Minnie May Olmstead and Ella May Parker

Minnie May Olmstead was born in Iowa in 1875, and died in Bruno, Minnesota in 1916. Minnesota? What was she doing in Minnesota?

My mother comes to the rescue here. As I have stated before, it is so important to get these family stories down on paper (or blog) before they disappear. Oral history adds greatly to the historical records, making these people more than just names and numbers.

When Minnie was small, she contracted rheumatic fever, a disease that is nearly unknown today because of antibiotics. If a throat infection is not treated, the bacteria can enter other parts of the body and create serious problems. In Minnie's case, it led to rheumatic heart disease -- damage to the heart valves.

Despite these problems, Minnie led a full life -- giving birth to 8 children, including identical twins. Even after she was widowed in 1907, she continued caring for her children and others.

In the winter of 1915-1916, a cousin of Minnie's was living in Bruno, Minnesota, and was having difficulty with a pregnancy. Minnie chose to go and help her. The winter was too much for her heart, and she died there.  Her body was buried near her beloved husband in Nebraska.

 

 Although Minnie died young, her mother lived to be 92. My mother wrote Ella May Parker Olmstead, her great-grandmother, on a regular basis throughout her childhood and teenage years. 

Ella was born in Ohio, but moved to Iowa before 1874. She and her family came by covered wagon, and one of the wagon wheels was a fixture in the front yard where she kept flowers planted. Ella met and married James Olmstead in Iowa; they were married just over 62 years when he passed away in 1936.

Ella loved her family. In her later years, she was able to hold her first great-great-grandchild:

 Ella's Father, Timothy H Parker Jr., wrote his own story:

1883 History of Franklin & Cerro Gordo Counties CHAPTER XI REMINISCENCES OF PIONEERS. By Timothy H. Parker I left Wabash township, Jay Co., Ind., Sept., 10, 1855, with two teams, to come to Iowa. We were five weeks getting ten miles west of Dubuque. It got very cold and as I had no claim picked out in Cerro Gordo county, the place toward which I was making, I concluded to leave my family and go ahead alone to find a location. So I rented a house, got my family comfortably domiciled and came to Mason City, purchasing the farm on which I now live. I then returned to my family, and in the following April started to my land in Cerro Gordo county. When I got to the Shell Rock river, the ice was running and we couldn't cross with the wagons, so I got Enoch Wiltfong to help swim the horses over and take the family, beds, stoves, etc., across, giving him one dollar for his trouble. After paying Wiltfong I had thirty cents left to begin the summer. The next winter I went to Cedar Rapids and hauled a load of mill irons for George Brentner, receiving for the job seventy dollars, with which I bought stuff that was called flour, at five dollars per hundred. We had bad luck with the first two crops of corn we planted, as the early frosts killed both, and we had almost nothing to feed our cattle. We had six cows, however, that we had brought with us, and these helped us weather the storm all right. One day, in 1856, we were visited by an Indian squaw, who wanted to trade us her papoose for a bushel of potatoes, because the little thing was sick, and she didn't want to take care of it; but we didn't care about dealing in that kind of goods, and so didn't make a trade. When we first came to Cerro Gordo we didn't have very good religious privileges, and it was very seldom that we got the benefit of hearing a good sermon. I remember the first Sabbath I spent in this county. I went to Mason City, to see if there was any meeting; all I found was a Sunday school, and there was but little satisfaction in that, as there wasn't a man to open the school by prayer.

How wonderful to have this little piece of family history -- a story written by my third-great-grandfather! The Olmstead family has some interesting history, too. I will talk about that next.