Gideon HUTCHINGS

HUTCHINGS

Posted By: Sarah Thorson Little (email)
Date: 4/6/2007 at 21:54:33

The Renwick Times
Renwick, Humboldt County, Iowa
Friday, January 6, 1899

Death of a Wright Co. Pioneer.
Eagle Grove Times-Gazette: Seventeen years ago Gideon Hutchings [1831-1898] came to Eagle Grove and has since made it his home. He became at once an integral part of the town and ever since has been an important factor in it and its development. For eight years he was member of the common council and for four years was mayor of the city. In all these years, whether in the council or out, he was indefatigable in his work for the city and to his untiring energy and persistence may be credited many of the forward strides that Eagle Grove has made.

But it was in the public school system that his chief delight lay. In that work he put his whole heart and to build up the schools and put them on a plane than which there is none higher, was his greatest ambition. The school children learned to call him by the endearing title of "Uncle Gid" and to the end the title remained with him—an earnest of the deep affection he received from them. The flowers at the funeral were the Masonic square and compass, the Pythian pillow, a gate ajar, a pillow inscribed "Children's Friend," a broken wheel and cut flowers. These bore mute testimony to his fidelity to the public schools, each piece being borne by a school girl.

Of late years Mr. Hutchings has been gradually giving way to disease and the advances of age. He bore his trials with the charity that characterized his whole life and, while the impatience of manhood would some times rise, he was for the most part the kind, loving friend that so many honored. The bearers of the funeral were Messrs. Armbruster, Smallpage, Miller, Merrill, Wood and Boylson and as they lowered the tenement of clay into its last resting place there was not one of the vast assemblage who did not feel that he had lost a personal friend.

Life is an inscrutable and fascinating condition: What it bears and what it portends no man can say. Each block of the immense structure has its part to fulfill. "Uncle Gid" had his work, it was a noble one and was done well. Who shall say that this example will not act on this generation and on those yet to come with a vigor and benevolence man cannot compute?