Rose was the only daughter of seven children of Sam Orvis and Levina Sanborn, born in 1871. She married Irishman James Madden in 1896. She was 25 years old, and he was 34. They had six children together, including a set of twins. The Madden family had come to the area in the 1840s and lived most of their lives in the Wilmot/English Prairie area.
The couple had a house and two acres of land at the east end of the John Sanborn farm at 217 James Road. (The house is still standing and is owned by descendants.) One year Rose raised cucumbers to sell to the Vogler-Shillo pickle factory in Spring Grove to earn extra money. James wasn’t happy about this as cucumbers take a lot of nutrients out of the soil. However, Rose made enough money to buy clothes, school supplies and books for all her children with the proceeds.
Later Rose and James moved into the old Sanborn farmhouse. Her mother Levina Sanborn died in 1918 and her father Sam had a paralytic stroke in 1915. Rose became his primary caretaker until his death in February 1921. Unfortunately, Rose only lived another two more years herself, dying in December 1922 when she was only 51 years old.
When her husband James was five years old in 1863, his younger brother, Michael, contracted diphtheria and died. James slept with Michael in the same bed but never caught the disease. In fact, he never caught any of the contagious diseases of that time and lived to the age of 101 in 1959.
Their son James, Jr. (Jimmy), who was born in 1898, enlisted in World War I in the U.S. Navy but deserted. After a while he turned up in Canada where he enlisted in the “Ladies from Hell” Canadian Army which was a Scottish group. After the war he joined the Royal Mounted Police for three years and was stationed in Nova Scotia. One of his claims to fame was going four boxing rounds with famous boxer “Gentleman Jim Corbett”. He lived until age 86 but was blind in his later years.
Son Tom Madden was born in 1904 and was another prolific storyteller in the family. He left a written and an oral version on tape of his memoirs, a priceless treasure to historians. In November 1931 he rode his mule, “Old Jack”, to the Town Hall on Main Street to vote for the Democratic "New Deal" President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, showing off his well-known sense of humor.
Story by Laura Frumet
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