MERCHANT, Elizabeth 1807-1890

MERCHANT

Posted By: Marilyn O'Connor (email)
Date: 2/8/2006 at 09:36:10

Mrs Elizabeth Merchant, aged eighty three years, died at Rockford, Iowa, August 7. Her husband and eleven sons served in the Union army. In commenting on her death the Rockford Register says:

Thus, after having lived out far more than the allotted span of human life, this aged mother has passed to her final rest. Her name will go down into history and be long remembered, as that of the only woman in this great country who ever gave a husband and eleven sons to her country’s service in its hour of peril.

The Woman’s Relief Corps. of which the deceased was a member, conducted their funeral ritual and strewd the coffin with beautiful flowers.

We understand that Congressmen Sweney and Henderson were both trying hard to get a fitting pension; but old as she lived to be, she died too soon; this is not now needed. If the government wishes to do anything, let it erect a fitting monument over her grave with the record of her patriotism inscribed on imperishable granite.

[Osage News Sept. 18, 1890]