1918

Pastor E. F. Sherman, conducting services.

As the United States was joined with the Allies against Germany and the other Central Powers in the Great War (World War I), members of German-speaking Lutheran congregations (such as the Atonement Lutheran Church in Saugerties)--and German speakers in general in the United States--were subject to hate crimes by many patriotic and jingoistic Americans. English-speaking Lutherans did not want to be "stewed in the same kettle" as the German-speaking Lutherans; they wanted to make it known to the general population that they were not German but rather American, that they did not support the Kaiser and his policies. At the same time, many German-speaking Lutherans were making their own moves to dissociate themselves from the Fatherland; many had gone underground or were changing to English-speaking as soon as they could. The congregation of Christ's Lutheran Church in Woodstock had been English-speaking since its founding, and it might have been in this year that they began advertising that fact with a sign out in front: "English Lutheran Church."

The Synod of New York--consisting of a 10-year-old merger of the 46-year-old English-language New York and New Jersey Synod, the Hartwick Synod (independent for the preceding 88 years and including among its members Christ's Lutheran Church of Woodstock), and the more radical Frankean Synod (independent for the preceding 81 years)--became during this year part of the fairly liberal national United Lutheran Churches in America (ULCA). The 132-year-ol New York Ministerium, from which Christ's Lutheran Church had seceded (with the Hartwick Synod) 88 years earlier, remained separate from this national organization. Our little congregation continued its tendency to be part of a regional organization that takes a fairly relaxed, or "liberal," view of Lutheranism.

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This is a placeholder for information on our region during this year. The information will come soon. The footnote at the end of this sentence is also a placeholder; please don't click it.(2)

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Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) was President. The 65th Congress was in session. (The midterm elections that year would elect the 66th Congress.) A dollar in that year would be worth $14.70 in 2006 for most consumable products.

Immigrants from the British Isles and western Europe (especially the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Germany)--the so-called "Old Immigrants," most of them boasting a comparatively high level of literacy and accustomed to some level of representative government, who were either Protestant (most of them) or Catholic, were arriving during this decade at an average annual rate of 54,000. The "New Immigrants," those from southern and eastern Europe (especially Italy, what had been the empire of Austria-Hungary, and Russia), largely illiterate and impoverished, who tended to be either Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish and who had little experience with representative government, were arriving at an annual rate of 292,800--five and a half times as much as the Old Immigrants' rate, about the same proportion as a decade earlier and about half in raw numbers. (The significant overall decline during the decade was a result of World War I.) The New Immigrants huddled together in large cities, such as New York City and Chicago.

The great worldwide flu, which killed 50 to 100 million of the world's population in a period of 24 weeks, targeted especially the very young, the very old, and those in the prime of life.(3)

Life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by 10 years. Some 25 million Americans took ill, and about 675,000 Americans died (about 1 percent of the U.S. population). President Wilson was infected with a 103° temperature, and he never fully regained his equilibrium. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was infected but recovered. A leading physician, former president of the American Medical Association, speculated that the end of civilization was at hand. Undertakers ran out of coffins, morgues ran out of space, corpses were placed in spare rooms, in closets, on porches, until they could be collected for mass graves. The stench was unbearable.

The annual average number of lynchings of blacks during the six-year period 1914-1920 was 64--some were newly discharged soldiers, still wearing their uniforms.

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The great worldwide flu killed 50 to 100 million of the human race in a period of 24 weeks, targeted especially the very young, the very old, and those in the prime of life.(4)

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