Death of a Son-in-Law

It's springtime, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, the flowers are blooming — let's continue talking about tragic, untimely deaths, shall we?

In this case it was a son-in-law of Henry Chester: Charles Nelson, husband of Henry's daughter Lovisa, the same fellow whom I imagined as a peace-maker after Henry's really bad day; and if indeed he was, that was one of the last good deeds he did on this earth outside his own family, for he then had scarcely eight months to live.

Charles had come over from Sweden Denmark* in 1883. Where he spent his first years in the U.S., I don't know, but by the late 1880s he had the good fortune to land a job working as a farmhand for Henry Chester — good fortune, I say, because in Henry's home he met Lovisa, fell in love with her, wooed and won her. They were married in Chicago on June 9, 1891.

I'm not clear on the sequence of their moving around after their marriage. Charles farmed around Indiana, somewhere in Jasper County, and also in North Judson, Starke County, where the 1900 census found the Nelson family. In 1903 they moved back to Ainsworth because Charles Chester wanted help farming the family acres. In addition to working the Chester land, Charles rented another farm west of Ainsworth. It was here that their fifth and last child, a boy, was born in 1904.

Early in January 1905, the barn on Nelsons' place burned to the ground. The fire was discovered too late to save anything but one cow — twelve others were killed, along with four horses; the fire destroyed all the hay and grain, wagons and harnesses, and everything else in the barn. Though they carried insurance, it must have been a sickening loss, and it may have influenced the decision that soon followed: the Nelsons quit farming and moved to Chicago, where Charles became a teamster. Within a year, that decision would cost him his life.

The angel of death came for him riding a Chicago streetcar. It was mid-afternoon on March 15, 1906, and Charles was driving his team home from a day's work in Whiting, Indiana. Just over the Illinois state line, a streetcar smashed into his wagon. He was thrown to the ground, hard, and suffered internal injuries so severe that within twenty minutes he was dead.

Lovisa must have been devastated. Not only had she lost the love of her life, she was left with five young children to raise — the eldest fourteen years old, the youngest only two.

She brought her husband's body home to Indiana. His 73-year-old father came all the way from South Dakota to attend the funeral. They buried Charles in Crown Hill Cemetery, under a beautiful granite marker.

I don't know exactly how Lovisa got by in the next few years. She collected $1,025 in life insurance (about $22,533 in today's dollars), which would have helped tide her over. I expect her father contributed some support, too; he was pretty well off, and whatever his problems with unrelated people, I have yet to find any evidence that Henry Chester was ever unkind to his own children. Also, Charles had seven brothers and three sisters who might have looked out for his widow, and the 1910 census shows Lovisa living next door to a John Nelson, possibly her brother-in-law. And soon Charles and Lovisa's two oldest boys took on more responsibility; by 1910, at 18 and 16 years old, they both had jobs driving milk wagons.

Lovisa and the children often came down to Ainsworth for visits with her relatives. By 1920, she had come back to Ainsworth to stay, bringing the last two of her children who were still at home. Then her youngest daughter married and moved to Hobart, and Lovisa went with her.

She never remarried, though she lived 60 more years — a whole lifetime — after she lost Charles. When she died in 1965, she was laid to rest beside him.


(Click on image to enlarge)

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*See the Comments to this post regarding this correction.


Sources:
♦ 1900 Census.
♦ 1910 Census.
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ 1930 Census.
♦ "Barn and Contents Destroyed." Hobart Gazette 6 Jan. 1905.
♦ CPI Inflation Calculator.
♦ "General News Items." Hobart Gazette 3 Apr. 1903; 24 Apr. 1903; 19 Feb. 1904; 17 Mar. 1905; 6 Apr. 1906; 3 Jan. 1908; 10 July 1908.
♦ "Local Drifts." Hobart Gazette 17 Sept. 1909.
♦ "Mortuary Record." Hobart Gazette 23 Mar. 1906.