Qual o significado de "nineteen ought nineteen"?

Na história "A good man is hard do find", de Flannery O'Connor, há uma passagem assim:

"My daddy died in nineteen ought nineteen of the epidemic flu and I never had a thing to do with it."

Nineteen ought nineteen seria o ano de 1919? Não achei essa explicação no Google.

Obrigado!

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Ought, in this case, means the number zero. So, the year 1905 would be mentioned like this "19" nineteen - "05" ought five.

I thought you had 'mislistened' it, and it was "nineteen ought nine", but the flu epidemics time matches the year 1919, so probably Flannery O'Connor makes a grammar mistake there (willing or not).
Sometimes natives also trips grammar rules, mainly in colloquial settings.

Ref. forum.wordreference

The year of 1919 is usually written as "nineteen nineteen".

Aside note: cases of that influenza were recorded as early as 1891, so the guy might have thought of "1909" (nineteen ought nine) but expressed in that way. Being up to the listener the task of understanding the right message!