Dollie Mitchell is my maternal great-grandfather’s twin sister. Last year I found her gravestone on FindAGrave.com which gave me a date of death. My mother’s cousin who lives in Topeka is wonderful. She visited the Kansas State Historical Society Library and pulled Dollie’s obituary for me.
The most interesting part of this obituary for me is the cause of death. My grandmother has always told me that Dollie died by drowning in a river. The cause of death listed in the obituary is consumption. This generally refers to death after suffering from tuberculosis. It is crazy in how just one generation stories can change! As the youngest in her family, my grandma was born almost thirty-five years after her Aunt Dollie died. That is a large enough time for the story to be retold incorrectly.
Arkansas City Traveler, Arkansas City, Kansas
January 10, 1896, page 5
Dollie Mitchel, daughter of Mr and Mrs Moses Mitchel was born Oct 20, 1876 in Jackson county, Kans, and died in this city January 6th, 1896 at 10am of consumption. She was an ambitious child and when at school excelled in her studies. She was of a sunny, hopeful disposition, making frends [sic] wherever she lived. This was fully shown by the large number that attended her funeral. It is natural for one of this disposition to desire to live. Hence when it was manifest to her that disease was making rapid inroads upon her health, she sought relief by a visit to relatives in the health resorts of Colorado. But it was too late and it soon became manifest to all that the end was near.
She succeeded in reaching her home and here, surrounded by those that loved her, all that skill and love could do was employed to make her last days of suffering endurable. To her mother she expressed herself as ready and willing to die. We all hope to meet her again in the land where there is no suffering. Her pastor, J. W. Faubion.
