Hanna (Heath) Catterlin

CATTERLIN, HEATH

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler (email)
Date: 5/29/2008 at 09:42:34

Winterset Madisonian, Winterset, Iowa
December 4, 1896, page 3

Obituary

A Biographical Sketch of the Late Mrs. Hannah Catterlin.

Hannah Heath was born in Montgomery county, Ohio, September 27th, 1807, and died at the home of her son in Winterset, Iowa, November 29th, 1896, aged 89 years, 2 months and 2 days.

At the age of about 10 years she was converted under the ministry of Rev. John Strange, one of the great preachers of the early Methodist Episcopal church. She immediately united with the church, in whose fellowship and communion she remained until God took her to the ranks of the church triumphant in heaven.

On the 4th of January 1824, she was united in marriage to Mr. John Catterlin, near St. Marys, Ohio. Twelve children were born to them, two of whom died in infancy; two daughters died after they had married and gone to homes of their own, leaving eight children—five sons and three daughters—to mourn the loss of their mother.

In 1836 the family moved from Ohio to Adams county, Indiana, where they remained until the month of January, 1857, when Mother Catterlin, with her children, (the father having died in 1854), moved to Marion county, Iowa, remaining there until the fall of 1864, when the family came to Madison county, where she has since resided, broken only by occasional visits to her children in their widely scattered homes. She lived to see all her children settled in homes of their own, so that at her death she had, beside her own eight children, fifty grandchildren and sixty great-grandchildren, besides one great-great-grandchild.

She never changed her home without also bringing with her her credentials of church membership, and, unlike many church people in these latter days, she always united at the first opportunity with the church in her new home. She was one of the charter members of the church when it was made a station under the pastorate of Rev. C. C. Mabee, in 1865. And but few persons set the high estimate on the privilege of church membership that she placed upon it. The church was all and in all to her. She was a woman of large, catholic, fraternal spirit. She loved all churches and Christian people of every name.

As long as she could see she was a great reader. While the holy book of God was her great delight and constant companion, yet she did not cast aside the current literature of her time, hence she was a woman of marked intelligence, familiar with and deeply interested in current events; and especially in all those great movements which involved national interests and the progress of the Redeemer’s Kingdom at home and abroad.

On last Saturday evening, her pastor, Rev. Fred Harris prayed with her for the last time, and although then dying and unable to articulate, she kept her hand moving up and down and expressed her final victory by moving it upward. When the final moment came she fell asleep in Jesus.