‘Tales from Pioneers & Soldiers Cemetery’ Archives
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery
190th in a series For Want of Breath and Blood By SUE HUNTER WEIR “For want of breath and blood.” With those words Dr. John Cockburn, the city”™s Health Officer, painted a heartbreaking picture of the death of a fragile infant born in 19th century Minneapolis. He wrote those words on the burial permit for Baby Girl Weeks who died on April 3, 1883. She was only two days old. She was not the first of her father”™s children to die. John Warren Weeks and his first wife, Martha, had lost three children. Martha died in childbirth in 1877. John”™s second wife, Elizabeth, was the mother of the unnamed baby girl who died in 1883. John Weeks died from consumption (tuberculosis) five months after his infant daughter died. He was only 39 years old and had outlived four of his children. The marker for six members of the Weeks family--John and Martha Weeks and four infants. Photo by Tim McCall Before the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [...]
Three Lives Lost Over $20
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery 189th in a series By SUE HUNTER WEIR The St. Paul Globe characterized it as a story that began and ended in a graveyard. It was the murder of Thomas Tollefson, a streetcar conductor, on the night of July 26, 1887. Tollefson's murder was, as many crimes are, senseless and poorly planned. When all was said and done, three men died--one man murdered and two men hanged for having killed him. The two murderers netted a total of $20 (worth a little more than $430 in today's currency). 1880-1886. Horse-drawn streetcar, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Tollefson was a 28-year-old Norwegian immigrant who earned his living driving the Cedar Avenue streetcar line. He and Christina Nelson were married on February 10, 1887, a little more than five months before he was murdered. Tollefson was described as "a handsome fellow, and as brave and as generous as a man can be." The night that Tollefson was killed there was a big fire downtown and [...]
Thanks to Vaccines, the Golden Age for Children’s Health is Now
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery 188th in a series By SUE HUNTER WEIR A grandmother tends the graves of two of her grandchildren. Two year-old Freda Aubele died on December 2, 1915. Her six-year-old sister, Annie, died the following day. Their wooden cross is gone but family members placed a new marker on their grave in 2009.Photo credit: Aubele Family The Washington Post recently ran the following headline: “Coronavirus infections dropping where people are vaccinated and rising where they are not.” The story was news only because it specifically referred to the novel coronavirus. We have known for a long time that the numbers of illnesses and deaths decrease when people, especially children, are vaccinated. There are several diseases that were once among the leading killers of young children, which have been either nearly or entirely eradicated in the United States. Since the arrival of vaccines, we no longer have to worry about [...]
