PHILADELPHIA — At Sunday family dinners, the grandchildren would beg to hear that story again, the one about her twins in the baby carriage, and one of them was dead, and what did she do. This was when Sarah Jane Anderson would add to the collective memory of a Philadelphia nightmare.

Well, children …

It was October 1918, and the raging flu epidemic had killed 18-month-old Augusta, but spared her twin, Eleanor. Funeral parlors could not meet the demands of the dead; caskets were stacked on the sidewalks. But Ms. Anderson had a plan: She knew an undertaker in northeast Philadelphia.

She tucked the twins — one alive, one dead — in a baby carriage, left their rowhouse in Camden, N.J., and took the Delaware River ferry to Philadelphia. As she wheeled her sorrow north, fearful that she might be arrested for moving a body across state lines, people kept peeking into the carriage to admire how peacefully the toddlers were sleeping.

Twins? Aren’t they cute?

Six miles later, Ms. Anderson reached the undertaker; he accepted the tiny body. She then retraced her steps with little Eleanor, who grew up to become the mother of Janice Williams, who heard her grandmother tell this story long ago, and now — in the midst of another pandemic — feels compelled to share it.