A Child's Burial ...

 (As posted on "Sheldon - Remembering Our Past.")

     

     A CHILD’S BURIAL - I have a story that pre-dates the city of Sheldon by 10 years, but it is well within the area and might interest some who read this Facebook group. It takes us back to 1872 and the Owego area where a small community had started to form. A historian of those times named F. A. Baguhn related it in an article with the title “The Touching Story of a Child’s Burial.”

     Two families, the H. R. Wards and Oscar Wards, and a relative, a Mr. Griffith, were haying and trapping along the Sheyenne. A man came and asked them to come the next day to his cabin three miles way and help him bury one of his children.

     Word of this spread through the sparse population and about 15 settlers attended. Upon arriving they found the father had constructed a crude coffin and dug a grave under a tree. The coffin containing the child rested on a couple of stools in the cabin, and as people do, they walked in for a viewing. Then what? Nobody knew what came next and hung sheepishly back. No one had a Bible or knew any  words to conduct a committal service.

     Here is where the story takes a strange turn, but it might’ve happened since Metis families coming through the area were commonplace. A pair of Metis children lived about a mile away and entered the cabin and noticed the situation at hand. It is reported they walked to the coffin, knelt and made the sign of the cross before reciting words the settlers didn’t understand.

     The coffin was carried to the gravesite  and placed on stools. There it was, all set up with no one knowing what to do next. Again the strange kids took over and as Baguhn wrote, “She knelt and offered up one of the finest prayers many there had ever heard. With her brother she sang two verses of a hymn.” It was said to have made a profound impression on those who looked on. Everyone who saw and heard this little girl and her brother that day left better men and women. Beguhn ends by saying no one seems to know who the bereaved family and the Metis children were or where the child was buried.

     The Ward family left the area the following year, finally ending in the Bismarck area. If the administrator of this web group permits it, next we’ll tell their story with its tragedy. And I’ll add, if it doesn’t bore readers, there are many stories like the one above that I can tell that somehow relate to Sheldon.

Pictured are Dennis Bjugstad and Larry Strand standing on ground in neighborhood of the story.