Baker, William (1828-1901)

BAKER, MILLER, WATSON

Posted By: C Tucker (email)
Date: 7/23/2017 at 11:12:32

Evening Times Republican
Marshalltown, IA [Saturday 8-10-1901] p. 7

FOUND DEAD IN HIS BED

William Baker, an Old Resident of the County, Expires Very Suddenly

Called by His Daughter This Morning and 15 Minutes Later Is Dead

Heart Disease Assigned as the Cause -- Comrades Search for a Friend's Mother

Death came suddenly and apparently without pain or a struggle this morning to William Baker, one of the older residents of the city, and well known thruout the county as a pioneer. Mr. Baker died at about 7 o'clock at the home of his daughter, Mrs. C. S. Miller, 606 East Church street, where he had been living for the past few years. Mrs. Miller called her father, as is her usual morning custom, at about 6:45 o'clock, and he answered the summons as usual. Breakfast was awaited until Mr. Baker could get dressed and down stairs, but as he was a trifle slower than usual Mrs. Miller called him again. This time she received no response and, going to his room, found him dead. A physician was summoned, but after a hasty examination pronounced life absolutely extinct, with heart failure as the cause.

William Baker was born on Aug. 28, 1828, in Hamilton county, Ohio, near Cincinnati. He came "west", as it was then termed in 1862, stopping in Indiana for three years and coming to Marshalltown in the spring of 1865. Five years later he removed to a farm one and one-half miles south of town, where he resided until 1895, when he moved back to the city. His wife died in this city on May 16, 1897.

Mr. Baker leaves as members of his immediate family two sons and three daughters. Messrs. Charles A. and Edward D. Baker and Mrs. C. S. Miller reside in this city, while the other two daughters, Mrs. Theodore H. Watson and Miss Emma Baker, live in Des Moines. A younger brother, Enos Baker, the last of the family of eight children, also survives him, and is a resident of Irving Park, Chicago. A rather peculiar circumstance in connection with Mr. Baker's death is the fact that all of the eight children of his father's family have died one or two years apart, in exact order as regarded their age, Mr. Baker being the next youngest of the family.

The funeral will be conducted Sunday afternoon at 4:30 o'clock from the home of the deceased's son, Charles A. Baker, 602 East Church street. Rev. F. W. Parsons, of the First Baptist church, will officiate.