Know Your Ancestor-Day 5

Ok, so I don't know if you would consider Grandma Pauline to be an "ancestor," and many of my siblings actually knew her before she died, but I wanted to share a story from her life that I found in two different places. One place I read this story is Grandma's life story she wrote sometime after Aunt JoAn had Patty. The other source is from a history of Mary Jane Leek (Grandma's mother) and John Lott Wilson (Grandma's father). The story goes like this:

One summer, when Pauline was young (about 12), Leah Johnson (a neighbor girl) and her cousin came by and an accident happened. The girls all went down to the slough to go fishing. Instead of going across the bridge, the girls decided to go across the Rigby Canal Waste Ditch. Mary Jane (her mother) saw the girls and yelled for them to go around, but they didn't hear her. Leah slipped and fell into the water. Pauline tried to get her, and almost drowned. They found Leah's body about an hour later. This greatly affected Pauline, and made an impression on all. Pauline was sick for weeks because she took in too much water.

 

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I only bring up this tragic story because it was mentioned in two different accounts. More on our ancestors, coming up!