Elizabeth Laird ? - 1868

LAIRD

Posted By: A.M.W. (email)
Date: 3/16/2006 at 22:17:15

Mt. Pleasant Journal August 21, 1868

Mrs. Elizabeth A. Laird, wife of Joseph A. Laird of Wayne Township, Henry County, Iowa, died at her country home on Monday morning June 29, 1868 after a lingering illness since the first of April, last.

The subject of this writing was a woman of rare qualities—gifted in a good degree above most of persons in the commonest walks of life---especially in the particulars that make a good church member, neighbor, friend, wife, and mother. And, in each of these relations her example might be imitated with safety. Her departure is mourned by all who were connected with her in these several conditions of life as was attested by the numerous processing that attended her coffin to the place of sepulture.

Mrs. Laird was an invalid from early life, and was almost constantly admonished by her physical feebleness of a need of fitness for death, which led her to seek an intimacy with, and a close walk by the side of the atoning Savior. As a Christian, under such discipline, she had acquired great maturity in a life of trust and devotion, so that the threatening of dissolution awakened no alarm in her case but she was enabled to meet all the events of life with comparative reconciliation to the will of God. She maintained a meek and cheerful spirit throughout her last painful sickness and a marked feature of her experience towards the close was her complete resignation to Him whose will can never err.

When consumption first grasped with a death-hold upon her, she flattered herself with a hope of recovery. Several days however, before the close of her earthly career, she became conscious there was no remedy for her, and she gave her husband, who was soon watching over her, with eager solicitude witnessing the conquest of the disease, and the triumphs of grace, along with her little daughters—Minnie and Lizzie—to the care of a gracious Providence for time and eternity.

Her remains were deposited in the burying ground attached to Asbury Chapel, M.E. Church, near her late comfortable home.