Samuel Frye Walker

FAULCONER, HODGES, WALKER

Posted By: Lisa Walden (email)
Date: 8/15/2020 at 17:26:42

WALKER.- Elder S. F. Walker was born in New Richmond, Ohio, about twenty miles above Cincinnati, December 23d, 1831, and died at his home in Lamoni, near 7 o'clock, on the morning of April 1st, 1889, after an illness of about fourteen days, caused by pneumonia and heart disease.

His parents settled in Cincinnati when that city had but one brick house, and his father founded the town of New Richmond, where he was born. He received a fair education in the common schools of his vicinity, and also attended Clermont Academy.

In 1850 he came west to where Kansas City now is. At that time the Indians were there, the only inhabitants. In 1850-51 he attended Central College at McGrawville, New York. In 1851 he was engaged in engineering on the Mississippi River, and in 1852 he was a student at Wesley University, Ohio, after which he taught school for a time near Richmond.

In the Spring of 1853 he went to California by the Isthmus of Panama, and for seven years was engaged in mining in Sierra county. He was a candidate for the Legislature on the first Republican ticket nominated in that county. He continued in mining matters up to 1859 and helped to start Methodism in Virginia City, Nevada.

In 1861 he returned east overland and called at Salt Lake City. He soon returned to the west, went to Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and thence to California again. In 1864 he located in Smoky Valley, near Austin, and engaged in stock raising, and in 1869 he visited Plano, Illinois, and the same year was united in marriage to Sr. Marietta Faulconer, who, with two daughters and a step-daughter now survive him.

After his marriage, himself and family settled at Blue Springs Ranch near Austin, Nevada, where they resided till 1878. In 1876 he attended the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia, and in 1878 he removed to where now is Lamoni, and engaged in farming till, in 1884, himself and family moved into the town.

In the fall of 1885 he engaged in publishing the Gazette—now Independent Patriot. Not long since he gave to the world his “Ruins Revisited,” a book of very considerable merit and that was intended to be the first of a series of its kind, and other germain subjects.

A lover of books, a man of active brain and penetrative thought, his chief delight was in exploring every promising avenue in quest of valuable knowledge. This tended to keep him largely from the ordinary active business pursuits of life and make him appear reserved and retiring in his manners. But he was a man of warm and tender heart, of high and worthy purpose, a lover of justice and all right things—a lover of God and man—a deeply devoted lover of Christ and his gospel.

Religiously inclined and educated by religious parents amid favoring religious surroundings, he early united with the Methodist Church, of which his father was a minister. In California, in the mining camp, he for the first time heard the religious principles of the Latter Day Saints explained, and he at once perceived they were in harmony with the Holy Scriptures in a most eminent degree. He prosecuted his investigations of them thoroughly, and in time, accepted them heartily and became a member of that church and in due time a minister.

His soul thirsted after the things of God; and as a consequence he grew in grace and in the knowledge of God, and gave promise of great usefulness in building up the work of God among men. But our hopes in this direction were doomed; he has been called home by the Master and we are left to hope that he has passed on to wider fields of duty and progress; to higher joys and honors; to purer, holier conditions of life and being in the society of redeemed and exalted personages who have passed on before, with Christ Jesus the Captain of our salvation.

“After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well.” He sleeps in Jesus, who said, “I am the resurrection and the life;” and, “where I am, there shall my disciple be also.”

Source: The Saints' Herald - volume 36 (1889) p. 238-39 [The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints]