Going back line by line, has really shed some perspective on just how difficult life was for these early immigrant families. This family lived in Aurora, Illinois, which was a little over 40 miles from Chicago. As this was back in the 1880s, the only transportation was probably horse and wagon and probably train. There seemed to be many doctors in Chicago (in one family on my Blickhahn line, every male child became and doctor or dentist for a couple generations), but medical care in the rural areas may have been sparse.
I can't imagine being Hubert and Gertrude, and losing four of five of my children. Two of the children died during the same year. I haven't looked beyond Find a Grave at the children to know if the two died around the same time (maybe an epidemic?) or if it was from some other cause.