Father was away on the circuit.
One day Jane Sturgeon came to the school, called us out, and when
we reached home all was lamentation: news had come that father was
ill unto death, at Lebanon, a hundred miles away. Mother started
at once, by coach, but met the news of his death about Washington,
and returned home. He had ridden on horseback from Cincinnati to
Lebanon to hold court, during a hot day in June. On the next day
he took his seat on the bench, opened court in the forenoon, but in
the afternoon, after recess, was seized with a severe chill and had
to adjourn the court. The best medical aid was called in, and for
three days with apparent success, but the fever then assumed a more
dangerous type, and he gradually yielded to it, dying on the sixth
day, viz., June 24, 1829.
My brother James had been summoned from Cincinnati, and was present
at his bedside, as was also Henry Stoddard, Esq., of Dayton, Ohio,
our cousin. Mr. Stoddard once told me that the cause of my
father's death was cholera; but at that time, 1829, there was no
Asiatic cholera in the United States, and the family, attributed
his death to exposure to the hot sun of June, and a consequent
fever, "typhoid.
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