Harriet Victoria (Pierce) Fitchpatrick (1842-1906)

PIERCE, FITCHPATRICK, PEABODY, PRESCOTT, EVERHARD, MCCALL

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 4/9/2017 at 22:33:43

From Nevada Representative September 14, 1906

OBITUARY

DEATH OF MRS. J. A. FITCHPATRICK.

Mrs. Harriet Fitchpatrick, wife of Hon. J. A. Fitchpatrick, was stricken with apoplexy and resulting paralysis last evening during prayer meeting at the Presbyterian church, was carried home on a stretcher and died there a few minutes before midnight. She never spoke after her collapse at the church; but she gave signs of recognition to members of her family about her. The paralysis affected chiefly her right side, throat and respiratory organs, and it was the last effect which led to her speedy death. Her illness began about nine o'clock and she died so soon afterwards that for the most of people the first information they had of her illness was of her death. The shock to her family and friends and to the community was as great as can well happen incident to the sudden and of a much beloved and most representative woman.

Harriet Victoria Pierce was born January 18, 1842, in Onondaga county, New York; was married to Joseph A. Fitchpatrick at Ames in this county August 16, 1866, and died at Nevada September 13, 1906, aged 64 years, 7 months and 26 days. She moved with her family to Michigan when she was a child, from there to Black Hawk county, Iowa, when she was fourteen and to Ames when she was about twenty-two. Upon her marriage, Mr. Fitchpatrick being then county clerk, they came at once to Nevada, where they have since resided, and for the most of that time in the house which with its various enlargements and additions is still the Fitchpatrick homestead. She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lyman Pierce, both of whom have been deceased for many years; but surviving members of her father's family are her sisters, Mrs. Carrie Peabody, Miss Viola Pierce, and Mrs. Frank Prescott, and her brother Charles S. Pierce, all of Fresno, California. She leaves of her own family besides her husband, her son William P. Fitchpatrick, and her daughters Mrs. Viva Everhard, now in Michigan, and Genevieve, wife of County Attorney Ed. M. McCall.

Mrs. Fitchpatrick was a woman of rare consecration to the work that came in her way. Her home was one in which all who had no claim found welcome; her thoughtfulness for family and friends and for the needy and general good was characteristic; her devotion to the concerns of her church marked her whole life. Motherliness was her natural attribute, and the installation of religious teaching in the minds of the little children was her and their delight. Generation after generation of children of this community have gone to the Presbyterian Sunday school and there received from her their first ideas of religion other than those taught at their mothers' knees. She was always at the church services, always at the meetings of the aid society and of other organizations incident to the church, always at the weekly prayer meeting. When her own children were out of their babyhood, her neighbors' children profited from her motherly interest, and in later years her grand-children have never been certain where they belonged. Such a woman becomes essential in innumerable places; and what church or home or the children's homes will be without her, only experience will tell.

To those who knew Mrs. Fitchpatrick best there is singular appropriateness in the fact that the stroke which fell upon her should have done so in prayer-meeting. Indeed, her last words were spoken in prayer, and the prayer itself closed with a petition for forgiveness of her sins. We never knew that she had any sins; but the prayer was characteristic and in harmony with a life that had been spent as worthily as it was ended. And the suddenness of her death, shocking as it is, yet precludes any thought of continued suffering. All her life was useful; and when her work was done, her life ended. It is not to be believed that she would have had it ordered otherwise if she could have known.

The time for the funeral is not fixed at this writing, word from the California relatives being awaited; but it will not be until Monday or Tuesday.