Unidentified Wiki
Advertisement

Lea County John Doe was an American servicemen who died in 1918 due to the Great Flu Pandemic.

Case[]

In 1918, a man in a military uniform visited Jim and Mary Baker's home in Lea County, New Mexico. The couple offered him a meal and allowed him to sleep overnight in their barn. However, the man turned out to be sick with the H1N1 influenza A virus, which was spreading rapidly at the time. The man was too ill to provide the Bakers with any information about himself and died overnight.

The man was buried in Block E of Antioch Baptist Church Cemetery, located three miles west of the New Mexico and Texas state line, about sixteen miles northeast of Lovington, New Mexico. Vandals repeatedly stole his headstone, but a man named Paul A. Zielinski eventually paid for a new one.

Sources[]

Advertisement