NO INDIVIDUAL MARKER EXISTS.

80 years, 7 months and 12 days.

Widow - Thomas M. Speers.

Daughter of William H. and Zerelda Ferguson.

Informant - George A. Speers.

Interred - October 26, 1931.
___

THE KANSAS CITY STAR
Monday, April 11, 1921

A PIONEER HELD PULPIT

MRS. MARY A. SPEERS JOINED CITY'S
FIRST M.E. CHURCH.

Widow of Kansas City's First Chief
of Police Says Her Faith in God
Carried Her Through the
Outlaw Period.

A pioneer of Kansas City preached the sermon last night in the Cleveland Avenue Methodist Episcopal church, Twenty-eighth street and Cleveland avenue. Mrs. Mary A. Speers, widow of Thomas M. Speers, first chief of police of this city, told how she joined fifty-seven years ago the first Methodist Episcopal church that was built here.

"That church was located on Fifth street between Wyandotte and Delaware streets," Mrs. Speers said. "There were only two other churches here then. I joined when I was only 13 years old. The fire house was in the same building and sometimes it was necessary to stop the service that we might help put out a fire."

SAW A GREAT CITY BUILT UP.

"I did not dream then that our little village would become a great city. There were only a few houses in the midst of a great forest. The village was surrounded by deep ravines and nobody dared venture into them. Those were time of violence and crime."

The white-haired woman paused as she said this. Her husband had been chief of police here for twenty-five years. Perhaps she recalled in a swift rush of memory a crime wave beside which the one of today must have seemed a small affair. For she was at the side of her husband during the reconstruction era, and her husband kept order when Jesse James and his band were the scourge of Western Missouri. That troublous period has left no deep wrinkles on Mrs. Speers' face, and her sturdy form is what one would expect in a pioneer. Yet what she has undergone lent a note of pathos to her voice as she said:

KEPT HER FAITH IN GOD.

"I have known many trying times, more than once have my eyes filled with tears. I thank God that I listened to the venerable pioneers of that little church, and I have been trying to walk with my hand in the Master's ever since I was brought to the altar."

Mrs. Speers has organized a choir of fourteen, which she has named, "Ma Brown's family." The choir gives concerts to obtain money with which to build a new church.