Sanders, Mary Steele 1842-1909

SANDERS, STEELE

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 1/18/2012 at 08:20:22

The Grinnell Herald; March 12, 1909

MRS. MARY STEELE-SANDERS

It was only a few weeks ago that Mrs. Sanders left our rugged climate to make a new home with her husband and her youngest son in the land of beautiful flowers, of luscious fruits and of balmy air. She missed her Grinnell friends and made new ones, was happy in California and enjoyed ususal health. She retired to rest last Thursday evening about ten o'clock, after an hour or more of reading alone. Not long afterward, the husband, conscious of something unpleasant, inquired, "What is the matter, Mary?"

"I am trying not to cough," she replied. "I can scarcely breathe."

The doctor was called. He found her pulse one hundred and forty. Medicine was given every ten minutes. She was quiet. The husband spoke to her. No response. Thursday ended and her earthly life with it Friday, and her's was a life in a new world.

Her first twenty-six years were passed in Arcade, N.Y., in the home of her father, Alonzo Steele. There she, at the age of eleven, saw her mother, a woman of rare intelligence and excellence, buried.

In Grinnell she was married to Geo. Lucius Sanders, in 1871, her children William Steele and Charles Lucius, were born here where her father died a few years ago more suddenly than she. Here she made a sweet home for husband and children, and frequent guests, some of them for a long time. Here, too, she dropped into church and benevolent work with sincerest sympathy, as a deaconess, as treasurer of the Ladies' Education Society, member of executive committee of the Iowa Branch, and as a friend of Home Missions. She found congenial companionship in the Elizabeth Earle Magoun Club, and left on all an impression of sincerest good will. Indifferent to methaphysical subtleties, and careless of criticisms that would cast shadows on the words of the evangelists concerning the Master, she yielded to His authority and gave her heart to Him as "the way, the truth, and the life," ready to serve here, and ready to go at His call.

A farewell service, led by her pastor, was held on last Friday in Modesto, her home, and attended by her children and grandchildren; and another was held here yesterday morning, conducted by her great uncle, Professor L.F. Parker.
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Brief funeral services were held yesterday morning at 9:30 over the remains of Mrs. G.L. Sanders, which arrived from California Wednesday night. The services were conducted by Prof. L.F. Parker in the Kibby & Adams undertaking rooms. The pallbearers were Professor Charles Noble, D.S. Morrison, Rev. W.O. Willard, I. M. Harrington and D.R. Warburton. The remains were interred at Hazelwood.

Those who accompanied the remains from Califronia were the bereaved husband, G.L. Sanders, Mr. and Mrs. W.S. Sanders and sons.