Although from the beautiful Au Sable River less than one hundred yards away Jim could have had water delivered into the cabin by the very simple process of having an electric pump, only a handpump in the kitchen was permitted to be installed.
The isolated place of beauty cost him thousands and thousands of dollars, but he would not have in it any modern plumbing.
Due to the absence of a few modern conveniences Jim was bitten by a poisonous spider, and even though he had often boasted that he intended to live to be at least one hundred years old, and had so arranged his life that under ordinary conditions he might have lived to be that age, a spider upset his life’s plans.
Shortly after the insect had bitten him Jim left for his home in Owosso seeking medical attention. This was on August 8, 1927. The physicians were strangely puzzled by the malady which plagued Owosso’s favorite son. He was seriously ill with an unusual and seemingly unknown disease. The newspapers throughout the country carried stories of Jim’s condition and almost immediately specialists from everywhere rushed to his aid, if aid were possible. All the efforts of the doctors and specialists who rushed to the bedside of James Oliver Curwood in those early days of August, 1927, were futile. He was given a blood transfusion by his daughter, Mrs. Carlotta Jirus, of Detroit, but this, too, was of no avail ... on August 13, with his wife, Ethel, his son, James, his two daughters, Carlotta and Viola, his brother, Ed, and his two sisters, Amy and Cora, at his bedside, James Oliver Curwood, writer, conservationist, exponent and lover of Nature, passed away.
The Detroit Free Press ran this story on August 14, 1927.
CURWOOD’S FUNERAL SET FOR TOMORROW
AFTERNOON
Author to be buried in Owosso beside
graves of father and mother.
Owosso, Mich., Aug. 14—A.P.—Funeral services for James Oliver Curwood, author and noted conservationist, who died late last night after a week’s illness of a general infection, will be conducted at the residence at 2:30 o’clock by the Rev. J. Twyson Jones, of the First Congregational Church.