Anna Pell Dies of Pellagra, 1910

“Death of Mrs. Anna R. Pell,” from the Caucasian and Raleigh Enterprise, October 20, 1910. In 1910 people thought pellagra was an infection. By the 1920s it was proven that pellagra was caused by a vitamin deficiency. It is extremely rare in the United States today.

The older citizens of Raleigh will regret to learn of the death on Sunday afternoon in this city from that dread disease, pellagra, of Mrs. Anna Pell, widow of the late W.E. Pell Jr., who was city editor of the old Raleigh Sentinel in the days of Josiah Turner. Mrs. Pell was a native of Raleigh, being the youngest daughter of Walter J. Ramsay, who for 30 years prior to the war was the State’s leading jeweler, and was in her 66^th year. She was for many years a consistent member of Edenton Street Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and loved her church and her native city of Raleigh. She leaves only a son, Harding Pell, Secretary of the Merchants’ Association of Charlotte, and an only brother, Theo. N. Ramsay Esq. of Norfolk, Va., to mourn their loss besides a large number of nephews and nieces.