Emma Townsend Charles

CHARLES, TOWNSEND

Posted By: Sharon Elijah (email)
Date: 1/14/2019 at 09:21:40

12 June 1919 - West Branch Times

Emma Townsend Charles, to whom the angel came so suddenly in her home near Lancaster, Calif., on the 23rd of May, 1919, was well known to many of the readers of this paper, both personally and through the medium of her pen.

The call came so suddenly that we can almost say, "God's finger touched her and she slept." She was stricken when seemingly in her usual health only a few moments before the spirit took its flight.

Funeral services were held for her in the Friends church at Pasadena, and she was laid to rest in the shade of the beautiful trees in Mountain View cemetery and in the shadow of the mountains she so much loved and where sleep many dear relatives and friends who have preceded her to the "Better Land."

The services were in charge of Rev. George Williams, the local pastor, and Rev. Charles Tebbetts, a life long friend of the family. Rev. Tebbett's words of heartfelt sympathy and beautiful tribute to the departed were comforting to the bereaved relatives, and his earnest plea for right living that shall fit us not alone for death but more especially for life, was an incentive to better living to the many friends who filled the church. Edith Chambers, daughter of John C. Chambers formerly of West Branch, sang beautifully and feelingly the hymn, "I shall be no stranger there." Dr. Jesse R. Townsend, though in feeble health, sang a few verses of the "Sun Bright Clime", a hymn that has been adopted by the Townsends of Pasadena as the family hymn. Among the pallbearers were Henry Wood, formerly of Springdale; Herbert Chambers, son of John C. Chambers; Frank Pierpont, a well known former resident of West Branch. Frank Pierpoint and the deceased have been associated together as president and secretary of the West Branch Association of Pasadena ever since its beginning several years ago.

The departed leaves to mourn her loss, a husband, a sister and aged mother, as well as many other relatives, twenty-five or more of whom were present. The Townsend families that formed so large a part of the pioneer settlers of West Branch were nearly all represented by children who now reside in Pasadena. Rev. Tebbetts spoke of living, when a boy of thirteen, one mile east of West Branch, and said that he saw in the audience representatives of at least one-half the homes that he used to pass in that mile walk going to and from school.

Just before the close of the services, Mrs. Hornby of Lancaster made a request that touched all hearts present. She said that Mrs. Charles had asked her only the day she died to take her class of Sunday school boys during her, Mrs. Charles' vacation, and Mrs. Hornby said that she had now accepted the class permanently as a sacred trust and asked the prayers of all present for herself as teacher and for every individual boy in the class, that they might grow to useful and honored manhood which was the earnest desire and prayer of their devoted and loved and now departed teacher.

Rev. Tebbetts preceded his remarks by reading the following obituary:
Emma L. Townsend was born at Springdale, Iowa, the eldest daughter of Thomas and Mary Gue Townsend. The family soon moved to West Branch only five miles distant, where she lived until the summer of 1885.

With her cheery, impetuous, optimistic nature, she was markedly like her father, whose place in the home and in the wide circle of friends left vacant by his death when she was but a child, she helped beautifully to fill.

An intense interest in every one about her was manifest even in her early childhood and today her old home friends are joining with us in our feeling of irreparable loss because of her sudden call to the higher life.

The greater part of the past thirty years she had lived in Southern California, having spent five years in San Jose.

In 1899 her life was joined in marriage to that of A. Frank Charles, with whom she has lived these twenty years in blessed and happy companionship.

Her bright, inspiring life of service among us is too well known to need reviewing in detail. Few there are in our church and community whose lives have not been made stronger and happier by her cheery smile or helpful word of sympathy, for she seemed instinctively to understand the need of other hearts and was ever ready to help.

Her pen was her daily companion, and how many of us can attest the helpfulness of its use in the loving messages sent by her in times of need in our own lives. Many of those whose grief in the passing of our dear one is most deep and heart-felt are not here to join us in the last tribute to her precious memory. These are, as she would say, her "dear old ladies" her shut-ins, to whose lonely lives she has been so much in her loving ministry to their needs.

To her a trip to the mountains or to the beach was not so much enjoyed for the beauties of Nature it afforded though an intense lover of Nature she has ever been,--as for the opportunity it afforded to stop here and there along the way to greet her "apple-woman" or leave some quilt scraps for the "dear old woman" who watched for her at certain times of the year and who will sorely miss her bright calls at her humble door-way. Most of all perhaps she loved her work among the tubercular patients at the county hospital, into whose wards of suffering these flowers are to go to carry her last message to hearts that have learned to love her and bless her coming.

In the new home community at Lancaster her life was a ray of sunshine. With her characteristic intensity she loved every phase of desert, valley and mountains but above all she loved the people--her neighbors, who soon became her loyal friends.

When the hand of the angel--not of death, but of life--was suddenly laid upon her and she was called from their midst, it was the loving hands of these new-found friends that lovingly rendered the needful service in the stricken home and sent back to us the precious form of our loved one. Besides her dear Sunday school boys, almost the entire population gathered to show their appreciation of her and their sympathy for him whose life is so bereft. Some of these beautiful flowers express a portion of their last service of lave.

Converted to Christ as a little child, her faith has ever been sincere and literal and her loyalty to the cause and service of her Lord unfaltering. The marginal notes of her bible attest its constant use and its precious promises were her daily inspiration and comfort.

Her own eager anticipation of the realities of Heaven, for which she often expressed herself as homesick, is well manifested in the following tribute written by her a few days before her death in memory of a dear friend. Appropriate to herself, as to her in whose memory they were penned, is this tribute:

"How can I frame a memorial of our friend? Not so much to perpetuate her memory as to reveal our sorrow for her departure. We thought she loved California so; but as the shores of the Fairer Land drew near, she longed only for the open vision which should reveal its glories. She was true to old friends and had a glad hand and open heart for new ones too; but as she felt earthly ties loosening, her soul sought only the quiet waiting for reunions never to be broken. And so, while our tears for sorrow we cannot hide, we trust in a glad tomorrow we may, by the favor of a kind Heavenly Father, enjoy the raptures of the Glory Land."