Orrissa Staples

STAPLES, HARRIS

Posted By: Sharon Elijah (email)
Date: 11/24/2018 at 10:29:10

27 March 1902 - West Branch Times

DIED At her home in West Branch, Ia., on March 18, 1902, Orrissa Adelaide Staples, wife of Asa C. Staples, aged 69 years and nearly 3 months.

Though her health has been delicate for many years, the immediate cause of her death was la grippe, surviving the attack only about two weeks. The funeral services were held at the house the 20th inst. at 2 o'clock. In accordance with her many times expressed ideal of such occasions, special invitations were given to none, that all might have freedom. Several ministers of various denominations were present and participated in an informal way, "and the word of the Lord had free course and was glorified." One who had known her long and well bore testimony that, though for many years cut off from the privilege of public worship by nervous debility and heart trouble, she had an intelligent conception of a higher Christian life, though not in a beaten track. Hers was an applied Christianity from day to day, and some of us can testify that much of what we are today, we owe to her influence.

She was able to converse with great composure most of the time during her illness. On one occasion she said, "If this is death, and I feel that it is, there is nothing in the way--not a cloud. I don't know but I have said all, and done all I know what to say or do."

Her husband and one son (by a former marriage,) Edson C. Harris, survive her, to mourn her loss, her two eldest children having gone before.