Sarah Margaret Duff (1921)

DUFF, DONNELLY

Posted By: Mary Welty Hart (email)
Date: 3/1/2008 at 10:59:14

Winterset Madisonian, Winterset, Iowa
September 28, 1921

SARAH M. DUFF

Sarah Margaret Duff was the fourth in a family of five children born to James and Nellie Donnelly Duff. She was born among the beautiful hills and vales of Guernsey county, Ohio, Dec. 8, 1844. Here her early life was spent until 1858, when her parents left their early home and taking their children in emigrant wagons, crossed Ohio, Indiana and Illinois to found a home on the prairies of Jackson township, Madison county, Iowa. Wild beasts were not scarce and Indians were plentiful in the surrounding country.

Growing to womanhood, she took up school teaching, which work she pursued for years. When not engaged in teaching, she followed culinary arts and her reputation went far and wide as one very capable in them. She made a public profession of her faith in Christ, May 16, 1874 and was for years a teacher in the Sabbath school of Union church, now Pitzer. For years she kept home with her older sister, Elizabeth, in the old home. When the sister "went away", as she would say, six years ago, she was not content at all, except that she continue the home as before. In her home was held the first meeting for the organization of a young people's society for the church of which she was a member.

Of her immediate family she is survived by her only brother, Robert Duff of Earlham. She passed from the visible into the greater invisible, Friday evening, Sept. 16, 1921, aged 76 years, 9 months and 8 days.
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Earlham Echo
Earlham, Iowa
Thursday, September 22, 1921

Miss Sarah Margaret Duff, who has lived alone a short distance northeast of Pitzer for many years, passed away Friday in her 76th year after a gradual decline in health. She was the only living sister of Robert Duff, of this town. Funeral services were held Sunday, and burial was in Pitzer Cemetery.