On this date in 1915, my great-grandmother Augusta Mathilda (Gustafsdotter) Rudeen passed away.
The February 25, 1915 edition of the Wahoo Wasp noted this item:
Mrs. Rudeen who has been seriously ill with pneumonia since the death of her son, Harry, last week, quietly passed to the great beyond, Monday, February 22.
I have a copy of her death certificate, which indeed shows the cause of death as “double lobar pneumonia”, but the date is February 21, not February 22. Her son Walter provided information for the death certificate.
I wonder if she really died of a broken heart?
Augusta’s death left the family in quite a lurch. Oldest son Walter was married now and living elsewhere. Lawrence, my grandfather, was 17 and would have had to take charge of the farm. I understand that Minnie (age 31) and Edith (age 14) were still at home.
I’m not certain about their exact location at this time. They could have still been on the Nilla Martinson farm (see this previous post for a map and explanation), or perhaps they had moved by now to the Mostrom farm (a photo of that farm appears at the top of this blog page).
I should have mentioned in the post about Harry that it is the family’s understanding that he died of diabetes, which was untreatable at that time.
