Last weekend I did some genealogical digging motivated by our current crisis. Since childhood, I'd heard that my great-grandmother's sister died in the flu epidemic of 1918. A few weeks ago, I located and ordered her death certificate from the North Dakota Department of Health.

On Sunday I located a news story about a "severe influenza epidemic" that ravaged the community of Kloten, North Dakota, noting that at "one time every resident in town, with the exception of one, was ill with the flu." It was my grandmother's Aunt Gustava Jacobson Johnson.

According to a county history, Jacob and Gustava managed a restaurant and hotel until her death in 1918. Apparently, "Jacob liked to write poetry in his native Norwegian language." I wonder what he wrote after 1918.

The history of Nelson County, North Dakota reveals some grim details about the influenza epidemic of 1918. http://www.digitalhorizonsonline.org/digital/collection/ndsl-books/id/55924/rec/1?fbclid=IwAR3-TB1W2n4ET9zchd6qemzLUOhK63R9WQgq42S15TNaz1sWJP0v_9M37bA

"Born to this family were six daughters, two of whom perished in the flu epidemic of 1918."

"Schools were closed, all meetings cancelled and many families were sick and lives lost each day." http://www.digitalhorizonsonline.org/digital/collection/ndsl-books/id/55924/rec/1?fbclid=IwAR3-TB1W2n4ET9zchd6qemzLUOhK63R9WQgq42S15TNaz1sWJP0v_9M37bA

"My father drove night and day to care for the sick. He used one team of his own horses, and one of Mr. Bull's teams. He would come in from one set of calls, eat some honey cake and cream, refill his medical bags, change horses and go out again."

"During the influenza epidemic in 1918, Joseph and Lewis took embalming courses and undertaking at Grand Forks, N.D. (see picture of inside Hardware store, up by banisters you'll see coffins). Sometimes in the County, there were as many as two to three deaths in a family."

More on hardware store undertakers: "I can remember my father telling how he and his brother Joseph would gargle with Listerine and put on masks before going into a household to pick up the dead. Later a family member would come to the Hardware store and pick out the coffins."