In my last post, I wrote about Jesse Buchanan and how he died in 1918.  My great great grandmother  Mary Ann "Molly" Stephenson Buchanan had received a telegram on October 30, 1918 with the dire news about her sons deteriorating condition.  Unfortunately, Jesse died soon after the telegram was sent.

Telegram sent to my gg grandmother that Jesse was seriously ill.  

With further research I determined that Jesse was not the only one of Mary Ann's children to die of the Spanish Flu.  I uncovered the death certificate of Jesse's older sister Addie Marie Buchanan and discovered that she died from "Lagrippe" which is an old-fashioned word for Influenza. According to Wikipedia, the Spanish Flu outbreak that killed hundreds of thousands in the U.S. lasted from January of 1918 to December of 1920. 

Addie Buchanan death certificate.

I try to imagine what it must have been like for Mary Ann to lose two of her children from the same illness within two years. Jesse at the beginning of the epidemic, and Addie at the end. Sadly,  we know that when she died, Addie left a husband and 5 children from the ages of 4-15.