Butte, America’s Story Episode 93 - Influenza in Stained Glass

Welcome to Butte, America’s Story. I’m your host, Dick Gibson.

The Ascension Window at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church recalls a devastating time in Butte. The window is in memory of Franz Arthur Benz, who died at age 23 in the great influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. His mother, Mrs. Arthur Benz, paid for the window in 1919.

The Bentz family apparently lived at 210 S. Washington in 1915 with three sons. August was a timberman at the Pennsylvania Mine and Charles and Leo both worked at the Anaconda Mine. The story is unclear because there is no Arthur Benz or Bentz listed in the city directory later than 1915. In 1917, one Mrs. Bertha Benz (widow of John) lived at 123 N. Idaho, and in 1918 she and (I assume) sons Henry and John lived at 722 S. Main. The directories for 1919-1922 are missing, so we don’t have a definitive connection for Mrs. Arthur Benz and son Franz, but they probably were related to one of these two families.

By most estimates Butte accounted for a third of Montana’s 37,000 influenza cases—and of those 12,000, about 1,200 died, mostly in October, November, and December 1918. Although in retrospect it was clear that there had been a few cases in Butte as early as July 1918, contemporary reports indicate the first three Butte cases appeared on October 8. The epidemic escalated rapidly to at least 2,804 cases and 218 deaths by October 28, just three weeks later. The reported cases very likely undercounted the real situation, and Butte probably had at least 3,500 victims of the flu by the end of October.

The flu struck disproportionately at young people like Franz Benz, afflicting those in their 20s the most. Schools, churches, and theaters (but not saloons) were closed; outdoor public gatherings of more than three people were forbidden. The epidemic was an enormous calamity for Butte; virtually no family was untouched by it.

The stained glass in St. Mark’s is unsigned, but much of it is high-quality opalescent glass, likely manufactured by one of the major stained glass houses in the east. St. Mark’s itself was constructed in 1906-08 at a cost of $16,000, replacing a home that stood at the corner of Silver and Montana Streets. The German Lutheran church was previously on Silver between Dakota and Colorado Streets across from the later site of the Emma Mine, but Butte’s growth necessitated bigger and better facilities for many of the major churches. The new church was part of the building boom of 1906-07. That original German church building on Silver Street was sold to the Adath Israel orthodox Jewish congregation, which used it into the 1950s or 1960s.

As writer Edwin Dobb has said, "Like Concord, Gettysburg, and Wounded Knee, Butte is one of the places America came from." Join us next time for more of Butte, America’s Story.