Baker, Cynthia (Ike) 1839-1908

BAKER, HYATT

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes (email)
Date: 9/15/2012 at 15:32:13

The Grinnell (IA) Herald; Oct. 30, 1908

CYNTHIA BAKER

Cynthia (Ike) Baker, who died at her home on south Broad street, on Tuesday, September 22, was born at Port Jefferson, Ohio, on April 20, 1839. Her parents died when she was but nine years old, and she was taken into the home of her aunt, Mrs. John Hyatt, with whom she moved to the vicinity of Grinnell, Iowa, in 1854. She was joined in marriage to P.W. Baker on January 20, 1856, and they at once settled on a farm which he had purchased in Jasper county in the neighborhood of Kellogg, Iowa. Their dwelling for the first summer was a board shanty on the prairie and when winter came, they moved into the cellar of the house which they had prepared to build. Their first crop was destroyed by a prairie fire. Thus she was called upon to endure some of the hardships of pioneer life, which she did with the cheerfulness that characterized her whole life.

In 1868 she and her husband joined the Seventh Day Adventist church and from that time until her death she has remained a faithful and most active member. She dedicated her only son, W.L.H. Baker, to the missionary work in that denomination, and he is now elder for a large district in Australia, having his home at Melbourne. Besides this, she has given largely of her means to the support of the church at home and abroad, having assisted about twenty-five young people in their course of schooling in preparation for missionary work. She was a regular contributor to the Life Boat Mission in Chicago and the Orphans' Home at Council Bluffs. She was also a life member of the Mount Lawn Fresh Air Home for Children on the Hudson, the Foundlings Home at Ottumwa, Iowa, and the Hillcrest School Farm at Nashville, Tenn., of the last of which she was one of the founders and to which she just recently gave $500.

Could you have known her or listened to the testimony of the many neighbors who have shared with her the use of her well, her basement, her f?e-box, her church and home, you would realize how inadequate these lines are to express the value of her life to the world, and how greatly she will be missed. Truly, "She hath done what she could."