This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.illinois.counties.knox/3800.4/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Galesburg Evening Mail, Tuesday, December 31, 1912 Mrs O. B. Judson Laid to Rest Funeral Held This Afternoon at the Home on North Chambers Dr. Campbell Preached Sermon Paid High Tribute to Wife and Mother Who for 56 years presided over Home Funeral services for the late Mrs. O. B. Judson were held at the residence, 122 North Chambers street, this afternoon at two o'clock with Rev. S. Van Pelt and Rev. S. M. Campbell officiating. Mr. and Mrs. Everett E. Hinchliff furnished the music, their duets being rendered with great beauty and sympathy. A bunch of carnations from the Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church was especially noticed among the many tributes. With the bouquet was this card: "Accept the sympathy of the Woman's Missionary Society of the Presbyterian church. These forty-two carnations are in honor of the forty-two years which your mother was a member of our Society. With her going, the last charter member of the Society has passed away." Rev. Campbell preached the sermon, which follows: "This is the coronation service for God's servant and we are gathered - relatives and friends - in this home where she has been a happy wife and mother for fifty-six splendid years, that we may console each other and that we may give praise to God for the goodness and mercy that followed her all the days of her life. It is our privilege and our pleasure to think of her as having come out of this life's tasks and experiences into the experiences and enlargements of that unsullied life where she more largely shows the intercourse of the Divine." "Mrs. Judson's life has been a long one - her pilgrimage extending over 78 years. To recall these years is to recall a historical period of great interest and to review her years in Galsburg is to re-write the history of the city. Both Mr. and Mrs. Judson have been so well-known to us all, that they seem a part of our city and their names are inseperable as they themselves have been." "Mrs. Judson was born of Quaker parentage in December, 1834. She came to Galesburg in 1854 and was married to Mr. Judson at Washington, Illinois, May 21, 1856, fifty six years ago last May. Very soon thereafter, they came into the home where we are gathered today, then in the corn fields, and here they have since resided." "Here the children were born, here the family history has been lived, and from here she will be carried today to rest beside the departed daughter and among many friends who have gone before her into the larger life. The connection which Mr. and Mrs. Judson have had with our city through its business and social and church life, has been a very close one and they have gathered about them as the years have gone a multitude of acquaintances and warm personal friends who will share with the sons and the daughters the regrets that these lovely days of fellowship must end and that the father must travel for a little way without the companionship that has been so beautiful both to him and to us all." "Mrs. Judson's life has been a home life, and yet it has been associated with the best things in our city. Devoted to her home and children she yet found time for sympathy and substantial help to the charitable work of the city. Her devotion to her church has been conspicuous. I found a minute in the record book of the Second Presbyterian church of Galesburg saying that she was received upon profession of her faith and baptism in Jan. 1857. Throughout the fifty-five years of her fellowship with the church, she has shared all its fortunes; she has given her service to its missionary and social organizations and she has devotedly loved its worship. Only a week ago last Sabbath she expressed the wish she might go to church." "If this history seems but brief, it will take little imagination to fill in these dates, which are after all, but parentheses of a busy life. There has been the material in these years for a long biography. In them joys and sorrows have come: in them there have been many loving tasks done and many hopes cherished and fulfilled." "Can we ever part with a mother without recalling the story of the ten thousand duties which only a mother can attend to? To many of us beside this mother's children, a day like this stirs all the springs of memory, and other mother's faces and other mother's kindness came hastening back to gladden us and to refresh our spirits. What a good thing it would be for us if we should make occasions like this the decision time for some worthy idea in our lives. Is there some duty neglected? Is there some ideal of life awaiting our response? Is there some service in church or community that has been calling us? Have we forgotten how to make life sweet for those who travel beside us? And these troubles we should bravely meet, or forgiveness we should lovingly render? What a time it might be to lift our lives up to the nobler expression - called to it by the freshened memory of this mother whose response to duty was so conspicuous and tender." " But one can scarcely avoid the more personal word which it seems possible to say today in your presence. The long life of our friend and her sincere Christian trust makes it possible to speak of her in quiet terms of love. Those aged Saints have a way of getting into our hearts very decidedly. It is a pleasure to recall Mrs. Judson's brightness and alertness of mind. How ready she always was with half witty responses to our greeting. She was very intelligent, a lover of books and an interested observer of our busy world. There above all, she was a real Christian cherishing those thoughts and views of life which go so far to make life beautiful both here and hereafter. And now, that she as gone, is not this a beautiful thing to remember that she has cultivated that trust in God which is the work of the Christian, and that she has tried to live with the light of God's love shining into each common day? She would not wish that we speak any extravagant words of prais! e and we will not. But we will thank God for the life so reverently lived for the tasks so carefully wrought, for the onward and upward look cherished toward Christ, and toward the heavenly home." "With you, then, who loved her most, we sympathize and with you we rejoice. And we pray that God's grace may rest upon our elder brother and father as he travels on, upon the children, and grandchildren and upon all whose hearts are tender at this home-going hour." The pallbearers were W. L. Steele, Prof. Longdon. I. L. Pillsbury, R. N. Shaw, C.C. Merrill and E. R. Drake. Interment was made in Hope cemetery.