Swigart, S. H.

SWIGART

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/22/2008 at 16:13:10

Maquoketa Sentinel
February 19, 1857

DEATH OF MR. S. H. SWIGART.

It is with the most painful feelings that we are called upon to record the death of a beloved brother, and recently the junior editor of this paper. He left Maquoketa in October last, in company with his wife, for Texas; arriving there he found the climate did not agree with him, and after a short sojourn of a few weeks to Richmond, on the Brazos river, returned North to visit with his wife’s Uncle, in Boonville, Missouri. His disease (bleeding of the lungs) continuing, the best of medical aid was procured, but all to no purpose; he died on Wednesday evening, Feb. 4th. His remains will be brought to Maquoketa for final interment.

That he is dead, we can hardly realize. A few short months ago, and he was at his post. Cut down in manhood’s prime, at the early age of five and twenty, how truthful is the saying portrayed, that “in the midst of life we are in death.” A kind brother is dead, a husband is dead, a son is dead. Oh! What a dark shadow it casts upon the hearth around which our hopes and affections centre! The world heeds it not; the wheels of business move on without a pause; the surges of active life hurry by without an ebb, and the sun shines brightly as ever. Yet there are desolate hearts which feel as though a pall of night were upon them; and a stricken mother who, though seated by her fireside, and with loved ones still around her, will miss evermore one bright and manly face, and think of her son far away in the land of strangers. A kind brother is dead! – What hours of care, and painful anxiety, and vigils, and prayers, and hopes, and fears, are contained in that brief sentence! A little cold, scarcely noticed, and then a cough, and then alarming symptoms of disease, and sad and fearful misgivings, and dark and gloomy forebodings, and then the sinking of the heart as hopes gave way to the terrible certainty that he must die. We felt that it must be so, yet scarcely dared whisper it to each other. He is gone. Never more will be compose a sentence, or clink the type in the bright stick that he loved so, and which has been his companion for years. Ah! Never, never, more! The film of death is on those eves, once so anxious to seek the copy. There was a conclusive shudder, a deep moan, and all was over. He is now beyond the reach of sorrow, pain, disease and death.