James Eber Bigger
BIGGER, ACRES, SCHULTZ, MCKEE
Posted By: Carrie Robertson (email)
Date: 1/1/2017 at 13:23:41
Sunday December 2, 1917 Cedar Rapids Republican
James Eber Bigger was born January 13, 1889 and died November 28, 1917 on the farm two and a half miles southeast of Marion, where his father and mother had lived and died and where he had passed all the years of his life.
It was the last of the old homesteads between Marion and Mt. Vernon, occupied one of the children of a pioneer who had founded it. He was the youngest of a family of seven children, all of which reached the age of maturity, and of whom none now remains except Mrs. Alice Secrist of Marion.
His father and mother, of sacred memory--Joseph and Frances Bigger, were early settlers of Linn county, and as farm back as 1849 the Bigger home was noted for its hospitality and good cheer, and thru the years it has maintained that character to the honor and pride of the family and by the heritage left to this youngest son. He was always a good boy, and therefore a good man, good to his widowed mother, to his brothers and sisters, to his neighbors, to his hired help, to the community, to everybody.
He had a great pride in the old home and its traditions [can't read next part], that he shoudl chose fo a life, companion and helpmate, one [can't read] by nature and education to ensure and enhance his home ideals. So on February 7, 1890, he was married to a girl of an adjoining neighborhood, Miss Lizzie M. Schultz, who not only met the requirements, but gave dignity and grace to the station of home-maker, wife and mother.
To this union were born four children, Ethel, Marie, aged 1[?] years, James Lawrence, 14; Julius Wayne, 12, and Gladys Louise, 10, who with their mother survive the deceased. Two half sisters are also living, Mrs. Mary L. McKee of Salisbury, Mo, and Mrs. Elizabeth [??] of Shenandoah, Ia. Eber Bigger, as he was generally known, was decidedly a home man. His home was his joy and pride, his refuge and retread, his inspiration and treasure house. In the love and companionship of wife and children he found his real heaven on earth. He lived for them and in them. As husband and father he as the embodiment of kindness, affection and thoughtfulness. Love was indeed the architect and [can't read] of his home. While industrious and successful in his business affairs, he was never subservient to the spirit of commercialism, but bought for himself and his children those things that were edifying and [??].
He was a member of the Methodist church of Marion, and while modest in his public profession, yet with his family and friends, in his daily walk he lived a beautiful and consistent Christian life. His life in retrospect, stands out clean and graphic, centered in and devoted to his family and unmarred at any place by unkindness, unfairness, disloyalty or deception.
The legacy of such a life is without price. To the bereaved widow it will be a lasting comfort and consolation, and to the orphaned children an enduring inspiration and benediction.
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