George Franklin Findlay

FINDLAY, HART, SEASE, WAKEMAN

Posted By: Laura Leary (email)
Date: 1/28/2005 at 15:22:33

George F. Findlay died Friday (January 17, 1908) eveing at eight thirty from a complication of diseases which have caused protracted illness. Lloyd Findlay, a brother from Otho, C.V. Findlay of this city, another brother, his wife and two children, his father and mother and Doctor Alice Wakeman, an old fried of the family, were at the death bed.
The funeral will be held at the First Congregational Church, Monday morning at 9 o'clock, services being held afterward at the Otho Congregational Church and the burial will follow in the old Otho cemetery. Every precaution has been taken by City Fumigator, under counsel of the Mayor, and there can be no dange of any contagion resulting to any friends who attend the services. The house has been quarantined because of the illness of Berdena, the little daughter, with scarlet fever.
George Franklin Findlay was the eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. J. F. Findlay and was born at Paw Paw, Illinois October 21st, 1864. Early in the seventies he came with his parents to Northern Iowa, where his father had taken a homestead. After passing through the years of the grasshopper scourge and drouth the family settled among former Illinois friends in Otho Township. In the year 1877, so that for over thirty years the life of Mr. George Findlay has been lived in this city or vicinity. As a boy he attended school No. 1, Otho and then entered the Fort Dodge Collegiate Institute, planning to enter the gospel ministry, but ill health overtook him and he was forced to give up his high hopes of public ministry. For two years he taught school and then took up the life of a farmer, deeming it more beneficial for his health. He married Miss Theta Hart, only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Hart, May 14, 1891. Always a lover of little children these two, into whose home no children had come by birth, adopted Raymond and Berdena, already related by ties of kinship, but who in their adopted home have found a most real and rich affection.