Pioneer Stories - Kind words 

Josiah Rogerson Sr. - "Let Us Oft Speak Kind Words"

September 13, 1856.

About 10:30 this morning we passed Fort Kearney and as on of the singular deaths occurred on our journey at this time, I will give a brief and truthful narration of the incident. 

Two bachelors, named Luke Carter, from the Clitheroe Branch, Yorkshire, England and William Edwards, from Manchester, England, each about 50 to 60 years of age, had pulled a covered handcart together from Iowa City to this point. They slept in the same tent, cooked and bunked together; but for several days previous, unpleasant and cross words had passed between them.

Edwards was a tall, loosely built and tender man, physically, and Carter more stocky and sturdy. Carter had favored Edwards by letting him pull only what he could do in the shafts for some time. This morning, he grumbled and complained, still traveling, about being tired and the he couldn’t go any further. 

Carter retorted; “Come on, Come on, You’ll be all right again when we get a bit of dinner at noon.” But Edwards kept on begging for him to stop the cart and let him lie down and die. Carter replied coarsely, “Well, get out of there and die then.” 

The cart instantly stopped. Carter raised the shafts of the cart. Edwards walked from under the and to the south side of the road a couple of rods, laid his body down on the level prairie, and in ten minutes, he was a corpse.

We waited a few carts of us a few minutes longer till the captain came up and closed Edwards’s eyes. A light loaded open cart was unloaded. The body was put thereon, covered with a quilt, and the writer pulled him to the noon camp, some five or six miles, where we dug his grave and buried him a short distance west of Fort Kearney. 

His traveling companion offered no compassion to him whatsoever, but just before Edwards closed his eyes and was dying, Albert Jones brought to him a drink of water in a tin cup and moistened his dying lips.