By Cecelia McKeig
So many men were killed in accidents while working in the woods for themselves, helping neighbors or as hired men for logging companies!
Olaf “Ole” Henry Hendrickson, a farmer residing near Quiring, was instantly killed while at work clearing land near his home on Sept 9, 1908. The accident happened on John Anderson's homestead while Hendrickson and Gust Branzell were engaged in felling a tree. He was struck on the side of the head and died without uttering a cry. Deceased was well liked by all and his tragic and untimely death has cast a gloom over the entire Quiring country. He left a wife and six small children. He was a member in good standing of Quiring Lodge of Modern Woodmen and carried $1,000 insurance in that order. He was only 37 years old.
He was struck on the side of the head and died without uttering a cry.
In her book called “The Lonely Road,” E. May Coe Schwietert wrote about the accident. She was only a child at the time, but she remembered when a neighbor came running to their house to tell them what had happened. She recalled how she saw a team and wagon come along the road with several men who had rushed to the site and were returning. Nothing more could be done, and the neighbors’ thoughts turned to what they could do for the widow and her young children. Mrs. Coe worried about the funeral and the fact that there were no flowers. She and the children picked long streamers of the greenest and best moss vines that grew in the spruce trees. Mrs. Coe wove them into a thick wreath and then tucked petunia blossoms into it. It was the only floral wreath on the plain pine coffin. It was probably the first grave in the Quiring Union Cemetery.
By 1910, she had become the housekeeper for Andrew Hendrickson, Ole’s single brother. On April 6, 1911, Andrew Hendrickson married the widow, Ella May Cottrell Hendrickson, and the community was relieved that she would have the help she needed and that they had found each other. They had two sons and were together until his death in 1944.