Oliver Perry Workman

WORKMAN

Posted By: Chuck Workman (email)
Date: 4/14/2009 at 22:53:19

Oliver Perry Workman died at the Oregon House, Yuba County, California, May 29th, 1877, of Consumption. Oliver P. Workman was 28 years, 10 months and 14 days old. He was buried in the Masonic Cemetery at Marysville,Yuba County California. He was born in Van Buren County, Iowa, July l5th, 1848, the son of Richard and Mary Ann Bowers Workman.

After obtaining a common English education at the district school, he attended the Bonaparte High School, then conducted by the popular educator, Prof. Ed Howe, where he made many friends and advanced rapidly in the branches pursued. Thinking a trip out West would improve his health and add much to his store of general knowledge, he went to California, where, for a while, he employed his time in visiting friends and seeing the varied scenery incident to that country, after which he returned to Iowa much improved in health.

Having resolved to make teaching his profession, he at once took steps to place himself at the front ranks by attending the famous North Missouri State Normal School, situated at Kirksville, Mo., where he not only made rapid progress, but also rendered valuale aid in the class exercises, the institution being so much crowded for a while that the large corps of teachers could not accomplish all the work before them. At this institution he graduated in the two years course and and received his diploma.

Returning home for a short visit to his parents and among his many friends, he bid adieu to the scenes of his childhood and started to California to engage in the profession of his choice. How well he succeeded is fully attested by the number of positions offered him in different schools, and by the testimony of Professor Steele, an old experienced practical educator, who was superintendent in the county in which he was engaged, who often said that "he was the model teacher of the county."

In addition to his reputation and success as a teacher, his sociability and manly upright course made him hosts of friends wherever he went; for who could ever become acquainted with Oliver, without going away his friend?

Kind, generous to a fault, true as the needle to the pole, always governed by principle, never swerving to the right or left for policy, and with a laudable ambition to succeed and be a man among men, he has left a record behind him of which his friends may justly feel proud and which does honor to any community in which his lot might be cast.

But he is gone; his work is over, his mission ended, and he who would have been the stay and comfort not only of his little family but of his parents in their declining years, has passed on before.

And while we may mourn over his untimely end, and think it hard that he should be stricken down at the very commencement of a life of usefullness and activity, severing friendships that had been formed in youth and continued through the more advanced years. Yet, there is a cheering thought that when life's fitful fever is o'er, in the bright hereafter we will meet our school-boy friend again, and there unite that broken friendship, to be continued throughout the circling ages of a vast eternity. He leaves behind a loving wife, Rachel Harper Workman and three young children, Eugene Girard, Richard and Mary; his parents, Richard and Mary Ann Workman and one brother, Girard W. Workman.