recently, she was having work done in her son’s bathroom and was told they would have to open up a long-sealed crawl space on the third floor.
“When he opened up the ceiling, sticks his head up, there is a room,” Kayyem said. “And in the room he found a picture.”
So, she took to Twitter to find the story behind it and within 30 minutes the power of social media delivered some answers.
“The Twitter genealogists were able to unearth a story that was quite remarkable,” she explained.
The back of the photo bore the name “Annie” who was later identified as Annie McCue and the photo was of her father.
McCue lived in the home with her husband and daughter between 1917 and 1919.
During the flu pandemic, their daughter Letitia became ill and succumbed to the sickness at the age of 19 in what was called a pandemic room.
“A lot of these homes, when someone got sick, they called them influenza or pandemic rooms and when someone would get sick would get sent to a quarter one in a room and then they closed it out,” Kayyem said.
For her, this eerie and spellbinding discovery has but things into perspective in regards to the current pandemic.
“This unfolded so fast just thought my complaints are of annoyance but not if tragedy good reminder to count our blessings,” she said.
Kayyem has been able to contact McCue’s surviving relatives. They still live in New England and she plans to send them the photographs soon.
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