On July 24, 1886, ten year old Leendert Bogerd was herding cattle for Mr. Baker, just west of Dayton, allowing them to graze as they moved along. He climbed a tree and when a dead limb broke off, he fell upon the roots below, which struck him in the stomach. He was found by the members of a Sunday school class who were out on a picnic. He was seriously hurt and said that he wanted to see his mother for he was going to die. He died the next day and was buried in the Dayton Cemetery. He was described in the newspaper as the son of Mr. and Mrs. Austin Simpson, but Simpson was his stepfather, having married his widowed mother.

The boy’s parents, born in Zeeland, Netherlands, had immigrated to the United States in 1872. Pieter Boogerd married Stoffelina van den Houten March 23, 1872, in Ouwerkerk, Netherlands. They left for the United States that same year, coming to Dayton, where Pieter’s brother, Leendert, was already living . In Dayton they anglicized their names to Peter and Lena Bogerd.

Peter and Lena had three children: Cornelius, born in 1874; Leendert, born in 1876; and Peter, born in 1878. Peter, the father, died in 1878 and Lena and the three children were living in Dayton in 1880, next door to John and Jacoba Baker, another Dutch couple from Zeeland.

After Peter’s death Lena remarried, in 1881, to Austin Simpson, a coal miner and farmer from Dayton. When he retired they moved to Ottawa where Lena died in 1924.