"My dear wife, and faithful companion for more than sixty years, died very suddenly January 7, 1917. She had suffered from heart weakness for many years but with increasing severity as she advanced in age. But with the exception of three or four weeks, three years before her decease she had done the house-work, with a little of my assistance, to within ten minutes of her last breath. After our midday lunch we were sitting in our easy chairs, I in a drowsy, sleepy condition, when hearing a faint, peculiar sound, I opened my eyes and her arm and shoulders were hanging over the chair arm. I sprang and caught her but life was extinct. She had gone instantly without a struggle or a moan. It was an easy, painless way for her to pass out of this life; and I am thankful she did not live to suffer a long and distressing illness. But to me, it was a shock that seemed like stopping my own heart throbbing. We were alone at the time, but just as I caught her my son, Adelbert, providentially opened the door to the room, having called to see how we were. 'Oh, 'phone for the doctor.' He came; is it too late? He said, 'I could not have saved her had I been here at the moment.' Oh, thou enemy death! Bring me back my companion! You will not? No, you cannot. But there is One who can and will destroy thee and all thy works. My loved one will live again, and live to die no more. For a little more than sixty years she had been my true, loving and beloved helpmate, that patient sharer of my burdens, toils, joys, and sorrows, a faithful Christian mother to my two good boys, self-sacrificing, caring more for others than for self.
It had been her oft expressed wish to live, as she expressed it, 'To see me through.' I lift my eyes to her shadow as it hangs on the wall before me, while tears blind my eyes as I write. I cry, 'Oh, that she might have lived to realize her unselfish wish!' I little thought that Sunday morning as we had our usual family altar service it was to be the last time I would hear her voice in prayer.
Funeral services the next Tuesday in the Congregational Church conducted by Bro. J. A. Woodworth, assisted by Bro. C. L. Smith. Then she was borne to Riverside Cemetery and laid 'dust to dust' till the shadows flee away, and 'there shall be no more death.'"
O. S. French's Memoirs and Sermons, Boston, The Warren Press, 1924, p. 57-59.
Transcribed 17 Mar 2022, by Duane E. Crabtree