Mary Ann (Sowers/Sours) Smay (1820-1915)

SOWERS, SOURS, SMAY, MACKEY, HAGUE, SERGEANT

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 4/9/2022 at 18:18:22

From Nevada Representative February 22, 1915 (page 1)

OBITUARY

"GRANDMA SMAY"

The funeral of the late Mrs. Absalom Smay was conducted Monday afternoon from the Lutheran church by the pastor, Rev. Shirck, assisted by Rev. Kissel of Fernald. There was a large attendance of friends to pay final tribute to a woman who had ben especially honored during a very long life, and the last rites were worthy of the subject and the occasion.

"Grandma" Smay, as for many years she had been familiarly known, was born Mary A. Sowers, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Balser Sowers at Madison, Virginia, April 19, 1830, and she died at Nevada, Iowa, February 19, 1915, aged 94 years and 10 months. She removed with her parents in girlhood to Indiana, and she was married to Absalom Smay at Marion in that state December 22, 1842. Mr. and Mrs. Smay continued to reside in Indiana through some of the earlier years of their married life; but in 1859 they migrated to Iowa and established themselves in what was then a most unsettled portion of Story county near Johnson's Grove in Richland township. There they pioneered, developed their farm, reared their children and commanded the unreserved esteem of their neighbors for about a third of a century and in the early '90s they quit the farm, moved to Nevada and built an occupied their home where it would be handiest to the Lutheran church, and where they lived most happily until the death of Mrs. Smay in 1909. After his death their already widowed daughter, Mrs. Sarah Mackey, made the home with and for th mother until she was accidentally killed by the cars in 1907. Since the last date Mrs. Smay had lived at the home of her only son William. When he died only a few weeks ago she was already stricken with her last illness, which was in fact old age, and her death at the home of her daughter-in-law has occurred, as appeared inevitable. Mrs. Smay is survived by only one of her three children, her daughter Elizabeth Ann, Mrs. Alonzo Hague, of Tacoma. She has also a sister, Mrs. Jane Sergeant, her daughter-in-law already note, her son-in-law, Mr. Hague, numerous grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. She was a woman who met modestly, but efficiently her responsibilities that came upon her as a wife and mother in a new country, and she lived to enjoy long the modest fruits of early industry. She was at her death the oldest woman in the county, and it has been with genuine reverence that she has been laid in her final rest.