Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1893 — SINGULAR MORTALITY RECORD. [ARTICLE]

SINGULAR MORTALITY RECORD.

Four California Pioneers Pass Away Wlth- > In Seven Days. Within the last seven days four old California pioneers, intimate friends for years, have passed away. Their deaths form a record in mortality. Every afternoon the four men, all over 65 years of 'age, met at their club, the Arion, at San Francisco, and played whist together. On one Wednesday, Joseph Hug, aged 69, died from a paralytic stroke. Three then sat about the card table. The day before Hug’s funeral Theodore Wetzel, aged 66, youngest of the quartet, passed away. Two days later William Dargener, the patriarch, died. Emil A. Engelberg was left alone. He attended the first two funerals, but on the day of the third burial he could not rise and two days later he also was dead. Engelberg was a member of Stevenson’s California Regiment. He was rich and prominent, and all three of-his comrades were well-to-do and well known.