Delta County Historical Society Archives photo Above, the Health Board order from 1918 is shown. The order limited business activity and required all residents, including children, to wear masks when outside their homes.

A century ago, in the fall of 1918, American armed forces, including some 1,500 men and a few women from Delta County, were involved in a titanic military effort in the last months of World War I. Even while these forces, working with the powerful armies of France and Great Britain, were slowly pushing the German army back towards the German homeland, it was increasingly clear that these armies now had a new foe to contend with. This foe would come to be known as the Spanish influenza, and before it subsided in 1919, it would kill more people worldwide than had died in all the battles of World War I.

One of the first indications of this deadly disease in Delta County came in a news item in the Sept. 20, 1918, issue of the Escanaba Morning Press that Lt. Hugh Coughlin of Escanaba had been sent home from France because of illness. It was not known what the illness was, but within a few days, his parents were told their son had Spanish influenza, but it was thought that he would recover. So that was good news. However, a week later, the newspaper reported that Serviceman Robert Pierson of Bark River had died of the flu while at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. He had been ill with the flu five days before he died.

A few days after that, on Oct. 1, the public here in Delta County learned from a new item in the Morning Press just how infectious this flu was. This news came from an Army report that already 72,327 soldiers had been infected. Two days later, the Army reported that it now had about 114,000 soldiers ill with the flu.

By this time local authorities were aware that there was a looming public health crisis, and on Oct. 12, the Escanaba Board of Health warned the public that an epidemic of Spanish flu was moving through the state, and people should be concerned about catching this disease. The Board of Health said people should be very cautious in crowds, in the streetcars, and to watch out for people spitting on the sidewalks and in public spaces.

Five day later, the Board of Health went much further by ordering that all public spaces be closed. This included the schools, all the churches, theaters, dance halls, lodges and billiard halls. This was a drastic move, but two days later reports of 66 new cases of the flu made people wonder if this order had come too late to prevent an epidemic.

News from the Army continued to be bad, as well. As an example, on Oct. 29 the Morning Press reported that Lt. Louis R. Kratzenstein, 34 years old and a physician, had been treating flu victims in various military camps when he contracted the disease and soon died. Lt. Kratzenstein’s father and uncle were prominent merchants in Escanaba who had built the three-story Kratze Department Store at the corner of Ludington and 12th Street in 1911.

The public had much to fear from this flu epidemic in other areas of Delta County, too. In Maple Ridge Township (the Rock area), for instance, the flu really began to take hold in October. The one physician in this area, Dr. Charles Calley, labored day and night for several weeks to help victims of this disease. But then he caught the flu, and was soon dead. The same was true in Gladstone where, among others, Mrs. Hildur Sederburg caught the flu on Oct. 25 and died four days later.

Getting back to Escanaba, by early November, conditions seemed relatively quiet, and so when on Nov. 11 an armistice was called that ended World War I, city authorities decided to lift the ban on people gathering together, and the public went wild. Bells rang, factory whistles blew, and everyone headed toward Ludington Street to parade up and down the street all day long and well into the night.

Probably, the flu would have come back whether or not these Armistice Day celebrations occurred, and come back it did. By Dec. 1, 200 cases of flu were being reported just in Escanaba, and this led the Board of Health to clamp down even more on people gathering together. All churches, schools, candy and fruit stores, all amusement places, and all places of business of any sort were ordered to be closed. Moreover, all people who had to go out for any reason were ordered to wear masks. Considering that the Christmas shopping season was just beginning, the willingness of the merchants to abide by this order shows how serious the situation was. To enforce this order the city swore extra policemen into the police force.

For the next week or so, hundreds of new cases of the flu were reported, but then the numbers began to drop off. As a result, on Dec. 10 the Board of Health said that people could now go out in public without masks, and the restrictions on businesses being open were lifted as well.

In the rest of the county, meanwhile, the flu continued all through this long, deadly fall of 1918. In early November, Mrs. Stone Anderson, 35, of Ensign died of pneumonia after catching the flu a week earlier. She was survived by her husband and four children. Also in early November, Rose Roulie, 14, of Osier died soon after caching the flu while she was taking care of her six younger siblings. Rose had been taking care of her siblings because of the death of her mother earlier in the year and absence of her father, who was away in camp. A month later, Mrs. Charles Mattson, 55, of the Buckeye Addition in Gladstone died of the flu after contracting it a week before. Mrs. Mattson was an immigrant from Finland who had come to America in 1895.

Sad stories like these continued well into December, with perhaps the saddest story of all coming from Martin Creek in Bay de Noc Township. This story concerned a Native American family, the Sagataws. First, on Dec. 5, Mrs. George Sagataw died of the flu. The next day, Mrs. Sagataw’s son Martin went to Escanaba to order a coffin to be sent over to their house. When he returned home, he was struck with the flu and died two days later. Then his brother Joe also died of the flu, leaving their very ill 17 year-old sister Annie alone in the house with no one to take care of her.

While all of this was happening here in Delta County, Mrs. Sagataw’s husband, George, having become ill himself, was under quarantine in Canada along with another son, and they were not allowed to leave. Thankfully, an older woman in the Indian community in this area understood the need for someone to help Annie and moved into the Sagataw house until Mr. Sagataw could return.

In mid-December authorities from Escanaba, having heard of this very sad situation, journeyed to the Sagataw house and found this woman, perhaps in her 70s, they thought, faithfully watching over the bodies of Martin and Joe Sagataw, as well as the body of their sister Annie. The older woman had been able to take care of Annie in her last days, but could not keep her alive, The authorities also noted that the house was very clean and orderly, and they clearly saw this woman as quite remarkable for all that she had done. The also noted that she was prepared to stay until Mr. Sagataw returned. She was allowed to leave when she asked, “Do you think I have to stay here now?”

For over two months in the fall of 1918 and well into a third, the Spanish flu of 1918 swept through Delta County claiming victims in the towns and in the countryside from the well-to-do to the poor and for the young to those not-so-young. But then in mid-December, it seemed that there were not so many new cases of the flu being reported, and that trend continued through the rest of the month. By the New Year it seemed that the epidemic had run its course, and so it had. When statistics came out for the numbers of death reported just for December — and then just for Escanaba — the numbers showed what the county had to endure during this time. First, the number of deaths for Escanaba in December established a new record for deaths in one month. Fifty-three people had died during that month, with 38 of these deaths due to this flu epidemic. Considering that Escanaba had about one-third of the population of Delta County, it is possible that at least 100 residents of the county had died in this epidemic overall in the county in that one month alone.

Sometimes you hear people talking about the good old days. Maybe not so good some of those years, eh?

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Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of “The Delta Historian,” the official publication of the Delta County Historical Society, as “The Terrible Flu Epidemic of 1918.” It is reproduced here with permission.