This is an excerpt from a Gardiner history attributed to Beatrice Lenore Gardiner.
In February 1870 spring came, or so it seemed to them and they moved into a dugout up in one of the many ravines on the East Bench. Here Robert built a huge adobe furnace and started his candy making. He would carry a sack of sugar home on his shoulder at night, make candy all night, and take it downtown (on his shoulder again) the next morning, bringing another sack of sugar back.
One day while he was downtown, a regular river came down the ravine and washed everything out of the dugout before Margaret could even get the baby out. She hurried to get him out on the hill where it was dry but the bedding was soaked, the precious sack of sugar was washed away; the flour had caked on the sack so hard that it was saved. That was enough dugout for them, but the baby took pneumonia and died.
While it may be true that the baby, Robert Stewart Gardiner, caught pneumonia, he did not die from it. According to the death record, Robert Stewart Gardiner died about a year later from canker.
Robert Stewart Gardiner death entry:
