Philip Engstrom: "The Story of a Poor Man"

It was a headline --- "The Story of a Poor Man" --- that caught my eye halfway down Page 4 of Thursday's Chariton Herald (Thursday, Aug. 2, 1888, that is). And be warned, this is a tear-jerker, so if you're looking for something perky to start your day with, this isn't it.

The Herald, edited and published then by John Lee Brown, who had just purchased it days earlier, reported Philip Engstrom's death first in a paragraph on Page 8 of The Herald of July 26: "Philip Engstrom, who was badly crushed in the Cleveland mines on the 1st of January 1883 and who has been a constant though patient sufferer ever since, died at the County Farm House on Tuesday morning. The patient Christian fortitude with which Mr. Engstrom has borne his intense suffering during these long years ought to be an inspiration to those of little faith in the sustaining power of Divine grace in the hour of sore trial and affliction."

The report on Thursday, Aug. 2, was longer and more detailed:

THE STORY OF A POOR MAN

Philip Engstrom, who has been at the Lucas county poor farm for the last four years, died Tuesday, July 24. He was born in Smaland, Sweden, Aug. 8th, 1859. His father was a prominent minister of the State church; his mother was of a lordly family. Philip was their eleventh child.

His parents intended to give him a good education, having consecrated him for the ministry. But after three years he quit college and tried other occupations, but without success. While clerking in a store he managed to save enough money to buy a ticket for America and landed here May 12th, 1882. After a good deal of trouble he finally settled down in Lucas and worked at coal digging.

Here he fell in love with a girl that he had known in the old country and they decided to marry on the 15th of January 1884, but their bright hopes were blasted before that day came. On the last day of December, 1883, while working, a great rock fell on him, broke his back and mashed both his legs, thus crippling him for life.

At first he entertained hopes of recovery, but had to give them up. During these long years he has been a patient sufferer. In the hours of pain and distress, he turned to Jesus and in him found peace to his soul and comfort against all evil. He was always good and kind to his attendants. Those who learned to know him mourn him sincerely. The weary man is now at rest.

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And that's all there is. The obituary reads as if it were written by someone who had gotten to know him --- a caregiver perhaps, or a minister. But there's no indication of its source. It's likely that he was acquainted within Lucas County's larger community of Swedish settlers, but no indication of that either, other than the fact his intended wife was identified as someone he had "known in the old country."

Nor do we know where Philip is "now at rest." His death was not recorded officially. There are at least three possibilities for people who died at this time as wards of the county without resources or family. A small cemetery was established on the Lucas County Poor Farm property just northwest of Chariton at some point after the property was purchased in 1869, but we don't know when burials  there began. The Chariton Cemetery has a large "Potters Field" section in its southwest corner, but the county would have had to pay cemetery owners in order to bury one of its wards there. And we know that the county also used, without payment, what now is known as Douglass Pioneer Cemetery as a potters field, too, after it was more or less abandoned upon establishment during the early 1860s of the Chariton Cemetery.

Philip does not appear identifiably in any of the gazillion family "trees" that can be searched online these days.

It's almost as if he vanished without a trace. But here you have proof that this young man did live among us for a time before tragedy and sorrows overtook him.