KIRK Mary

KIRK

Posted By: Marilyn O' Connor (email)
Date: 2/25/2005 at 10:59:35

OLD RESIDENT CALLED

Mrs Mary Kirk Died At Her Home North of Town
Friday Evening, May 14.
Was 95 years of Age
Mrs Kirk Was One Of The First Settlers In This Community

Died, at her home in Dougherty township on the evening of Friday, May 14, at 7:30 o’clock,
Mrs Mary Kirk, at the ripe old age of 95 years.

Mrs Kirk was one of the first settlers in this township, coming here with her husband and
family in 1868 and settling on a farm in the north part of the township, where she has lived those
many years. Two years later she suffered the loss of her husband, leaving her with a young
family of three boys and five girls. But with a courage characteristic of the early pioneers she took
up the burden and faced the difficulties and privations of pioneer life, difficulties at times sufficient
to make strong men quail.

Mrs Kirk has lived to see the settlement grow from six families scattered over the township until
now there is a house on every quarter section, and occasionally on every eighty acres, with a
thriving town and a railroad running through the settlement, which in her day, was practically a
wilderness where the red man hunted the deer and buffalo.

Deceased was a native of Bohemia but emigrated to this county when quite a young girl.
She was a most exemplary woman, her home and her children were her greatest care, the latter
of which she lived to see grow up to manhood and womanhood, but aside from this she found
time to commune with her God, and lived a most practical Christian patience but the immediate
cause of her death was paralysis with which she was stricken last fall.

She is survived by three sons and two daughters all of whom were with her in her last sad
moments, except one daughter who is in Canada. Joseph of Rockwell, Frank and Patrick of
Dougherty and Sister Stanilus a Franciscan nun from Victor, Iowa.