Bertha Holland Spence

HOLLAND, SPENCE

Posted By: Fran Hunt Volunteer
Date: 10/10/2001 at 07:12:12

BERTHA HOLLAND SPENCE
Bertha May Holland was born near Milton Iowa, April 11, 1879. Her early life was lived on the old farm amid the scenes of rural life where she early evidenced the womanly qualities and sweetness of disposition for which she was so generally loved. At thirteen years of age she was converted and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church of which she remained a faithful and devoted member to the time of her call to the Church Triumphant. She was graduated from the Milton High School with the class of 1897 and in the fall of 1899, entered the Iowa Wesleyan College at Mt. Pleasant and for two years pursued the course of music but was finally compelled by failing health to give up her studies and return home.
On New Years Day, 1903, she was united in marriage to Dr. William E. Spence and thus the playmates of childhood were made love-mates for life. In the spring of the same year, Bertha’s health again failed and upon the advice of a physician, they sought a milder climate, moving in July to Deming New Mexico. The change seemed beneficial, and to all appearances the vigor of health rewarded the move. But the germs of disease were doing their deadly work and three weeks ago, there came another relapse. On Monday of last week she was brought home by loving hands, and on Thursday morning answered the summons to a higher and better life.
She talked and planned all winter with her husband of a joyous homecoming in June, but the homecoming proved, as in the case of Howard, a return to the old home to get a start for the Home above. A few hours before she fell asleep she said to a brother, “Lift me up, I will soon be in Heaven. I am so tired and want to go. There I can rest.” She leaves her husband; her father, Mr. E.C. Holland, four brothers and an uncounted host of relatives and friends.
The funeral was held at the M.E. Church at 2 p.m. conducted by Rev. J.F. Barnett assisted by Rev. J. Wesley Potter. The P.E.O. Sisterhood, of which she was a member, also assisted and marched in a body to the New Cemetery where she was tenderly laid to rest. I am not related and am posting this obituary for those who might find this person in their family history.