Ann gets sick and starts feeling rather useless, but as I've come to learn, life is better boring than tragic, since at the turn of a page, life can go from one to the other. After a few uneventful weeks, with the exception of a pleasant and well-attended birthday party for Ann Catherine Jarvis Milne, the next installment will include a tragedy that, as often as I've read it, cannot read without great sadness.
October Tu [1884]
Tus 16
Frid 17 Sent a letter to Maggie
Sat 18 Weather stormy it rained Thundered & lightened all night the house shook
Sun 19 Weather after a storm. sunshine the sunshine is welcome this morning when every thing is wet and miserable but the dusty roads is all the better for the rain. I never did appreciate a storm while it was storming it seems to me we are having great trouble it brings to my mind the death of my darling boy
I have a bad cold Father is busy makeing wine.
Mon 20 Weather cloudy I did not go to Meeting yesterday
Thomas & Em spent the evening. Br Robson called to get a bottle of wine Amelia called this morning
Tus 21 Weather pleasant did not attend my Meeting
Wed 22 Weather warm went to the third Ward brought Josey home took Anne to the Thing^th^ [Tithing] Office
brought flour & Potatoes in the buggy for her
I feel better for a ride my health has been bad
Thu 23
Sun 26 I did not go to meeting to day I must do better I did[n't] like to wake Father to harness up Em stayed to Supper
 |
| Ann Jarvis Milne and family |
Mon 27 Weather fine Anne birthday thirty ^6 six^ years ago
I was with my dear Mother Anne was born on a Friday thirty six years ago. May her next thirty six years be more pleasant than her last has been. her sisters & George agreed to give her a surprise party we each took our pic nic fourteen children sat down to the table besides the babes in arms
there was Eighteen Childeren all our own nine of our family of grown folks making twenty seven all our family that was here
[In margin: spent five dollars for Josy Dress and twenty eight cents for lining]
Tus 28 Weather cloudy rather cold I feel tired this morning wrote a letter to Sam
Wed 29 I am sick to day with severe cold
was obliged to keep my bed most of the day
Thur 30 Sick received a letter from Heber
Friday 31 I have been in bed untill three o clock
it seem my life is very useless
If I work I get warm and then take cold
From Charles Lowell Walker's Diary
He has no journal entries for this period.
Notes
more pleasant than her last has been — Ann Catherine Jarvis Milne (1848-1956) was born into poverty, lived her childhood in poverty, and then became a plural wife and was living through the difficulties of federal persecutions in the 1880s. She died just a couple of weeks before her 108th birthday.
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