Nancy Melissa (Daniels) Shannon (1816-1911)

DANIELS, SHANNON, CHAPMAN, MITCHELL, FOURT

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 11/22/2016 at 22:28:37

From Nevada Representative August 29, 1911

OBITUARY

DEATH OF MRS. SHANNON

Mrs. Nancy M. Shannon died Saturday afternoon at the home in this city of her niece, Mrs. Hannah C. Mitchell, where she had had her home for the past dozen years. She had attained the great age of 95 years and until the past year or two had been decidedly sprightly. For several months, however she had bee failing and the end had been obvious for some time before it finally came. Her life was remarkable. Born in 1816, she was married when she was sixteen, had her one son before she was twenty, had been a widow since she was twenty-one, had lost her son when he was sixty-four, had far outlived all of her own generation, but had happily found a home for her last years with her niece in Nevada.

Nancy Melissa Daniels was born on a farm near Batavia, New York May 5, 1816, and she died as Mrs. Shannon at Nevada, Iowa August 26, 1911, aged 95 years, 3 months and 2 days.

Her father, Mark Daniels of Danville, Vermont, had removed to Batavia shortly after his marriage to Nancy Chapman of Montpelier, Vermont. He again removed when his daughter was a child to Rochester, New York, where he established a barrel factory on the bank of the still incomplete Erie canal; and one of the earliest recollections of the young girl was the opening of the Erie canal in 1825, in the exercises of which President John Quincy Adams, Governor Dewitt Clinton and the Marquis de Lafayette participated. Schools were scattered in those early days and much of her education was secured from her parents and the library which her father had gathered together, a book at a time. History was a favorite study of hers and her interest in it remained keen until the end.

Ten or twelve years later Mark Daniels removed westward with his family, tarrying for a time in Akron, Ohio, and in St. Louis, finally settling at Pekin, Illinois, where he opened a general store and where Melissa Daniels was married August 7, 1832 to Robert Emmett Shannon, a young lawyer of Irish extraction. Her mother died soon after and her father moved to the vicinity of Plainfield, Illinois. In 1835 her son, Junius W. Shannon, was born and two years later her husband died. She then returned to her father's and kept his house till his death in 1846. For a number of years thereafter she taught school in Sterling and other points in Illinois, her brightest and most cherished pupil being her son. Later he read law in the office of Miles Henry in Sterling and was admitted to the bar in Iowa. The call of journalism was stronger, however, than that of the law and he founded and edited the West Union Iowa Gazette, and later took charge of the Huronite and Huron, South Dakota. In 1896 he was made managing editor of the Statesman Press of Marshalltown, Iowa. Mrs. Shannon mad her home with him during all these years, but he died in 1899. In the previous year she had came to Nevada, Iowa to make her home with her niece, Mrs. Mitchell, where she died as stated.

She is survived by a grandson, Edwin Spencer Shannon of Wessington, South Dakota, and a grand-daughter, Mrs. Fanny Fourt of Fairfield, Iowa. In spite of several months of failing physical health, her mind remained clear and active almost to the day of her death.

Mrs. Shannon's funeral was conducted from the Adventist church Monday afternoon by Elder J. C. Clemons. Friends from abroad who were here for the funeral were Mrs. F. A. Moscrip and daughter Miss Muriel from Marshalltown, the former being a grand-niece of Mrs. Shannon, and also Lebbeus Mitchell, who had remained at the Mitchell home during the last weeks of Mrs. Shannon's illness. The interment was in the Bixby lot of the Nevada cemetery.