This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Bourne Classification: Obituary Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1571 Message Board Post: SIDNEY ARGUS - HERALD. April 20, 1933. "Town's First Church Organist is No More".-- Word comes to this office of the death of one of the real early-day citizens of Sidney, Mary L. Bourne, whose father, Harvey G. Bourne, served as the first treasurer of Fremont county. Miss Bourne died Easter Sunday at Rushville, Nebraska, where she had made her home for the past several years, aged 83 years, 7 months, 25 days. She was born in Grayson county, Virginia, August 22, 1849. When she was five years of age the family came to Sidney. After completing the public school course here, her education was completed in a Catholic convent at St. Joseph and she then taught in the rural schools for several years. Her father died in 1864 in Salt Lake, Utah, and was buried there. She and her mother lived together until the death of the latter, 1899, most of that time in Hamburg, from which place they moved in 1886 to take up a homestead near Hay Springs, Nebraska, where the mother died thirteen years later. Several years later "Aunt Mollie" moved to the sandhills twenty-five miles south of Rushville where she successfully operated a ranch. Since disposing of her ranch she has lived in Rushville where she has been active in church and Red Cross work. A brother, Richmond Harvey Bourne, two nieces, seven nephews survive, all living in the vicinity of Rushville. It is said that Miss Bourne played the first church organ brought to Sidney. Though gone from here more than half a century, she never lost interest in her girlhood home, as was attested by the fact that she was a subscriber to old Fremont County Herald continuously until its purchase by the Argus and to the Argus-Herald since. The body was brought to Rockport, Missouri, for burial.