U-M medical historians launch digital influenza archives

Only photo of Ida (Rajala) Acey and her son Richard

Many of lost ancestors in the Influenza epidemic of 1918!  My great grandmother (Ida Rajala) was one of those lost and at a young age.  She had only been in the US a few years and left behind a husband and one son.

The Funeral Record for Ida (Rajala) Acey

Now, we can learn more about this horrible epidemic via The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital Encyclopedia, an open access digital collection of archival, primary, and interpretive materials related to the history of the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic in the United States created by The University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, in partnership with the U-M Library’s MPublishing division.

The collection, contains more than 16,000 digitized documents—correspondence, minutes of organization and group meetings, reports from agencies and charities, newspaper accounts, military records, diaries, photographs, and more—along with interpretive materials contributed by scholars of history and public health.

If you too lost ancestors to this influenza epidemic, please share their stories with us.

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