Pangborn, Joseph Phillips

PANGBORN

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 11/11/2007 at 19:44:05

Maquoketa Excelsior
October 31, 1867

A Tribute to the Dead.

It has pleased the Supreme Ruler of the Universe to call from the shores of time, the bosom of a beloved family and the society of devoted friends our friend and neighbor Joseph Phillips Pangborn. I am sensible that no effort of mine could pay an adequate tribute to the ennobling traits of character which has ever distinguished him in all his intercourse and associations with men. – but he is dead. He had been sick but a few days. His physicians, Dr. L. L. Hague, together with numerous friends done all that could be done to alleviate his sufferings, but all to no avail. He expired Wednesday evening, July 31st, at his residence in Brown’s Valley, with congestion of the brain. Mr. Pangborn was born in Vermont, and was at the time of his death, aged 36 years 11 months and 20 days. His parents emigrated to Iowa in an early day, where his father, brothers and sisters still remain. The deceased came to California in 1819, and was among the pioneer settlers of Brown’s Valley, where he married and leaves a family and a host of warm hearted friends to mourn his loss. We feel that the community has lost a true friend and a benevolent and noble hearted man, and that the Good Templars, an Order to which he was an active member, has also lost a sincere and worth brother. The members of the Order took charge of his remains and on Friday, August 24, all business houses in the place were closed; also, the superintendents of the different Quartz mills caused a suspension of operation in token of respect to his memory, in which vocation as a miner he was well versed. His remains were taken to the church, which was densely crowded, and at 9 o’clock a.m. service was had by the Rev. Mr. Parkhurst, thence to the grave yard, where we paid our last tribute of respect of all that was mortal of our friend and brother. Seldom have we witnessed so large a concourse of people, and the heart felt sorrow manifested by all would indicate that he died without an enemy. We feel that he has left to those that loved and admired him a name which they will hereafter fondly cherish, and may the trusting faith of the Christian, so beautifully sublime in its perfect resignation to the will of Providence, enable the doting wife and beloved children who had looked to him for a sustaining arm, to feel that “He doeth all things well.” Who is prepared to say that his sun went down too soon? We have paid the last tribute to his worth, and have borne him to the grave and left him wrapped in its quiet slumbers. We look upon his tomb, and there his once active form lies cold and still, robed in the habiliments of the grave; his genial eye is closed, and his hand so wont to grasp our own, is still and calm in death; the soul which inspired it has fled; his cheek is no longer flushed with hope, and he has no part in any thing that is done on earth. How forcibly this event reminds us that we are but voyagers on the stormy ocean of life; and we feel that he has only crossed the ocean of time to another land and a fairer climb and that his spirit will rise above the din and mists of the earth, and float amid the sunlight of heaven.
Wm. M.J.
Brown’s Valley
August 2nd, 1867