The Spanish Flu in the Dominican Sisters' Archives

This 2020 coronavirus pandemic prompted an investigation into the health crisis of a century ago. The Dominican Sisters Archives in San Rafael, CA, contain annals, pictures, scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings which document the experience of the 1918- 1919 flu in Vallejo and have been recently processed and described in a finding aid published on OAC by an archive intern, Alison Howard, under the direction of the archivist, Jack Doran. Sixteen Dominican Sisters lived in St. Vincent’s Convent in Vallejo at the time; they administered and taught in St. Vincent’s high school and elementary school. Vallejo was a town of about 11,000 (census of 1911) but had doubled in size because the Great War required more workers at the Mare Island Navy Yard, adjacent to the town.