Carmichael, Harriet Marie Bonebright Closz (1861-1940)

CARMICHAEL, BREWER, BONEBRIGHT, CLOSZ

Posted By: Debbie Greenfield (email)
Date: 9/20/2016 at 15:36:56

Daily Freeman Journal, Webster City, Iowa, Monday, September 9, 1940

PIONEER DIES AFTER ILLNESS OF FEW MONTHS

Mrs. Harriet Carmichael, 79, Was Teacher and a Writer

Mrs. Harriet Carmichael, 79, granddaughter of Wilson Brewer, founder of Newcastle, now Webster City, died at her home 220 Ohio street, at 2 a.m. today, death being caused by ailments incident to old age.

She had been in failing health for several months, but had been seriously ill only a week.

Funeral services will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Foster funeral home.

Harriet Marie Bonebright, was born in this city Feb. 26, 1861, her parents being Thomas and Sarah Brewer Bonebright. She attended the public school in this city and began teaching school at the age of 16. At that time B.S. Baker was county superintendent.

She was married to Theobald Closz May 8, 1879 and to this union one daughter, Inez Rosalie, was born. She died in infancy.

In 1893, they moved to Chicago where she became a free lance magazine and newspaper writer. She returned to this city in 1900.

She was later graduated from the Palmer school of chiropractic shortly before her sixtieth birthday.

In 1921 she wrote a book of reminiscences on pioneering, which was conceded by historical critics to be a classic and is an authority in its time for school textbooks.

About the same time she adopted a son, Jean Gilbert Johnston, whom she reared to young manhood and who survives her.

Mr. Closz died several years ago and she was united in marriage Aug. 31, 1926, to George A. Carmichael, of Clarion, who died Feb. 17, 1937.

For five years she was the official United States weather and crop reporter for this community. During 1933 she and her husband returned to the old Brewer homestead, her birthplace, to help care for her brother, the late F.A. Bonebright, whose health was failing.

In the spring of 1933 Mrs. Carmichael and Mr. Bonebright founded a Pioneer memorial which comprises a museum housed in a hewed log cabin built by their grandfather, Wilson Brewer, the first settler here in 1849. There is also an eight acre tract, now Wilson Brewer park, located at the old homestead.

This memorial to their ancestors was jointly donated by these grandchildren to the city of Webster City to be preserved for future generations.

This pioneer woman helped care for her brother and his wife through sickness and death and likewise shouldered the responsibilities of the household, business activities, maintaining the pioneer exhibit and entertaining visitors in her capacity of caretaker for the museum.

Mrs. Carmichael had an insatiable thirst for knowledge and an indomitable desire to accomplish some lasting good along life's highway. She stated that such wishes usually failed to materialize, but she gained great hope and inspiration through straining for an ideal.

She wished her funeral arrangements to be simple. She had requested that some friend speak a few words at her bier, suggesting that Maj. F.J. Lund, a long time friend of the family, be asked to do this. She also asked that her body be cremated and her ashes scattered upon the soil of the old homestead or be permitted to find a resting place beside the remains of her parents on the site of the first Brewer log cabin at Trail's End, burial plot in Wilson Brewer park.