Page 66 - Armstrong Bloodline - ebook_Neat

certainly possible that she could have gone to stay for a time with her great Aunt and step mother,
Catherine Cotton. We do know that she next reappears in Michigan in the 1890s, and marries Alton E.
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Fletcher of Parma, MI in May 1896.
I find his reasoning convincing and am inclined to accept his argument. As a result of the above and the
aforementioned references, I have chosen to show her surname as Cotton in my personal genealogy database.

Life in Dakota Territory was hard. Year after year crops were destroyed by locusts. Frequent excursions into
Nebraska to find lumber were necessary to build with and during the winters they were snowed in. For a few
years, it appears they managed to keep things together. A sworn statement from their family doctor, F. N.
Burdich, indicates that he attended the births of Alva and Mary's three youngest children, Rolla Silas, on
September 14, 1871, George Francis, on July 22, 1874, and Mary Ellen, on August 24, 1876. 224

However, Alva's physical problems continued to intensify. In 1873 he also suffered from a rheumatic affliction
resulting from his wound. In 1876, Dr. Burdich notes that he is lame part of the time and periodically suffers
from inflammation of his war wound and is laid up two to four weeks at a time. A benevolent U.S. Pension
Office raised his disability pension to $6.00 a month. By 1875 he was suffering from considerable immobility of
his left leg and shoulder. We believe that Alva did some farming, but we also know he lived in town. His
pension files mention that he and Mary were good friends with Silus and Harnieh (?) Paluus, a couple who
lived near them for several years and directly across the street from them for approximately three years from
1875 to 1878.

Dame fortune had never smiled for long on Alva, and on February 16, 1878, his young wife Mary, then only 31
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years old, died of an unspecified illness. Doctor Burdich was attending her at the time of her death and their
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friends, the Paluus', also helped out in any way they could. It can be imagined that the affect on Alva and his
four children aged 8, 6, 3 and 1, must have been devastating. The Paluus' stated that they knew Alva for about
nine years, so it is likely that Alva left the area in 1879 or 1880. He probably received some assistance from his
in-laws, Thomas and Catherine, but with four kids depending on him, hard decisions had to be made. Exactly
when the two younger children went off to live with his older sister Ellen and her husband Trumbull in Illinois,
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and he and his two oldest moved to Iowa to live with his widowed sister and her four children, is not
known. 199 However, Thomas and two of his children also died during the winter of 1880, so it is likely that
many if not all of these events contributed to his decision to leave the area. Tragedy soon struck again, as in
November 1880, Ellen died of cancer, leaving her husband with a new born baby and five other children to
raise.

After his sister Ellen died, Alva brought his two younger children back to live with him. According to the sworn
statements of two school teachers in Shenandoah, it appears that the children began attending the public
school in Shenandoah in 1880 or 1881 and continued to attend regularly until March of 1885. 226 & 227 An
educated guess by one family researcher is that Olive took her four children with her to Illinois where she took
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over the care of her sister’s children. In any event, one year later two marriages occurred that, at least for
the moment, returned a degree of stability to both households: On November 14, 1881, Olive married her
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brother-in-law Trumbull Goold, while a week earlier on November 8, 1881, Alva married Maria S. Call, who
he had apparently known for several years. Whether these were marriages of love or convenience can only be
surmised; however, this was the first marriage for Maria, who was several years older than Alva, and who must
have been very different from Alva's first youthful bride.

Alva and Maria attended the First Baptist Church of Shenandoah where at least Maria (and possibly Alva) was a
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member. Alva's physical deterioration was accelerating. By 1883 he was suffering from rheumatism of the

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