Mrs. Orra G. Henry d. 1903

HENRY, MURPHY, PHILLIPS, KAYS, BEARDSLEY

Posted By: Volunteer - Rich Lowe
Date: 3/9/2013 at 06:50:26

MRS. ORRA G. HENRY.
OBITUARY SKETCH.

Vernon, Iowa, April 19, 1899

I am eighty-four years of age at the time I write this, a short account of my past life.

I was the youngest, but one, of eleven children, and the only one now living.

I was raised to womanhood in the town of Ashfield, Franklin County, Massachusetts. At the age of nineteen I was married to Sylvester T. Henry of Brookfield, Orange County, Vermont.

I lived at the last named place four years when we, in the year 1838, emigrated to Iowa, then a territory. We lived two years in Bentonsport, then settled on a farm in Vernon township, where we have lived, with the exception of a few years in the town of Vernon, for sixty years.

I have been the mother of eleven children. Five have passed to the silence beyond, unknown. My husband died thirteen years ago in March last. I am waiting, waiting, for the same great change-will we be united in that world after death? Such an assurance has never been to me revealed - it is all a mystery.

Death has no terrors for me, it will be a happy release; when the burden of years and our faculties leave us, it is time to go.

In my endeavor to fulfill life's duties, I hope my children realize that my interest was always for their happiness and instruction. And now my hope is you all may be blessed with a happy life and with its blessings needful.

Good bye.

Orra Henry

The above letter to her children was written by Mrs. Orra Henry more than four years before she fell asleep and passed to join her husband and children gone before.

Mother Henry died some time in the morning hours of Tuesday, October 27, 1903, at the home of her youngest daughter, Susan, who is Mrs. Charles Murphy of Bentonsport. When her granddaughter, Sallie, went to her room at 7 o'clock she could not awaken her grandmother who had gone to that home from which no traveler ever wanders.

Funeral services were held Thursday at the Presbyterian church of Bentonsport, Rev. Chas. E. Perkins of Keosauqua officiating by request of the deceased. Craig Miller sang three beautiful solos, also by request. A Bentonsport choir, assisted by Mrs. Ed Smith of Bonaparte ably rendered several appropriate hymns.

The remains were interred beside the grave of her husband I the Bentonsport cemetery.

The children who are living and were present at the funeral are: - Volney Henry of Milton, Mrs. Susan Murphy of Bentonsport, and Sam F. Henry of Bonaparte. Mrs. Emily Phillips of Ottumwa and Mrs. Amelia Kays of Alexandria, Virginia, were unable to be present.

Thomas P. Henry died in January of 1900 and was living at Bonaparte when his mother wrote the above letter.

The pallbearers were her grandsons: Henry Phillips of Ottumwa, Orin Henry, Russell Henry, and Sylvester Murphy of Bentonsport. There are seventeen grandchildren and fourteen great-grandchildren living.

Mrs. Naomi Beardsley of Ithaca, New York, the eldest sister of Mrs. Henry died a short time before the above letter was written and was then ninety-eight years of age.

Mrs. Henry has recently been living with her son, Voleny, at Milton but had always hoped that she might die at the home of her daughter in Bentonsport where she had gone for a short visit only a few days before her death.

Source: Entler Scrapbook, vol. 4, Iowa Historical Library, Iowa City, IA