Sweet Be Thy Rest and Abundant Be Thy Reward

I recently purchased a subscription to Newspapers.com and have enjoyed reading the little quips that have been captured about my ancestors. Content in newspapers a century ago was much more personal and social that it is today. If someone visited a friend or relative, it made the paper.  When a farmer sold a cow, it made the paper. When children were sick and missed a day of school, it made the paper.
This chart above shows how I’m related to Elizabeth Ann Phelps , wife of Jesse Gordon Flanders. I was fortunate to find Elizabeth’s obituary in the McHenry (Illinois) Plaindealer from April 10, 1913. I’ve published it here:

“Mrs. E. A. Flanders
Passed Away at Her Home in Nunda Township
Elizabeth Phelps was born at Solon, Ohio, June 15, 1828, and died at her home in Nunda township March 27, 1913.
On the 22nd of March she fell and broke her limb and owing to her advanced age and feeble condition the shock was more than she could bear and she failed gradually for five days and passed away as above stated.

At the age of ten years death deprived her of a mother’s care and at that young age she had to assume control of the household duties of her father’s home, a position which she continued to hold until Nov. 4, 1845, when she left the paternal roof to become the wife of Jesse Flanders and go with him to form a new home at Cleveland, Ohio.

To this union were born ten children, two of whom died in infancy, the remaining ones being Mrs. Frances E. Doran of St. Paul, Minn, Lewis of Great Bend, Kansas, Mary J. Mason of Richmond, Ill, Elvin P. of West McHenry, Carrie Whiston of Nunda township, Ella Bay and Lizzie Shenick of Marshalltown, Ia, and Truman L. who has always resided on the old homestead.

After a residence of a short time in Cleveland they journeyed westward, making the trip by the way of the great lakes and stage route to Janesville, Wis, where they remained until the summer of 1848, when they moved to McHenry county and purchased a small farm in Nunda township, which has been her permanent home for sixty-five years.

At the death of her husband, which occurred May 20, 1871, she found herself in meager circumstances, with a large family of children, the youngest a mere babe, to battle unaided with the stern realities of life, but she toiled on, as only a mother can toil, her only thought and ambition being to retain the little home and to keep her children together, and how well did she succeed. She lived to know that the children appreciated the sacrifices she made for them and that in her declining years they were ever ready to add to her comfort and to brighten the closing pages of life’s volume and to keep them free from the trials and hardships that had been so prominent at the noontime of life, and in the home she had cherished so long, surrounded by the loved ones she had worked so hard to rear, her gentle spirit left its worn-out abode of mortal clay and passed to the unknown regions of immortality to join those who had gone before, there to reunite the loving ties that were so rudely broken here. Such was the closing scene of her long and useful life. Thus has death claimed another of the fast disappearing pioneer settlers of this land.

The funeral services were held at the home on the afternoon of Saturday, March 29, and were conducted by Rev. M. L. Aldridge, pastor of the McHenry Universalist church, with sweet music by Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Walsh, and the remains were tenderly placed beside kindred dust in Holcombville cemetery.

Adieu, thou toil worn mother, adieu.

Sweet be thy rest and abundant be thy reward.”

It’s so touching to read the kind words written about my great, great grandmother. There’s such value in learning more about her personal life, the tragedies she endured and the success she made of her life in light of those tragedies.

I’m so proud to be your great, great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Flanders! I wish I’d known you and I really wish I had a photograph of you. I join with the publishers of your Obituary in wishing you sweet rest. 

Published by Mary Rebecca Margheim Thompson on her blog "Grace and Glory" 10 February 2018.