Mabel Lora Cheney Inlow

My given name is Hartford Cheney Inlow, II (my father was “I”)

I like my name, but it has not always been easy. Especially when introducing myself to someone for the first time. The quizzical expression on the other persons face, watching them labor over what I’m trying to communicate to them. At those moments my wife will often come to my rescue, explaining: “He has three last names.” It’s the truth. I have three last names.

“Inlow,” my relatively unusual surname. “Cheney,” my grandmother’s surname. It is through this line I proved the first of several Mayflower ancestors. Finally, there is that most unusual given name, “Hartford.” Where did that come from?

I’d always been told by my father that my grandmother named him after her doctor, Dr. Hartford. Interesting. And, knowing my grandmother, not totally out of the realm of possibility. But why? Why would my grandmother, Mabel Lora Cheney Inlow, name her newborn son after her doctor, of all people? I mean, who does that?

My dad explained it happened during the Spanish Flu epidemic when my grandmother was pregnant with him—when people in Oklahoma City were dying left and right—when pregnant mothers and their babies were especially vulnerable. She was over 40, already at great risk. Nonetheless her doctor managed to get my grandmother safely through the pregnancy and deliver a strong healthy baby boy. So, my grandmother—in typical Mabel Cheney style—named her new baby boy after her doctor: Dr. Hartford.

It sounded a bit, shall we say, unlikely. But my grandmother did tend to live life according to her own rules. Could I ever prove such a thing, however? The first clues, of course, were in my father’s account. But things like that can easily be ‘mis-remembered,’ can’t they?

One day, while searching Oklahoma City directories for information about family members, I stumbled across a listing for Dr. J. S. Hartford, medical doctor! Could he have been my grandmother’s physician? Could that be evidence the story had some truth to it?

The Spanish Flu epidemic hit Oklahoma City hard. The first reported case arrived September 28, 1918. Three days later, October 1, there were more than 1,000 reported cases. Two days later it exploded to 2,000 cases. It was spreading like wildfire. One former resident recalled, “…they all had very little care, and they just died like flies.”

John Kirkpatrick, ten years old at the time, reported: “We lived at 415 W 10th, and our house was on the way between the mortuary and the cemetery. I remember a constant parade of horse-drawn hearses. It was a horrible epidemic.”

I did some quick math. My grandmother would have been about six months pregnant with my father (born February 4, 1919) when the Oklahoma City outbreak started. Wow, could it be true?

Nearly 7,500 Oklahomans lost their lives from the flu (keep in mind, Oklahoma was not highly populated then; it achieved statehood only in 1907). I thought about my 41-year-old grandmother going through this, seven, eight, nine months pregnant with my father. But she also had the rest of her family, three other children, her aging father, and her husband.

The final puzzle piece fell into place one day as I was looking over certificates—birth, death, marriage—scanning for clues I might have missed. I had my father’s birth certificate in front of me. I’d looked at it a dozen times before and I’m not sure how I could have missed it. At first, I thought my eyes were playing a trick. A name seemed out of place. I looked again, studying it, initially not understanding what I was seeing. It appeared my father’s name was written in the wrong place on the certificate. But no, it wasn’t my father’s name. It was a rushed signature, but still very clear: “J. S. Hartford!” It was written in the space, “Attending Physician.”

So, it was true, it really was true. My grandmother actually did name my father after the physician who cared for her during the Spanish flu epidemic, and who delivered a healthy boy child on February 4, 1919.

That is, indeed, how my father and I ended up with three last names.