Luvern Danielson, the two year old son of Mr and Mrs John Danielson, who lived on the south side of Sec one in Milford Twp, drowned in a large stock tank on the family farm.
“The little fellow, with his brother and father, had been around the barn and had been missing only a short time, when his father went to shut off the windmill he noticed a piece of cloth in the tank but thinking nothing more about it was about to go away when, on second thought, he looked into the tank and found his little son dead. It is thought that he strangled when he fell into the water.”
Roland Record. 1912
Several years previous to this tragic incident, Mr and Mrs John Danielson's eldest son was killed by a horse running over him.
That same summer, 1912, just about a month after the incident in the previous story, a neighbor child, gender unmentioned in the newspaper, (Other sources revealed the baby was a boy) fell into a cistern and was nearly drowned. This happened on the Gudmund Hall farm about six miles southeast of Roland. There was a Hall family that owned the southeast 80 acres of Sec 10 but this would have been only five miles straight south of Roland- the Ingvald Hanson farm of the 1950's and then the Leo Tjelmeland farm. When the Hall family had a closing out sale in 1920, the directions to the farm said to go five miles south of Roland and threequarters west.
From the Roland Paper of the time;
“Mrs. Hall was hoisting water from a cistern and while leaving the room for a minute had left the trap door to the cistern open Upon her return to the room, she asked the children, where the baby had gone, but they failed to tell anything and upon examination she found the little one in the cistern. It had fallen in, while the mother was away. She rushed for a ladder, but this was too wide for the opening. Then she tried to let down an older child in the hopes that it could reach the baby, but to no avail, and when she tried to get up she almost fell in with the second child. A child was sent into the field after the father and he came rushing home and by their combined efforts he was let into the cistern and caught the floating body with his feet and finally succeeded to get out with the aid of his wife. The child was thought to be dead by this time, as nearly fifteen minutes had been consumed before they succeeded in getting the baby out of the water, but after a couple hours of hard work, they noticed that the baby's lips began to quiver and after more persistent work, the child regained consciousness and has since been feeling none the worse for the terrible experience.”
That's what the paper said-- two hours of persistent work.
The Lewis and Bertha (Hall) Rasmusson family had, in two separate incidents, two children drown in the stock tank. One was Fern, age 5 and the other was about three. These youngsters would be siblings of Jeff Rasmusson. No other details available. Rasmusson on page 227.
Ethel May Welch, known as May, almost 11, lived with her extended family in the immediate Pleasant Grove area at the start of the twentieth century. She was the eldest child of her Mother, Wave, who was remarried to Arthur Warren.
One morning in late Oct of 1912, May was attempting to carry a heavy portion, including the spindle, of the cream separator up the cellar steps and outside for washing. In the process, she stumbled against the top riser of the steps and fell forward and punctured her rib cage and 13 days later, on 8 Nov 1912, died.
The spindle was a heavy portion of the separator that contained a `bigger than a finger' rod that held the disks in place and spun to create the centrifugal force to separate the milk and cream.
The supposition is that, like many sets of steps coming up from a cellar under a house to the outside, the risers are uniform in height, but the top step was `oversized' and this, perhaps coupled with fatigued legs and a long skirt, caused her toe to hit the riser, resulting in her fall forward.
May attended both the Pleasant Grove Church and School and during her 13 day ordeal she was `always cheerful and patient'. Just shortly before her death, it is reported, she attempted to sing the hymn “He Loves Me So”. Ruth Warren, `54, (daughter of Raymond) does not believe this Warren family is related to her. This incident is incorrectly reported in the 7 Nov 1912 Roland Paper as Grace Warner, daughter of Albert Warner.
Virgil George, son of Mr. and Mrs George A. Kimble, was born March 16, 1923 and passed away June 15, 1924, at the age of 15 months. He had been ill for three weeks with pneumonia and other complications. Internment was at the Nevada Cemetery. The Kimble family lived in the south of Sec 25 where the road turns to the west - or south. (A quarter mile east of School 7)
It's hard to imagine that there was a “dry eye in the house”, particularly when four young neighbor girls served as pall bearers. These young ladies would have been in about the third or fourth grade. (And were probably dressed in white) They were Mabel Hanson (Milford `32); Dorothy Day, (Nevada `30); Bertha Sorem; and Dorothy Sowers (Milford `31). The Hanson family lived in the southwest corner of Sec 23. The Day family lived in the middle of Sec 36 where the Otto family later lived in the `50s and `60s. Dorothy Day and family left the Milford community between her sophomore