Elizabeth (CULBERTSON) SNEDAKER

SNEDAKER, HUMPHREYS, CULBERTSON, GALLAGHER, ALEXANDER, CHAMPLIN, GRANVILLE

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 3/9/2009 at 15:09:05

The Mount Ayr Record-News, 1933

DEATH CLAIMS GOOD CITIZEN

Funeral Services Held at Rhoades Funeral Home During Week.

Funeral services for Mrs. Elizabeth SNEDAKER, widow of the late J. E. SNEDAKER, were held Saturday forenoon at 10:30 o'clock at the Rhoades Funeral Home in Mount Ayr, being conducted by Dr. Jesse JOHNSON, pastor of the United Presbyterian church. Burial was in Rose Hill cemetery [Mount Ayr]. Mrs. SNEDAKER died in Iowa City Thursday as the result of a paralytic stroke suffered several days previously. Her children, Miss Mabel SNEDAKER, with whom she made her home in Iowa City, Mrs. Allen HUMPHREYS of Ringgold county and Howard SNEDAKER of Milwaukee, Wis., were at the bedside when the end came.

Mrs. Elizabeth (CULBERTSON) SNEDAKER, daughter of Aurelius and Margaret (GALLAGHER) CULBERTSON, was born near Zanesville, Ohio, on March 20th, 1858, and died in Iowa City, Iowa, on March 29, 1933, at the age of 75 years and nine days.

When she was a child of nine years of age, the family moved to Chariton, Iowa. In 1884 she was united in marriage to Jesse Everett SNEDAKER, of Mount Ayr, Iowa, where the home was established and where it remained until Mr. SNEDAKER's death in 1922. Here their children were born and reared: Mabel, now of the Department of Education in the University of Iowa in Iowa City; Howard, now of Milwaukee, Wis.; and Marguerite, now Mrs. Allen HUMPHREYS, whose home is some ten miles south of Mount Ayr.

Mrs. CULBERTSON (sic) leaves three brothers, John and Howard CULBERTSON, both of Chariton, Iowa, and Louis CULBERTSON of Provo, Utah; also three sisters, Mrs. Alice ALEXANDER of Chico, Calif., Mrs. Sarah CHAMPLIN, Chariton, Iowa, and Mrs. Etta GRANVILLE, also of Chariton. A sister, Mary, and a brother, Will, preceded her in death. There are four grandchildren, Charles Robert, Jean Elizabeth and Patricia Ann HUMPHREYS, children of Mr. and Mrs. Allen HUMPHREYS, and Joanne Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Howard SNEDAKER.

For the last ten years of her life Mrs. SNEDAKER made her home with her daughter Mabel in Iowa City. Always a reader and student, alert and active to the last, she was, on the day before the cerebral hemorrhage came which carried her away, working on a paper for the Twentieth Century Club of Mount Ayr, of which she was still a member.

In early girlhood she made profession of her faith in Christ, and united with the Presbyterian church of Chariton. In Mount Ayr she and her husband and family made the Presbyterian church their church home as long as that church remained, and since that time her memebership has been in the United Presbyterian church of Mount Ayr, in which she was an earnest and valuable worker.

From those who knew Mrs. SNEDAKER the unvarying testimony is that hers was a life devoted to the best things; that the spirit of Christ was so wrought into the texture of her thought and life as to make her presence a benediction. To the words of praise so genuinely bestowed by many, her children wish to add the tribute of the hearts that knew her best:

Her life was one of unselfish devotion to her family and friends. She had the sympathy for the troubles of others which is founded upon real understanding. A great personal dignity was hers - a dignity which met all hardships of life with a calmness which was the wonder of her friends. She was dearly beloved by all her nieces and nephews. One of them was heard to say, "Aunt Elizabeth never said any unkind word about anyone in all the years I have known her, and I never knew anyone who thought so little of herself, so constantly of others."

NOTE: Elizabeth's brother Louis A. CULBERTSON was born in 1850, Ohio, and died December 24, 1933 with interment at Provo City Cemetery, Provo, Utah County, Utah.

Transcription and note by Sharon R. Becker, 2008