From: Brisbane, North Dakota
13 December 1918
Worthy Staats-Anzeiger!
This will inform our relatives and friends with the sad news that our father, Martin Erker, on 10 November went on a pilgrimage to a better world. He too became a sacrifice of the influenza. He was 61 years old. He was born in April 1857 in Krasna, Bessarabia, South Russia. In the year 1906 he came to the United States. He immediately established a homestead in the area of Lemmon, S. D. where he resided until his death. The deceased was a well-known farmer in that region.
At his departure he left behind three ailing sons and one sick daughter. Already three days after father’s passing, a son, Celestinus, followed him in death at age 23.
I am now healthy again and received a letter from my sister in which she wrote that she was feeling better too, but that our brother, Michael Erker, in Rubicon, Wis., was still sick.
I now greet my Aunt Helena Tschasik near Strasburg, N. D., and all my friends.
Jos. M. Erker