Ezra Hohulin remembers his parents
Timotheus Hohulin and Leah Plattner were baptized in the Mackinaw River near Goodfield, Ill. by Elder Brother Michael Zimmerman into the Apostolic Christian faith. They were married Apr. 17, 1898 near Congerville, Illinois in Woodford County. On their first anniversary Apl.17, 1899, a baby boy, Herman, was born.
Timotheus (Tim) was in business with two brothers, John and Sam in Goodfield (1893). Hohulin brothers we blacksmiths and machinists dealers in farm implements, windmills, pumps, hardware, and seeds. In 1897 they purchased a fence machine and manufactured steel picket and chain link fence. They also bought a general store in 1902.
Tim and Leah bought a home in Goodfield, and lived there until 1907; then they sold their share of the business to the two brothers John and Sam. They also sold the Goodfield home then moved to a farm that they had purchased about eight miles south of Morris just across the road from the newly built Apostolic Christian Church. The first service there was on Easter Sunday in 1907. Tim served on the church board and as a song leader. Dad and Mom (Tim and Leah) had four children born on Goodfield and five born in Morris, Minnesota.
The first sorrow the older children can remember was in the fall of 1908 when Tim and Leah noticed that one of the legs of their little baby girl, Hannah, was not growing as the other one was; Hannah walk lame every step of her life due to infantile paralysis (polo). The next was in the fall of 1913 when their two week old son, Alpheus, died of a navel hemorrhage; the funeral was postponed several days because of a blizzard.
In the fifteen years we lived in Minnesota we had good crops, but we also had blizzards, cyclones, and a cloudburst. The cloudburst came in 1914; then in 1917 a big blizzard with six to eight foot snow drifts caused trains to be stuck between Morris and Hancock. A cyclone in May of 1918 took the barn, two silos, grain bins, and the chicken house. Later the influenza epidemic in Oct. and Nov. of 1918 caused the entire county to be quarantined; no one was allowed to attend funerals except members of the same household; all schools, churches, and theaters were closed; public meetings were prohibited. We were all sick in bed at one time with the flu except Dad, but not one in the family died.
In Nov. 1921 we moved to Fort Scott, Kansas. Our daily cows were shipped there on two box cars. Also emigrate boxcar. At Fort Scott we had no losses due to cyclones, no blizzards, or cloudburst, but brucellosis in the dairy cows, quite a loss. Then later cholera in the hogs, almost a total loss. The came a drought, and water had to be hauled in for the livestock and for home use. Although we had some crop and garden failures, we always had hay and silage for the dairy herd and many other things to be thankful for.
In the depression mike sold for five cents a gallon, corn eleven cents a bushel, wheat twenty-nine cents a bushel, hogs two and a half cents a pound. Dad and Mom lost all they ever had. In 1932 they moved to Peoria, Illinois where Tim did yard work and Leah did day work and worked in their big garden. Later Tim worked at Caterpillar Tractor Co.
In 1934 Tim’s sister, Julia Stoller, passed away, and from her estate Tim and Leah got enough money to buy a home at 1205 E Nebraska Ave., in Peoria, Ill. where they lived the rest of their lives. Leah had a stroke the evening of Jan. 3, 1958 and passed away the next morning. Tim has a heart attack and passed away while eating breakfast on
Oct. 1, 1961. They had been very good parents to all of us children.
We miss you now, our hearts are sore. As time goes by, we miss you more, your loving smiles, your gentle faces, no one can fill your vacant places.
By Ezra Hohulin