W. C. Pugh (1920)

PUGH, FEE, ROCHAMBEAU, REYNOLDS, LAWSON

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 6/1/2020 at 16:51:46

Guthrian
Guthrie Center, Iowa
June 10, 1920
Page 2, Column 3 & 4

The writer of this column has been deeply touched by the death of his aged father, a man well known to many readers of this paper. W. C. Pugh died at his home in Dexter, Friday, May 28, after an illness of three months from cancer of the stomach and was given burial in the Dexter cemetery Sunday, May 30, 1920 at an age of 77 years, 10 months and 22 days.

He was born in Randolph county, Indiana, July 6, 1842, coming to Iowa with the family in 1858. He was married to Lovina C. Fee, at Redfeld, May 8th, 1864, and they had been given the joyousness of living together more than fifty-six years, a long time, as measured in human experience.

The three children of the family, C. C. Pugh, of Des Moines, Jas. C. Pugh, who died at his home in Des Moines in the fall of 1914, and Mrs. Frank Rochambeau of Brooklyn, New York, constituted the family. Mrs. Rochambeau, the daughter, was better known to the people of Menlo, just as Nellie, where as a school girl she was for years a chum with Miss Blanche Grisell. She was not able to be at home either during the illness or burial of Father Pugh because of illness in her own family.

In the early days when Menlo was called Guthrie, and before the railroad threaded its way that far west, Father Pugh started the making of a farm adjoining the town of Menlo putting to the sod the plow and opening the new resources of the wild prairie that he took just as God had placed it and made it into a beautiful, fertile place. Older residents will remember that because of the large grove, the orchard and the vineyard it was a show place in that new country, and throughout his life he was always planting trees, always giving beauty to every piece of ground he touched because that was in his heart.

I am quite sure that Mr. Kellogg, of Menlo, knows better of those days and of the early settlers of that time who were neighbors with father and mother, than any one now left of all that splendid body of men and women who really pioneered there when the country was new, because he had all the years been so close to my father, so like brothers in their constant association.

Of the large family that once lived in the old homestead north of Dexter there are now but three surviving, two sisters, Mrs. J. Q. A. Reynolds of Dexter, Mrs. Saml. Lawson of Menlo and Ed L. Pugh of Salt Lake City, the brother.

Father Pugh was so fine in his devotion to the wife and family, the memories that come to us now are too sacred to write about, and the joy, the helpfulness he brought to us so rare, that the memory of it all is the richest inheritance and man could devise to wife and children. That through all his illness he should be spared severe suffering seemed most righteous, for he never knowingly brought pain or injury to any one. That the last sleep should wreathe into his features a happy smile of rest and peace, was a solace to us all that is beyond expression, and the affection for him that was in the hearts of neighbors and friends everywhere brought to us such sweet consolation that we could put away the cherished body without breaking hearts. Fourscore years had been given him, years that he lived to the fullest, for he took great joy in living, and into the sadness that comes with his death there is wrought such precious memories as to enrich whatever of years may yet be given us, memories serving all the time as a benedictory prayer.---C. C. Pugh, Des Moines, Iowa.