Stone, Homer B. & Lucy (Lindsley) d. 1896 & 1897

STONE, LINDSLEY, EASTMAN

Posted By: Barbara Hug (email)
Date: 7/24/2003 at 07:24:10

Old Settlers Gone

Those of our older citizens, who lived in Newton during the dark days of the war and until 1866, will remember Mr. and Mrs. H. B. Stone, parents of Mrs. Jas. W. Eastman, Elbert Stone and Hi Stone, the latter of whom was killed by the Indians on the plains of Wyoming while making a trip form this city to the far west in 1864. The old people recently died at their home in Des Moines, he nearly 88 years of age and she in her 90th year. The main particulars we glean from Tuesday’s Register.

Near the death of the old year and the birth of the new there passed away a couple of old residents of Des Moines and pioneers of Iowa – Homer Bishop Stone and his wife Lucy. Both were natives of Litchfield, Conn., of English ancestry extending back to the Hartford and New Haven colonies. Mr. Stone was born May 22nd, 1808, and Mrs. Stone, whose maiden name was Lucy Lindsley, August 28, 1806. They were married March 2, 1828; in 1838 moved to western New York, which was then to New England, the far west. They soon after moved to Coldwater, Mich., then a new and wild country, and thence moved to eastern Indiana. In 1844 they made their last western migration, and settled near Oskaloosa, Iowa. Here Mr. Stone Pre-empted land and with his family endured all the hardships of pioneer life, living first in a tent, then a rude hut, and afterwards in a most pretentious log house, which was during those early days a home of hospitality alike for neighbors, travelers, and especially Methodist preachers, the zealous circuit riders of pioneer days.

Mr. Stone moved to Des Moines from Newton in 1866, purchased a home and ground on the east side near the capitol, where the venerable pair have lived to see this spot which in the first settlement of the country was known as Fort Des Moines at the Raccoon Forks, grow into a city, a railroad centre and a metropolis of business, wealth and culture. After a brief period of decline succeeding an apoplectic attack, Grandma Stone passed away the day before Christmas. Grandpa Stone, whose life had become so interwoven with that of the faithful and devoted wife, who had been his almost daily companion for near three score years and ten, that he could scarcely bear to have her out of his sight, pined away in his loneliness and feebleness of age until without sickness or pain his last breath went out as in a gentle slumber on Monday the 6th inst. (of this month), at the residence of their only daughter, Mrs. James W. Eastman, with whom the old couple had been living for a few years past. They had lived to have nearly a dozen great grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren scattered over the farther and newer great west. The oldest son was a pioneer of Colorado, the third of Montana and who, in the prime of his life, fell victim of the murderous Indians on the plains of Wyoming. Few lives are ever rounded out with the length of days filled with comfort, peace and domestic happiness of Grandpa and Grandma Stone. ~ The Newton Record, Friday, January 17, 1896, Page 1, Column 2