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George Carl Tagtow family
Submitted by Rita
Tagtow-Ellsworth
aandr@hur.midco.net Aug. 2007
My grandfather was Carl John Tagtow, my father
was George Carl Tagtow. My mother, Katherine Viola Tagtow, died May 24, 1940,
and is buried in the plot (in the Iona Cemetery) that was Grandpa Tagtow's ...
he was buried there and then Grandma had him moved to the cemetery in
Chamberlain. Lila Rose Tagtow was born in 1915, and she lived just a short
time. She is buried on one side of Mom. Carl George was born in 1917, and died
shortly after birth. He is buried on one side of Mom. Carmen Viola was born in
1922, she developed pneumonia, was taken to the Gregory hospital and died three
days later. She is buried on one side of Mom. After Grandpa was moved to
Chamberlain, the three young children were buried in the same grave ... one on
top of the other and then when Mom died, she was buried where Grandpa had been.
I believe this came about because of lack of money to buy a plot.
This is information that my oldest sister Phyllis wrote: Phyllis was
born on March 12, 1916, at the old Hickey place at Iona, (North) where George
and Katherine lived. Phyllis died on October 13, 2003. Another older sister,
Lorraine Eleanor Ellerton, born October 24, 1918, at Sophie (Tagtow) and Frank
McGhee's home in Dixon. I, Rita Joyce, was born at the ME Hospital in Mitchell
on Jan. 30, 1934. Lorraine and her husband, Everett, my husband, Aaron, and I
try to get to the Iona cemetery at least once a year before
Memorial Day and sister Phyllis used to accompany us before she moved
back to VA.
We have really appreciated the care the Friendly Neighbor Club has taken of that
cemetery. This past May we noticed that the crosses were there with the
incorrect names and were not in the correct place as we had been told
anyway. It was several years before we three "girls" bought a headstone
for our mother's grave. Walter Moore bought it in
Omaha and brought it up to the cemetery. We think the cemetery
association has done a great job.
One of our family stories about my mother, Katherine
Kropenske Tagtow, was that she was the first SD woman to be a licensed ferry
boat pilot. She and my father ran a ferry boat between Lower Brule and Ft.
Thompson on a government contract around 1930-38 ----those aren't exact dates
---- I know they were running it when I was born in 1934, and they ran it when
I was four years old. The boat's name was The Phyllis-Lorraine after my two
sisters. We lived on the boat and in the winter we lived in (and later) on a
farm down by the river north of Iona and my father trapped fish and hunted for a
living along with my mother, sister Phyllis and her husband, Walter Moore.
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