Chase, Harriet Bell (1838-1884)

CHASE, BELL, MIRACLE, ANDREWS, MORSE

Posted By: Debbie Greenfield (email)
Date: 11/21/2016 at 17:35:10

Hamilton Freeman, Webster City, Iowa, Wednesday, May 14, 1884

THE DEATH OF MRS. JUDGE CHASE

This sad but long expected event occurred on Wednesday forenoon of last week, and was only briefly announced in the FREEMAN of that date. It is of course a familiar fact, not only to the citizens of our town and county, but to hundreds throughout the State, that Mrs. Chase had been for several years suffering from that most dreaded and malignant disease - cancer. A person of less determination and endurance, or of less physical constitution, would long ago have succumbed to the power of this wasting destroyer. But she bore her sufferings with the greatest fortitude - striving by her own strong will, seconded at every point by the highest medical skill, and the tenderest ministrations of her friends - to throw off the coils of the terrible fate which had too completely surrounded her. The unequal struggle, however, became simply a matter of time, the only question in the case being - "How long can she last". It is very sad, but it only illustrates the weakness of all human science and skill, that a disease like this, so wearying, wearing and wasting, utterly baffles all efforts to stay its progress and that in addition to the thousands whom it has sent down to the welcome rest of the grave, it has other thousands in its fell grasp, and will destroy other thousands in time to come.

Mrs. Chase may truly be said to have been one of the early settlers of Webster City, though the town was two or three years old and contained 300 or more inhabitants when Judge Chase settled here in 1858. They came here soon after their marriage and have resided here ever since. Good fortune attended them until Mrs. Chase was stricken with this fatal disease, and none in our community have been accorded a higher social position. Mrs. Chase was a woman of education and intelligence, possessing a clear, bright intellect, and much force of character. She would have become noted in any direction in which her tastes might have led her to higher cultivation and greater effort, but her ambition was centered as that of the good wife and mother always are - in her own home and the comfort and welfare of those nearest and dearest to her. Her life was one of much self-denial - carrying ever with her the highest sense of the duty she felt she owed to others. It was not until quite recent years that she allowed herself freely to enjoy the general society to which she would have always been so cordially welcomed. But while she was thus ever solicitous for the welfare of those of her own home circle, she was a person of most kindly impulses, firm and abiding in her friendships, generous in the estimate she placed upon others, and with ever an encouraging, appreciative word for those who were striving and deserving. Outside of her own family relationships, she had a wide circle of friends who have been filled with the keenest sorrow over her mournful fate. Few invalids in any community have been the subjects of deeper general solicitude - though years have passed since it became evident that her malady was a mortal one.

"She died lamented, in the strength of life,
A valued mother and a faithful wife.
Called not away, when time had loosed each hold
On the fond heart, and each desire grew cold.
Not when the ills of age, its pains, its care,
The drooping spirit for its fate prepare,
And, each affection failing, leaves the heart
Loosed from life's charm, and willing to depart,
But when to all that knit us to our kind
She felt fast bound as charity can bind"

During the long illness of his wife, and now that she has so prematurely and so sadly passed away, Judge Chase has had the most sincere and heartfelt sympathy wherever he is known. He has been a constant attendant at her bedside, his efforts to mitigate her suffering and to restore her to health, absorbing every faculty of his mind and every element of his nature. It has been a prolonged, terrible strain, thus to see the wife of his youth so gradually but so surely fading away into the silent land, and feel himself so utterly powerless to invoke any sort of relief. His own suffering could have been little less than that of the stricken invalid herself. But it is a blessed consolation that when the end came, it was quiet and painless. There was no agony - no suffering.

"They thought her dying when she slept
And sleeping when she died"

Mrs. Chase was born in Perry, N.Y. on the 14th day of Jan., 1838, and was therefore 46 years of age. Her maiden name was Harriet E. Bell, and she was the second daughter of Col. Ralph Bell. A husband, an only son, three sisters - Mrs. Judge Miracle, Mrs. J. H. Andrews, of Boone, and Mrs. S.E. Morse, of New Woodstock, N.Y., and two brothers, Jerry and Ralph Bell, are left to mourn their irreparable loss, while the sincerest sympathies of all who have known the family for many years past go out towards them in this hour of their sad and overwhelming bereavement.