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A son's tribute to a remarkable woman I wish I had known.
Farewell Mother
From the Guthrie (Oklahoma) State Capital, Frank Hilton Greer, Editor
The editor of this paper has just returned from the saddest mission that comes into the life of man - the laying away from eternity of the mother from whose life he sprung, upon whose breast he slept and whose fond caresses and loving words smoothed his childhood hours and stimulated him for the struggles of youth and manhood.
At 2:46 p.m. on Wednesday, February 3, 1897, at her home in Winfield, Kansas, the mortal...
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A son's tribute to a remarkable woman I wish I had known.
Farewell Mother
From the Guthrie (Oklahoma) State Capital, Frank Hilton Greer, Editor
The editor of this paper has just returned from the saddest mission that comes into the life of man - the laying away from eternity of the mother from whose life he sprung, upon whose breast he slept and whose fond caresses and loving words smoothed his childhood hours and stimulated him for the struggles of youth and manhood.
At 2:46 p.m. on Wednesday, February 3, 1897, at her home in Winfield, Kansas, the mortal life of Mrs. Clotilda Hilton Greer passed away. The funeral occurred at 2 p.m. on the day following from the Presbyterian church in Winfield. The details of the funeral had been carefully arranged by the deceased during her long illness. She had requested that her four sons, assisted by two near friends of the family, Mr. Cone and Mr. Bebout, should be her pall bearers. At her request her old pastor Rev. J. C. Miller was called from Newton, Kansas, to assist her new pastor, the Presbyterian Minister, Rev. Stophlett, in the funeral ceremonies. Rev. Parker, of the Baptist church, by request of the family, also assisted. The funeral sermon by Rev, Parker was preached from a text selected by the deceased - a verse especially dear to her for having been the text at the funeral of her mother, sixty years before. It was Revelations xiv-13.
"And I heard a voice from Heaven saying unto me: ' Write: Blessed are they which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea, sayeth the spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.'"
The Presbyterian choir, whose music she had listened to upon almost every Sabbath for many years, and composed of Messrs. G. H. Buckman, M.A. Clarkson, C.I. Forsyth and Dr. Guy, with Mrs. Buckman at the organ, sang at the request of the deceased, "Asleep in Jesus." All of her near relatives, four sons, two daughters, three daughters-in-law and three grand children, were present. The casket, typical of the mother's life, and as the children knew she would have it, was entirely of white, festooned with immortelles, roses, carnations and small sheaves of fully ripened wheat. She had looked upon death as but a part of the real life, the transfer from this earth to the brighter home beyond. "It is natural to die as to be born." she said. "It is but the divine ceremony ushering us from this temporary abode to the sweet eternity prepared for the just." In a recent letter to the writer she reminded us that "our lives are 'as a weaver's shuttle,' and it seems but "a spin from the cradle to the grave."
It had always been her wish that the cerements of woe should cast no shadow upon the promised joys of heaven, when the mortal and immortal in her life were separated by the decree of nature and of God. It was her desire also that no money be spent upon floral tributes, but that the money which would have been spent upon these be sent as a contribution to the Home of the Friendless at Leavenworth; so the beautiful flowers sent in came from the homes which had reared them by their own artistic love, and in profusion typified the purity of a beneficent Christian life. Thus in gentle simplicity she was by loving hands laid to rest beside her husband, whose remains had been sleeping fifteen years in Union Cemetery.
Clotilda H. Greer was born in Zanesville, Ohio, October 13, 1833. Her mother was the daughter of Bishop Haggerty of the Methodist Episcopal church. The mother died when Clotilda was but three years of age. The daughter, following the precept of the mother, joined the Methodist Episcopal church at Attica, Ind., in 1848. On October 15, 1855 at Oskaloosa, Iowa, she was married to Samuel W. Greer. In deference to the wish of her husband, who had been educated for the United Presbyterian ministry, and to aid him in what was then expected to be his life-work, she transferred her membership from the Methodist to the Presbyterian church, and for forty-one years was a devoted Presbyterian. In February, 1856, when Kansas was in the throes between freedom and slavery, her husband came to the new and turbulent territory of Kansas and cast his lot with the "freesoilers." In 1858 he was elected the first territorial superintendent of public instruction for the state of Kansas. The wife came to Kansas in February, 1857, and together the newly married couple settled at Geary City, Doniphan County, where Edwin P., the first son, was born. In 1858, they located at Leavenworth, where four sons and two daughters were born to them, two of the sons dying in infancy. In 1871, the family removed to Cowley County, where Charles F., the youngest child was born. Her husband was one of the most active_______of the earliest free soil champions. He was in Washington City with a committee to assist the free soil cause in congress, when the new senator, James H. Lane, organized the "National Guard" for the protection of the White house, 120 of them being Kansans, one of them being Samuel W. Greer. The wife came from a family of strong southern democrats, but the fires of freedom enkindled her soul and her husband's party being then the special champion of liberty, she became a republican, with which party her sympathies thereafter remained. Her husband organized Company I, of the Fifteenth Volunteer Cavalry of Kansas, and was commissioned its captain by Governor Thomas Carney. The wife buckled on his sword and saw him off to the war with her patriotic love and prayers. The husband's health was impaired in the army, causing him for many years before his death to be an invalid, thus adding immeasurably to the hardships of the wife and mother. The husband died in "82. Six children survive her. The eldest, Edwin P., is the editor of the Winfield Courier. The second son, Frank H., is editor of this paper. The third, Elbert R., is in the newspaper business in Kansas City, and the youngest, Charles F., having graduated in the mechanical department, will soon use his experience in the publication of a newspaper of his own. Of the twin daughters, Mary L. is private secretary to Dr. Hammond, president of Wesleyan college at Macon, Ga., and the other, Eleanor, has been the home girl, looking after the household comforts of the mother. These are a few of the formal incidents in the life of this noble woman and beloved mother.
To those left behind there is a sweet excellence in this life the influences of which, like her soul, can never die. Her death was the sublime exemplification of the gentle faith of her life. The fifteenth Psalm was her guide and foundation hope and the promises of the Bible, her daily companion and solacer. The grandest of all literature to her was the Bible, and the promise of a life beyond the acme of her hope. She prayed for a peaceful ending and it came as beautifully as the setting of a summer's sun. With her children all about her, she prayed for each separately, committing each to the Father who had been her friend and comforter during every sunshine and cloud - and then she fell into a peaceful sleep to awaken in paradise.
But the spiritual was only one of the admirable compositions of this mother. While she believed the laws of Moses, the Psalms of David, the book of Job and the sermon on the Mount, the best literature, religious or secular, ever given to man, she did not fail to recognize the beauty of a familiarity with the writings of the great historians, poets, fictionists, scientists and philosophers. Her storehouse from these was the marvel of her children who were familiar with her busy life and the exactions of her household duties. Many a time we have seen her rock the cradle, or churn the butter with a good book before her from which she was filling her mind and which she read and retained for the practical use she could make of it. Her example was as much for this world as for the next. She believed in the elevation of the mind as well as the heart and soul. She believed it the duty of every citizen, male or female, to assist in the elevation of the state by a purification of the affairs of man. Her highest motto was to do right, and this was her daily inculcation for her children. In a letter to the writer in 1895, she said:
"I doubt, my son, whether there is anyone of your subscribers who reads your paper so carefully and with such solicitous interest as your mother does, and none, I am sure, who feels so proud when you do right or so sorry when you do wrong."
And when the writer hereof was elected to the legislature there came a letter from California, where the mother was visiting, giving this from an anonymous poem, as the motto for her boy in his public service:
"What constitutes a state?
Not high raised battlements or labored mound,
Thick wall or moated gate;
Not cities proud with spires and turrets crowned
Not bays nor broad-armed ports,
Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride;
Not starred and spangled courts,
Where low-browed baseness wafts perfume to pride:
No, men; high-minded men, men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare.
These constitute a state."
She was a devout advocate of temperance, woman suffrage and public and private charities. The last ten years of her life, being largely freed from household cares, she delighted in forwarding these enterprises, and her days were pleasantly devoted thereto. But she was not fanatical. She was charitable for the feelings and opinions of others, though unswerving in her own beliefs.
Among the most beautiful flowers at the funeral were those sent by a woman in remembrance of a kindness fifteen years ago to her when death claimed her babe. Her philosophy was, "Let your heart be generous, your convictions firm; right your everlasting motto and your conscience, rightly cultivated, your continual guide." These have been lodged firmly in the minds of her children and will be a lasting benediction to their lives.
It is inexpressibly sad to have nature sever such associations as those of children and mother. But the affection and influence of such a one is not for her life alone; it remains in the hearts of her children like the echo of a sweet voice from the mountains. Whatever doubt there may have been in those hallowed by such associations as to the policy of doing right, as to the value of the Bible and the recompense here and hereafter of the right living, all are removed by the contemplation of such a life and such a death as hers. Though her letters will come no more, though her voice is stilled, her silent influence will remain as a daily reminder and stimulus to those for whose welfare she lived.
The parental influence, after all, is the truest and surest guide of mankind.
When I refer to my ancestry, I do not dwell on what, way back in the mystic past, my original sire may have been. No doctrines can shake the faith by parents implanted. When I think of my father, I think of the man who, in the midst of grasshoppers and drouth and pioneer poverty and despondency on a Kansas farm, followed the plow behind an ox team in the hope of a new harvest, singing the psalm read at my mother's funeral, at her request:
"The Lord is my Shepherd, I'll not want.
He maketh me down to lie in pastures green;
He leadeth me the quiet waters by.
Yea, though I walk in Death's dark vale, yet will I fear none ill.
For thou art with me, and thy rod and staff me comfort still.
Goodness and mercy all my life shall surely follow me;
And in God's House forever more my dwelling place shall be."
I think of this man, this image of God - who, soothed by the gentle love of a Redeeming Savior, went to eternity as tranquilly as the waters of a pellucid brook runs to the sea; whose religion was his great elevator and comforter, which not only made his life one for his posterity to allude to with pride, but which carried him triumphantly through "the dark valley and the shadow of death," who took my hand in his and implanted in my heart the farewell injunction.
"Be true to yourself, your home, your country and your God."
When I think of my mother, to whom the 23rd Psalm was as dear as to her husband, no thought of evolution, no bewildering theological or scientific doctrine, can come to dim the one whose sweetest belief was that the "Lord liveth and there is a reward beyond; who gently and lovingly took me by the hand in the sweet hours of childish innocence and taught me at her knee that coronation of the sermon on the Mount,
"My Father which art in heaven,
Hallowed be they name."
The mother whose old age was buoyed by a consciousness of duty well done, of having bettered the world by living in it, and whose admonitions will be the cherished memories of her children; the one whose every letter ended, "May God bless my boy."
(The Winfield Daily Courier - Tuesday February 9, 1897: E.P. Greer, Editor)
Letter written by C. H. Greer at Alice Dunham Finch: Find A Grave Memorial# 38408415 |
