1918 SPANISH FLU

1918 SPANISH FLU

Chief Justice Fuller with mask - May 2020 -  Kennebec Courthouse Augusta, ME 

Melville Fuller, who died in 1910 while on vacation at his home in Sorrento, did not live through the 1918 flu epidemic.  But this week his statute in Augusta was outfitted with a mask (photo courtesy of my nephew Emery) for this health crisis.  

As I sit here drafting pages for this blog in the midst of the current pandemic, I began to think about what effects of the 1918 Spanish Flu had on Sorrento.  I have not done a great deal of research, but the period between 1915 and 1919 was important for the resort for a number of reasons.

While Frank Jones has died in the Fall of 1902, his complicated estate had taken many years to settle.  It was not until 1908 that large portions of the land formerly owned by Jones began to be sold off to new owners.  At the same time, the families who summered in Sorrento established the Village Improvement Association (VIA) in 1915 to manage certain assets, most importantly the Library which was gifted to the VIA by the Jones family.

In 1916 the new owners of large tracts of land in town, formerly owned by Frank Jones, began Sorrento Estates - a venture to market real estate sales in the resort.

World events also began to intrude into the bucolic community.  Many sons of both year-round and Summer residents volunteered for service in the Great War.  Beginning in 1914, the conflict in Europe would take much of the Nation's attention away from such things as vacations and time in Maine.

This article from July 1918 details the fifteen names of both year-round and Summer residents from Sorrento who had volunteered for service in the war.

With a war raging in Europe and the flu epidemic looming, the news from the resort that Summer seems practically normal "...barring a few of the young men who have entered the service."

While there were some flu outbreaks in the Spring of 1918, the pandemic reached its peak during the Fall and Winter months.  I began to wonder if any Sorrento families were affected by the illness and if there were any fatalities, especially since that strain impacted a younger population.

I have not done an exhaustive search, and I'm sure others can enlighten me on what they may know from their family histories.  But I was able to document what appears to be one fatality during the 1918 pandemic.

Captain Alonzo Hanna was the yacht master for the Ewing family.  Both he and his son Alonzo Jr. enlisted in the military reserves during WWI.  According to Herson's book, the Ewings required the captain to wear a full dress uniform while on duty and provided him quarters, The Captain's House, where Hanna, and presumably, his wife and four children, lived.

This article from December 1918 contains the news from Sorrento that Camden Sargent had been ill with the flu and pneumonia but had recovered.  Sadly, it also reports that Captain Hanna's son was a victim of the 1918 flu epidemic. It provides details that A.A Hanna Jr., a Naval reservist and Sorrento resident, had died of pneumonia in Chelsea, MA shortly before Christmas. One of the worse outbreaks of the flu in Boston was among enlisted sailors at the Naval Hospital in Chelsea.

Postscript 7/4/2020...

Today I took a photo of Sorrento's war memorial by Town Hall.  The WWI plaque lists the only death in the war as that of Alvin Alonzo Hanna Jr. who succumbed to the Spanish Flu in Boston in December of 1918.