In December 1895, their children surprised them with a grand celebration for their 30^th wedding anniversary. As a local writer explained, the couple was “coaxed away for a week’s visit,” and while they were gone, their children ordered flowers from California and prepared “well-browned turkeys, appetizing salads, glowing jellies, delicious cakes and fruits, [and] ambrosial sweets.” When they returned home, they “found their home filled with [eighty] smiling guests…What emotions filled their breasts, at this demonstration of filial love, may be imagined.”

 

Wolf applied for a federal pension in April 1905 and eventually secured one. As he explained in 1909, his “back ached a great deal and if I stooped or lifted, sharp pains darted through my body and made it difficult for me to straighten.” His wife died in 1912. He fell ill in the winter of 1920-21, and he died of arteriosclerosis in Plattsburg on January 5, 1921. A local writer eulogized him as a “kind helpful neighbor and friend, a staunch Christian and a man of sterling worth and character.” In his final illness, he reportedly “bore his lot bravely, and yet longed to be called home.”