On September 10, 11, and 12 in 2024 the Brown County Historical Society presented Gilbert Cardinal's life as part of the series "If Tombstones Could Talk" at Woodlawn Cemetery. The Cardinal family legends web page was the source for this material. The following text was extracted from a PDF version of the presentation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Gilbert Henry Cardinal Researched and scripted by Myrna Dickinson How many of you play cards? If you play cards, you know, you play the hand you’re dealt… playing the hand the best you can, hoping that you win. Or, at least, if you lose, you don’t lose too badly. I kind of liken it to life…you live the best you can, using the talents you’re born with, hoping that you win. Or if you lose or fail, you don’t fail too badly. My name is Gilbert Henry Cardinal, eighth child of ten born to Joseph and Mary (Johnston) Cardinal. Now that my life is over and I look back at it, I think I lived my life the best I could, used the talents I was born with, and, all-in-all, didn’t lose too badly. Pa met ma while working at the S. S. Johnston brickyard in Green Bay. The Johnston’s boarded their employees and ma waited tables. They met, fell in love and were married. Between 1860 and 1880 ma birthed 10 of us. Imagine that! Three of my brothers, Sam, Archie and Chet and my sister Josie were a icted with “night blindness” which rendered them almost helpless at night. During the winter months especially. They were not dealt a good hand. My grandpa Johnston was born in Ireland as was my grandma Johnston. Though he was a hard working, good provider, he liked to imbibe…one of the traits for some of the Irish. It was said grandpa would go down town after work with $200 and he wouldn’t come home until he spent it all on drink! I do recall, when I was growing up, I didn’t like to go to Grandpa and Grandma Johnston’s house because I was afraid grandpa might have been drinking. Imagine that! Pa didn’t drink and grandpa Johnston’s drinking may have been the reason pa left the brickyard after a number of years to buy a farm. I was eight years old and we moved to a farm on the Suamico river on Sunset Beach Road, just east of highway 41. For some reason we left there moving to another farm west of Oconto. This farm was where I grew up…the place I called “home.” My brothers and sisters and I attended Comstock school…one room with a wood-burning pot belly stove keeping us warm and an outhouse, which was never warm! My memories are happy of my school years. All my life I recall pa as being a stickler for cleanliness. I do believe he took to heart that old saying, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness!” What would possess him to be a farmer where barnyards are lthy from the stock living there? Well, it wasn’t that way in the Joseph Cardinal barnyard! Insisting that the barnyard be kept clean, shovels were at the ready to pick up all animal droppings as they occurred. Of course, me, being the eighth child out of nine, William having died as an infant, and with Chet, Archie and Sam having night blindness, I was the one who had “dropping duty.” Imagine that!! I was also chosen to help peddle the vegetables we grew door-to-door in Oconto. At 16 I went to work in a logging camp for the winter months. I drove 8 oxen to camp in November that rst year. I was told to follow the road “you can’t miss it.” But in November it gets dark early and the darker it got the faster I went. When I reached the camp, the foreman put his hand on the warm animals and said, “you’ll do!” I spent several seasons in the camp rst as a cookee (a cook’s helper) and then as a driver, riding the logs on the river to make sure the logs didn’t jam together. Church was always a part of my life as both a child and an adult. We attended the Oconto Methodist Episcopal church and I was active in the Epworth League, a young adult association, within the church, as were my brothers and sisters. Our faith was important to us. In 1898, when I was 23, I enlisted and served with company M, 2nd infantry, in the Spanish-American War. Prior to my reporting for duty, the Epworth League presented me with a pocket-sized New Testament and Psalms bible inscribed “Look up, Lift Up.” I carried that bible with me the whole time. I served in Puerto Rico in the vicinity of Ponce, but did not get into any real ghts. However, I got an ear infection, which I believe came from bathing in a river while in Puerto Rico. It resulted in the complete loss of hearing in my right ear and periodic outbreaks of infection which I treated with hydrogen peroxide twice a day for the rest of my life. I had to deal with it and live the best I could. Upon my return home, my brother and I ran a small restaurant in Oconto for a short time. It wasn’t to either one of our likings. In the mean time, my oldest sister, Minnie, had married Abe Frei and she and Abe had answered to the call of the west having picked up land and farms in the area of eastern Washington and northern Idaho. Minnie was urging me to “go west.” Brothers Archie and Chet had answered the call. But ma wanted me to stay near home, so in an attempt to keep me around, she invited Lillie Strahl of Suamico to be a houseguest. Our families were acquainted, but I had never met Lillie. The ruse worked! Lillie and I were married on April 24, 1901. After a brief stay in Oconto, Lillie and I moved to Timm, WI where we cleared land to farm and build a home. Timm had a 1 room school, post o ce and a saloon. At rst we lived in a 1-room log cabin, but after a year we put on an additional room and we provided room and board for the school teacher, a practice at the time. I understand Timm no longer exists as a place name. Five years after Lillie and I married, in 1906, the western call persisted and Lillie and I went to Washington to join Minnie and Abe, Chet and Archie. We started working with Abe and Minnie managing farms and mining claims and then homesteading. We moved frequently carrying everything we owned with us. We lived the best we could. Frankly, I don’t know how Lillie tolerated it! One of our moves involved taking apart the wagon we owned, taking a train to our destination, arriving to a depot that was closed, unloading everything onto the platform…IN THE RAIN…I might add. A fellow who met us at the station helped me put the wagon together, helped load our furnishings and the waiting horses were hitched. Lillie and I drove to the vacant house where we were to live. The windows were broken and the house was dirty but it had a stove in usable condition so we could cook supper and dry our bedding. Another time we moved into a log house with a dirt oor which sloped so badly that we put one end of the bed spring on the ground and the other on a packing box. Surprisingly….Lillie never complained one bit. Of course, if she did, I never heard her since I was deaf in the right ear! Again, we lived the best we could. In 1910 we took up home steading near Curlew Washington, followed by two years in Indian Prairie, north of Spokane to manage a wheat ranch. It was there that our only son, Alton, was born in April of 1913. When Alton was 3 in 1916, Lillie brought him home to WI. To visit with family. At that time I decided it was time to come back to WI. I was tired of the life Lillie and I were living and did not want my son to live that way. I arrived in the fall and spent the winter working in a paper mill and living on North Broadway. But I had that yen and call to farm. I wanted that same feeling of “home” I had growing up on the farm west of Oconto. I started working for the Green Bay and Western railroad in the section crew at Oneida, section 2 in 1918. We rented a couple of di erent places in Oneida searching for that “home” feeling, but it didn’t happen until I transferred to working section 1 on the edge of Green Bay two years later. Not far from where I worked I purchased two acres, certainly enough to have some animals, a cow and chickens, and a large vegetable garden to keep us well fed all year. Lillie, Alton and I were “home.” Lillie cooked on a wood burning range, with wood delivered by the Diamond Match Company in their horse drawn carriage. At times left over railroad ties were given to me to handsaw lengths manageable for the range. In 1922 we made the place fancy adding a concrete foundation with a full basement and enlarged by the addition of a living room and bedroom to the front of the house. That same year Oneida St. was paved, sewer and water installed and electric lights added. We were living, we thought, in the lap of luxury!! De nitely “dealt a pretty good hand!” That same year I got a better paying job as a material handler in the store department, requiring lifting timbers and crossties used to build or repair bridges and other lifting of other heavy material. We were paid 53 cents an hour, bringing home about $54 on the 1st and 15th of the month. Although I was better off financially than previous times, my heart and my love was farming. During the Depression of the 1930’s, the railroad found it necessary to reduce payroll; we agreed to only work 5 days a week rather than have one of us laid o . In spite of that, I was laid o when I was 60 years old. Alton was in his last year at the University of Wi at the time. Life had not dealt us a good hand! I was called back to work later and continued working until I reached the age of 65 when I retired in 1940. Lillie and I took a trip to Arkansas to see Alton after I retired. Of course by then we no longer had our cow nor our chickens and our vegetable garden was small or non-existent. The place, although still “home,” was not the farm. On December 3, 1941 I woke up early and wrote a note to Lillie telling her not to go to the old chicken coop. I ended my life with a handgun I had. I guess, like in a card game, I knew when to fold them. I was buried here at Woodlawn the day before Pearl Harbor was bombed. Imagine that. Note: Gilbert and Lillie’s home at 132 S. Oneida is still there. It is two doors north of Redeemer Lutheran church.