2.4.4 Gottlieb Wilhelm Arnold.
Gottlieb Wilhelm Arnold was born on 30 March 1891 and baptised on 9 May 1891 at Angas Valley Lutheran Church. His sponsors were Johann Gotthold Arnold, Ernestine Pauline Arnold and Maria Schroeder.
He died just two years later.
The following excerpt from the Lutheran Year Book 1969-1971 gives some insight into the high infant mortality rate in the Rheinthal area which included Angas Valley. Gottlieb and Ernestine were to mourn the death of two of their children at Angas Valley another at Bow Hill and yet another at Pyap.
‘Infant mortality rate high. Various cemeteries in the district bear mute testimony to the fact especially Rheinthal cemetery. Of the twenty one marked graves still able to be seen there, eleven are those of children whose ages average not even three years. For a long time there was no doctor in the district, no telephone by which medical advice could be sought. The telephone line from Angaston was extended to neighbouring towns on the Murray Plains only at the turn of the century.
It was not until 1886 that Dr J B Kelly White, a surgeon, moved into the district. He did not stay long. In 1892 Dr Louis Lewis came from Snowtown. Prior to these years whenever folk became sick they simply followed instructions of a home doctor book or some homeopathic ‘quack’ and then trusted to God that He would see them through their trouble.’