Buckley, Nettie (Williams) 1859-1889

BUCKLEY, WILLIAMS

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 4/6/2011 at 16:09:57

The Grinnell (IA) Herald

OBITUARY

The word that Nettie Williams Buckley was dead came with awful suddenness to her many friends in Grinnell last Thursday morning--to the friends she first won as a child here--to her school and college friends, and to the younger ones who knew her as their teacher-friend.

Mrs. Buckley was the oldest daughter of H.W. Williams, and was born in Grinnell July 22, 1859, and baptised Nov. 10, 1860. After graduating from the high school, she entered the classical course in college with the class of '82, but was obliged to discontinue her studies at the close of the sophomore year, owing to ill health. A year's rest in Ohio restored her strength and in the fall of 1882 she entered the Chicago Musical College, from which she graduated. Then coming back to Grinnell she taught the music which she so dearly loved to a class of pupils to whom she was more than a teacher.

December 30, 1885, she was married to Parke Buckley, of Stawberry Point, a graduate from the college in the class of '81. Since that event the tone of her letters from "The Farm" have told of the cheeriness and contentment which came naturally to her from the home of which she was the center. Last summer she sustained serious injuries in a runaway. She seemed to recover, but during a recent illness the effects of the injuries received were evident, but no serious doubts as to her recovery were entertained, and she seemed steadily gaining. Wednesday evening, Jan. 30, after taking her supper in her reclining chair, she said, "I feel perfectly comfortable." A few minutes later she spoke of feeling a little nervous and wishing to go to sleep, and asked Mr. Buckley to come to her. He started almost instantly, but before he could reach her there was a little gasp, and the light had gone out. This is a brief outline of what to the world were the principal events of her life, but to her friends it reads otherwise. To them it was a life full of little acts of devotion in her home, of tireless energy as a student, of constant and ever ready sympathy as a friend, of earnest christian living. Hers was a life that always filled full a large measure of usefulness-the influence of such a life cannot die. G.M.W.