Karl Heinrich Buchmiller - Part Six

     When the group reached Shelley, about 50 miles from their destination via Market Lake, they hoped to progress a little faster. Not to be. Six inches of snow fell that night. The toll bridge at Eagle Rock, now Idaho Falls, also slowed them down. When they arrived at Market Lake they were out of food for themselves and feed for the animals. A small store provided them with their first bread since leaving Logan. They stocked up on their needs and continued on their way. They were cold and weary by the time they reached Rexburg, but their arrival meant a happy reunion with their loved ones.

Market Lake

What might have looked like

     Auntie Walz was disappointed to find that she and her family were to live in a dugout. The situation was not satisfactory, they all agreed. Conrad and Karl secured logs 12 miles north of Rexburg and built one-room houses, 12 feet x 15 feet, on each of the 2 1/2 acres both had secured. The houses were not far from one another. The logs were set up and chinked with mud. Roofs were spread with willows, sagebrush, and dirt. The floors were split logs, rough and full of cracks. A hard winter was upon them but it was far more comfortable in the log houses than it would have been in the dugouts.

     Sagebrush had to be cleared before gardens could be planted the next spring. Cash was a scarce commodity and it was much needed to buy supplies. Karl and Conrad spent the Winter of 1885-86 hauling logs to earn money for those needs.

     Karl and Conrad were good friends as well as relatives. They worked together to help their families all they could. Both young men obtained work haying in Montana during the summer of 1887. They signed a contract to complete a certain amount of work by a certain date. They would not be paid if the work was not finished. Karl was seriously injured when the team pulling his wagon ran away and he fell off. While he was trying to recuperate he came down with typhoid fever. He was so ill he had to be taken home to Rexburg. This all happened just a short time before the final date on the contract. Conrad worked night and day to finish their haying job on time but couldn't do it. He did finish it, however. He explained to the owner what had happened and he paid Conrad in full.

     A very sick man returned to Rexburg to his family. Karl lingered a while but then pneumonia set in. He died October 27, 1887. He was only 27. His friends made a coffin from the wood of a large cottonwood tree. A talented young schoolteacher, Ella Clarinda Hinckley, lined the coffin and made the burial clothes. (Note: Ella later married Thomas B. Cardon and their daughter, Genevieve, would grow up to marry Karl C. Klingler, first child of Christine's second marriage.) Karl Heinrich Buchmiller was buried in the Rexburg City Cemetery. He left a grieving widow and three children, Emelia, not quite 6, John, 3 1/2, and Lena, just over 2.

     Karl's mother made her home with her son, Emil, and died February 8, 1905, at Lund, then in Bannock County, Idaho. She was 81. Her grave is in the small Lund Cemetery. (Her grave has no marker. We found it by checking the sexton's records.)

Lund Cemetery

Emil married in 1889 and had a family of six, three boys and three daughters. One daughter died as a baby. Emil tried farming but was more successful as a merchant. He was also an artist and musician. He died in Salt Lake City, April 17, 1947, and was buried in the Brigham City, Utah, Cemetery.

     Mary had two very unsuccessful marriages and a happy common-law marriage. She was the mother of 11 children and died four months before her 92nd birthday in Salt Lake City, April 3, 1957. She is buried in the Wasatch Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Salt Lake County. Mary enjoyed visiting her niece, Emma, at the Steiner farm home near Rexburg, staying several months at a time. She also spent a few weeks at the home of her nephew, John Buchmiller. She left paintings she had made at each home. She spent every bit of extra money she had writing to Germany for the family genealogy records.

Anna Maria Christina (Mary) Buchmiller

     No photographs of Karl Heinrich Buchmiller were ever found. If his wife, Christine, had any they would have been in her trunk kept in the old log home built by her first husband, Karl Buchmiller. After the new Klingler home was constructed in 1914, the old home was used for storage. Alma Klingler, the youngest son, had a dog with puppies that he kept in the same room where the trunk was stored. He placed a lamp nearby to keep the animals warm. Somehow the lamp was tipped over and the trunk caught fire and its contents burned.