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However, it was a rather insignificant amount of money.

August 24th 1884 - My wife gave birth to a stillborn son, but the ordeal cost her her life and it was the hardest blow I ever experienced in my life. For me it was a loss that I'd never be able to replace. Trying to replace a faithful and loving wife is as impossible as trying to replace a tender and kind mother. We were married for 23 years and had eight children of which two were stillborn. She is buried in the protestant cemetery in Negaunee. I had a tombstone placed on her graveand had a small fence put around it which was painted white. Later on I had a marble boarder put around it. 

During the time I spent in Negaunee I was also practicing as a veterinarian and I still have a ledger listing 123 men that I treated sick animals for. I'm not going to brag about all the money I made because there were many who forgot to pay me. During the twelve years I was in Negaunee I worked for the Jackson Iron Company.

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I was the company's main mason. However, sometimes there was so much work to do and it had to be done so quickly that others needed to be brought in to help. Then again, other times there wasn't enough masonry work to go around either, so I would take a side job. A few times I even ended up working in the mine even though I didn't want to. During the winter when there wasn't anything to do on the stockpile or the rockdumps, I worked at unloading and piling up firewood off of railroad cars. It so happened that a few years before I left, that I was scheduled to travel to Iowa. Once there I was supposed to run a farm for James Brown who was the barn boss for the Jackson Company. He offered me $30.00 a month as well as food for my family. He also offered me the opportunity to keep 12 chickens for which he would supply the feed. However, I countered with that I wanted to be able to keep 25 chickens and we consequently never reached a satisfactory agreement. Afterwards I came to the realization that we were both being dumb. He was also willing to pay for my traveling expenses out there, and once there, if I didn't like it, he would pay for me to return.