PICKETT, Mrs. Belinda C.: 1823-1898

PICKETT, COOLEY, BUSHONG

Posted By: Volunteer: Sherri
Date: 8/22/2013 at 05:37:04

OBITUARIES.

Notice appeared in our columns at the time of the death of Mrs. Belinda C. Pickett. We are now enabled to present a more extended obituary.

Belinda Cooley was born in Athens county, Ohio, Sept. 16, 1823, where her home remained for twenty-two years. On Dec. 20, 1840, she was married to James Pickett, and something less that five years later, or in 1845, she came to Iowa with her husband, two sons and her parents. The family settled in the town of Lebanon, in Van Buren county, where, with the exception of two years spent in California, her home continued to be fixed until she passed to the home immortal.

Many of the best lives are uneventful, and the biography of Mrs. Pickett would contain no dramatic passages. She was a consistent, pure-hearted, duty-doing christian woman, always leaving the effects of her unaffected goodness all about her as she passed along her way.

In childhood she became a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and died in its communion. There was in her temper and disposition little of the merely sectarian, and she enjoyed the friendship and fellowship of Christians of other bodies than her own. To her family she was wholly devoted, making their comfort and welfare not only her constant charge but her unfailing delight. The poor and needy found in her a friend who knew how to give comfort and help; and to be in any distress was to have an instant claim upon her sympathy.

The circumstances of Mrs. Pickett's death were pathetic, in that she died away from her home. Her daughter, Mrs. Josie Bushong, had been staying during the school year in Keosauqua, where the grand-daughter was a student in the high school. On the fifth of May, Mrs. Pickett went to Keosauqua to witness the high school graduating exercises, visiting with her daughter. She was taken ill the following day, and in the face of all that could be done for her recovery, gradually failed, until, early in the morning of the 17, her spirit freed itself from the body of mortality.

The presence of relatives and kind friends contributed as much as was possible to reconcile her to her absence from home. At her death, she left surviving her, her husband, three sons and one daughter, Mrs. Bushong. As the relatives and others were gathered about the loved form, in the house of the friend, in which she died, a prayer was offered by Rev. Perkins, of the Congregational church.

The body was then taken to her home at Lebanon, where the funeral took place the following day, Wednesday, May 18, at 1 o'clock. The services were conducted by her pastor, Rev. Siberts, assisted by Rev. Smith, the pastor of the Presbyterian church of Lebanon. A funeral discourse was preached from the text in Hebrews, 13:14, "For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come." Appropriate hymns were sung by members of the Methodist and Presbyterian choirs. A large concourse of friends and neighbors were present, accompanying the bereaved family to the last resting place of the dead. This brief sketch of a pure and noble woman is the tribute of a friend, in behalf of many friends.

**Handwritten: BELINDA C. PICKETT 14 JULY 1898

Source: Van Buren Co. Genealogical Society Obituary Book C, Page 193, Keosauqua Public Library, Keosauqua, IA