OCR Text |
Show that Joseph often had to rest during the ride to and from the Bottoms and while he was grubbing brush. When their baby brother, William, was four months old (November 1879) Wilhelmina and her children were moved to the Bottoms. Her husband had filed on a quarter-section (160 acres) there with the United States Government.1 In order to prove the homestead rights, Wilhelmina and her youngsters lived in a two-room cabin on the N.E. corner of the land. A few other necessary outbuildings were added later. There were no horses for use on the homestead, but there were oxen with which the boys cleared more brush from the property. They were living in the Bottoms only a matter of weeks when Joseph died on the last day of November 1879 - He was thirteen years and nine months old. People said he died of rheumatic fever-and the family recalled that he had suffered with 'bad tonsils for years. But Wilhelmina had been powerless to help him for no one at that time knew what to do for infected tonsils and resulting fever, and they had little money with which to work had they known what to do. John K always remembered the agonies suffered by Joseph before he died. THE BOY During those homesteading days the boychild John K had his own thoughts. Some of them went ahead to wonder 31 |