Almira Lamb Williams Ferguson
Almyra Lamb was born January 23, 1826, in Alleghany Co. N.Y. Her family removed to Geneva Ohio, when she was sixteen years of age. She married three years after, to William WILLIAMS of Ashtabula, Ohio. In 1845 they came to Hainesville, Illinois, not by fast trains, as now, but by a strong covered buggy, drawn by a sturdy horse, able to pull them through the almost impassible sloughs and through woods with scarce a trail to follow. Their household goods came on a sailing vessel on the lakes; no railroad was at their service in those days.
In 1851 they came to Morris, with three little daughters to care for and Mr. WILLIAMS in feeble health. After exposure, during a severe storm, pneumonia did it’s work in a few days, and the widow was left among strangers with her little family; in two months the youngest child died. The Rock Island Railroad had now just found it’s way through this section, and her sister and her husband came from Ohio and tried to persuade her return with them, but she would not consent but let them take one little girl; the older one, now Mrs. George VAN ZANDT of Seward, Kendall Co. staying on in Morris. In 1854, August 1, she was married to Gardner D. FERGUSON, a farmer living three miles south of Plattville. Here she spent 27 years, suffering many hardships which are inseparable from life in a new country; going through the hard times which came upon our country after the civil war. Still there were many blessings fell to her lot; chiefest of which was the four sons who came to them. In 1882 they rented the farm and came to Minooka, where the oldest son Samuel was established in what has been his lifes work. Mr. FERGUSON who was twenty years her senior, died May 7, 1884. Since that time she has lived in a small house in the same yard as her son. She has been an invalid for the last three years. During the winter she became helpless and was taken to Joliet to the hospital the 25th of January, two days after her 90th birthday, in company with her brother Asa LAMB, who is the last of her name. He was injured in a street car accident. Mr. LAMB is 80 years old and so badly crippled, all his family dead. He came to Minooka nearly seven years ago, so the two so long separated spent many hours talking of olden times when the Indians were frequent visitors and bears and deer helped supply the larder.
Five weeks from the time Mrs. FERGUSON left her home here, she passed away very quietly, leaving to mourn her loss her brother, Asa LAMB, and six sons and daughters; Samuel A. of Minooka; Eugene P. of Joliet; William W. and Frank F. of Alberta Canada; Mrs. George VAN ZANDT and Mrs. J.D. SEARLES of Monooka. Also 27 grandchildren, 26 great-grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.
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