Samson stoically suffers from a gastrointestinal illness that increasingly prevents him from doing heavy farm work. You can observe his coping strategies: he relies on his wife and mother for what income they can produce and hires farm labourers. Meanwhile he is forced to revert to less strenuous tasks such as farm management affairs and breeding livestock. He also fixes watches and shoes. In 1868 the family moves to live beside his brother until Samson’s death at the age of thirty-eight.