Whoever inquired about Mary Martin Reeder-----we may be related. I am a "cousin" to the WAY family (Amanda M WAY) listed in this obit. Amanda was a very interesting lady. Please feel free to contact me if would like.? -----Original Message----- From: gc-gateway@rootsweb.com <gc-gateway@rootsweb.com> To: INRANDOL-L@rootsweb.com Sent: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 2:13 pm Subject: Re: [INRANDOL] Mary Martin Reeder (1797-1890) obituary This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: lr115743 Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.northam.usa.states.indiana.counties.randolph/1139.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: The link is no longer valid. Here is the obit. The Life and Times of Mary Martin Reeder 16 April 1797-27 July 1890 An Early Winchester, Indiana Resident Mary Martin Reeder was my 4th great-grandmother (Jane, Marjorie, Allie, Minnie, Belinda, Belinda, Mary). The obituary that follows was typed from a photocopy that has a few unreadable portions. The source of the obituary is unknown but is surly a Winchester, Indiana newspaper dated sometime in late July or early August 1890. She died 27 July 1890. There was a hand written note at the bottom of the obituary that said, "Copies of clippings pasted on front and back fly-leaves of Reeder-Brooks Bible." This bible has since disappeared. If anyone knows of its location, please contact Jane Barr Torres. Thank you. [Obituary:] Mary Martin Reeder. If there is one thing more than another that reminds us of the ceasing march of time. If there is one thing more than another that impresses upon us the unwearied _light of years, it is the passing from our view of faces once familiar, the dropping by the wayside of them long upon the journey. It was so of this deceased - "Aunt Polly," as she was so familiarly called. Long did she journey upon life's uneven pathway, and her death was a fitting end to her life's work. Whatever the future may develop; it is certain that, in this life, "virtue is its' own reward" and that no happiness can equal that which springs from the consciousness of duty well performed. In this respect, her life was one of simple grandeur, for she lived long and wrought much good and the fitting end crowned the work with indelible sweetness. Mary Martin Reeder was born in Hamilton county, Ohio, on the 16th day of April 1797, so that she was at the time of her death, 93 years, 3 months and 11 days old. Her parents were John and Sarah Martin, who were early pioneers in that county. She was born near North Bend, Ohio, the area where the body of Gen. William Henry Harrison, afterwards President of the United States now rests, and where a monument will soon be erected to his memory. John Martin was a soldier under General Harrison, and assisted him in erecting a block-house. A fort, for the better protection of the people thereabouts. John Martin served seven years in the Revolutionary War, was with General Anthony Wayne all through his great campaign with the Indians, and served with distinction in the war of 1812. He was a sturdy, fearless man, of great resolution and strength of character, and these traits all descended to his eldest daughter, Mary. The fort, mentioned above, was built to protect the people from the attacks of Indians, who were very troublesome at that time, but was also used as a church; and it was here, in this plain house, in the year 1809, that Mary Martin was converted to Christianity, and joined the Methodist Episcopal church, being persuaded to the course by the eloquence and piety of Bishop McKendria, one of the noblest of the early preachers. She never forsook the faith. She was baptized in that faith and clung to it with firm tenacity to the end of her long life. It was a simple faith she had, but it was a powerful as a storm and would have withstood any and all attacks made upon it. Through all the changes and trials and sorrows and vissitudes of this life, she clung to it with the heroism of a martyr, and with this gentle belief filling her whole soul, there was no time in her long life but what she could "pierce the thin veil" which separates the present from the future, and, listening, "ca! tch the rustle of an angel's wings." In 1813, in Warren county, she was married to David Reeder. When engaged in a skirmish with the Indians, in 1821, under General Harrison, he was wounded in the shoulder, and died from the effects thereof the same year. Mrs. Reeder has since been a widow, living sixty-nine years without the comfort, support and assistance of a husband and father. The brother of David Reeder, the Rev. Joseph Reeder, was one of the most famous of early Ohio Methodist preachers. From this union there sprang three children - Martin A. Reeder, the only surviving child, now 70 years of age, and Mrs. Alfred Rossman and Mrs. Groshond, who afterwards moved to Kansas. Martin A. Reeder has no children. Mrs. Rossman, whose husband, Alfred Rossman is still living here, aged eighty-two years, was the mother of three children, two of whom are dead, leaving Mrs. Belle Salter, whose husband is the merchant on the south side of the square. To Mr. and Mrs. Salter no children have been born but to Mrs. Lemon Rossman, brother of Mrs. Salter, two children were born who are still living. Mrs. Groshond was the mother of several children. Emma, one of them, was raised by her uncle Martin and is now the wife of Henry Brooks, a well-to-do farmer south of town. Another daughter of Mrs. Groshond is Mrs. Oliver Coats, east of town. To Mrs. Coats and Mrs. Brooks children have been born, and those children have become parents, so that Aunt Polly was, at the time of her death, great-great-grandmother - five generations living at once, a very rare thing in these days. Mrs. Reeder had two sisters in this town - Mrs. Edmund Thomas and Mrs. Matthew Way. The latter was Francis M. Way's mother, the former mother to John and Monroe Thomas, all of our town. In 1820, General Wayne sent John Martin, father of deceased, into the western part of this county to look after the Indians, who were committing numerous depredations here-abouts. He was much taken with the country, being the most heavily timbered of any he had ever seen. He carved his name on a large oak tree in the dense woods northwest of town, and resolved to live there when the Indian war was over. He kept his vow, and in 1822, he entered the land where Charles C. Smith now lives, and received a government patent therefor. His widowed daughter came with him and lived with him a short time. That same year she bought a "lot" in Winchester. It lies now immediately west of the G.R. & I.R.R., on the south side of Washington street, and is now owned by Thomas Ward, Sr. For this she paid the sum of eight dollars. Her father put up a cabin on the lot for her, sixteen feet square. The next year, 1823, she traded her lot for the lot she lived on at the time of her death, and gave four dollars to boot. This new lot was a half a square long, fronting now on Main street. The jail is now on a part of the lot, and Martin A. Reeder's house and Aunt Polly's house on the remainder of it. The whole lot cost twelve dollars! What a wonderful change! On this lot, Aunt Polly erected a two-story house made of hewed logs. This was the finest house in all the country around, for hewed logs were not often used. The "neighbors" as they were then called, came to assist in the raising of this house for miles around, and it was a gala day. People went then for many miles to a house raising,! and nothing was thought of it, but it took a whole county to build such a house. Now, two men can build such a whole house in a short time " frame and all" and the neighbors scarcely know it. Such are some of the changes which time brings. When John Martin and family came here, there were not many people in this county. Conversations with Aunt Polly showed this fact. This county was then a part of Wayne. Of course, there were no townships, and the settlements took the names of the rivers near which there were located. There was the "White River settlement, the "Mississinewa settlement", "the West River settlement," the "Greensfork settlement," etc., each comprising a few families. When Aunt Polly built her "mansion" of hewed logs, there were but two other houses in "town" - _____ of the lot, now known as the Hetty Aker lot, right east of the public square on Washington street, occupied by John Nelson, first Justice of the Peace in Randolph county, and a two story house built of round logs where the Journal building now is, and occupied by John Odle as a hotel. Of course, these have all long since disappeared. There is not now a house standing in the this town that was here when Aunt Polly came here, and, it ma! y be added, she and her son Martin A. Reeder lived longer in Winchester than anybody else. Her death leaves Martin A. Reeder the oldest resident in the town, and he has been here sixty-eight years. Your correspondent has often heard Aunt Polly, Martin A. Reeder, Col. H.H. Neff and other old citizens describe Winchester as it used to be. Some of these things are not inappropriate, even in an obituary notice, for they show the toils, the labors, the hardships of the pioneers, the difficulties they had to overcome, the disadvantages they had to contend with, the obstacles they had to surmount - things of which we, in these days of plenty and prosperity, know nothing. We enjoy the fruits of their labors and we ought to know how we came by it. When she came here, the entire site of Winchester was a dense forest. It was probably as heavily timbered as any part of the United States, and the whole county was the same. The two lots which Aunt Polly bought, of which we have already spoken, she had cleared. She also bought the lot where Ezra S. Kelley now lives - one square north of the public square - for the sum of ten dollars and had it cleared. It was nothing to see sugar and beech trees four feet through and white oak trees eight and ten feet through and other trees in proportion. Where the Christian church now s! tands, there was quite a pond and there the boys used to fish and swim. Beginning with the M.E. church and running north to Franklin street there was a very large pond. Aunt Polly's new log house was on the edge of this pond. A stream flowed from this pond over the ground where Henry Kizer's drug store now stands, and emptied into Salt creek. Ponds were everywhere and the forest was solid and unbroken. See what the early settlers did, and what a few years will bring about! Game of all kinds abounded. Deer ____ in the greatest of numbers. Squirrels, coons, rabbits - every description ____________. When asked how they managed _________ answered that they lived better than we do now. "Beech mast was thick everywhere ; it covered the ground in the woods. Every person had his drove of hogs, and they all ran wild in the woods. We killed all we wanted to at proper time and got bacon enough to last us a year. There were plenty of bee trees, and we had all the honey we wanted. We had all the maple syrup we desired, and made an abundance of sugar. In the winter, when game was good, there was a very great supply of all kinds of fresh meat. The fish came up from Salt creek into the ponds through the little streams, and, when summer came, the streams dried up and left the fish in the ponds." Thus the old settlers had plenty to eat. Hamilton, Ohio, sixty miles away, was the nearest trading point for some time, and where all the grain was ground for years. Coon skins were the great articles of currency and the medium of exchange. Aunt Polly used to make clothes for [sic] coon skins, and with these skins trade for various articles at Hamilton, the principle ones being salt and leather. Aunt Polly went to Newport, now Fountain City, and there learned the tailoring trade. This was in 1823. Her fame as a cutter and a sewer soon went abroad in the neighborhood, and she was busy early and late with her needle, making clothes for nearly every man and boy in the entire country. Thomas W. Kizer, who is sixty-six years old and has lived here all his life, said to the writer yesterday that Aunt Polly made him the "first coat he ever had." This is the testimony of many, many persons, and they all bear witness to the fact that she was adept in her line. In this way she earned her living, and did much to give her chil! dren such an education as the schools of this place afforded. It was about this time that her devotion to the church of her adoption manifested itself so strongly. She found it very inconvenient to attend the Methodist church, for the nearest one was at Saulsbury, the capital of Wayne county, for it was twenty-six miles away. So, she, together with William Kennedy and his wife, who had settled near Mt. Zion, four miles southeast of Winchester, some time before, organized the M.E. church of Winchester, and held their first prayer meeting in Aunt Polly's log house in 1823. People then thought nothing of going ten miles to church, and, by their second meeting, their number was swelled by several additions, among whom were Ellis, Kizer, father of T.W. and H.P. Kizer, Wesley Wheeler and wife, Lucy Keys, aunt of Daniel Keys, and other, whose names we did not get. Their names are deposited in the corner-stone of the new M.E. church and rightly so, for their meetings marked the first attempt to establish a church of any kind in this place. Very soon after this, the Rev. James Havens, known as Father Havens, came here and organized a class of nine members. He was a grand old Methodist pioneer, and well deserves the title of saint. Then the White Water conference began to send preachers here. They were James Havens, William Hunt, Allen Wiley, Arthur Elliott, James T. Wells and Russell Biglow, all grand men, who wandered through the trackless wilderness and met every danger in order to preach their religion. Services were held in Aunt Polly's house for! years, and the numbers grew. The little old table, with the bible upon it then and the Christian Advocate later had done the work. It was the seed sown in good soil, and it sprang up and grew and flourished, until today hundreds find rest and comfort beneath it's branches. This brought the church to 1825, when a house of worship was built. It was on the lot now owned and occupied by Dr. C.M. Kelley. Indeed, the house in which Dr. Kelley now lives is, Col. Neff says, a part of the church. In 18__ a new brick church was built on Meridian. Soon this became inadequate for the purposes of this growing congregation , and now there stands upon that spot a magnificent edifice, dedicated to the worship of the living God, and testifying freely to the liberality and generosity of the good people of Winchester. [here photocopy unreadable] And yet, from such small beginnings, in the midst of the dense forest, has sprung up a splendid church and a Christian people, law-abiding, God-fearing, ______ and prosperous. Should we not honor and revere the nature of that spirited old lady whose Christian fortitude gave birth to a branch of the church, which is now one of the most potent factors for good in our community. Aunt Polly was a member of the church for eighty-one years, being probably the oldest Methodist in Indiana, certainly in Randolph county. During all this time, she clung with unflinching grasp to the simple doctrine as taught her by the sainted Bishop who converted her, and it was the North star that guided her during almost her century of life. She was universally beloved by all. "She was a remarkable woman," said Col. Neff in conversation yesterday. "I never heard any man, woman, or child say one word against her in my life, and I never saw her mad. She was possessed of firmness to a remarkable degree, but it was so mixed with meekness, kindness and gentility that it never appeared harsh or unkind." This is a splendid compliment to her true Christian worth, and says about all that can be said. She was a woman of great courage. Miss Lou Way says that her mother, Aunt Judith Way, now eighty-four years of age, first became acquainted with Aunt Polly by her being lost in the t! hick woods. She cried aloud and Paul Way heard her voice and recognized it as that of Polly Reeder, and by answering her cry found her in the woods in the night-time. Hundreds of such incidents might be told of the ______ perils, the dangers, the hardships of pioneer life, among Indians and wild animals, but this will suffice. These grand old fathers and mothers lived and wrought, not so much for themselves as for us. They cleared away the almost impenetrable forests, they drained the stagnant ponds, they made the roads and blocked out the highways, and we of the rising generation reap the reward. We shall not, therefore, while we stand upon soil made sacred by their labors, cease to admire the courage, the daring, the fortitude, the self-sacrifice, the self-devotion of such as she whose life we mourn, nor forget to sing their praises as long as life shall last. The latter days of Aunt Polly were quietly spent. The old log house was torn down about forty years ago, and a little frame erected back of where it stood for her. And there she lived - lived the same plain and simple manner in which she was raised and in which she believed. She was beloved by all the neighbors. Mrs. H.P. Kizer showed her a thousand favors, and Dr. and Mrs. G.W. Bruce were ready with any little kindnesses they could bestow. Her grandaughter, Mrs. Belle Salter, for years has been one of her truest and most trusted friends, and aided her on all times and occasions when needed. Mrs. Hawthorne was as kind to her as could be and Aunt Polly always spoke of her in a loving and sympathetic way. To the very last she retained her eyes, her ears, her memory unimpaired. She was a strong woman all her life, and a great portion of her strength remained with her to the end of her days. The strength acquired in sewing and weaving, chopping down trees and hauling limbs for w! ood, in raising her family and making her living, this served her in her old days, and so she was comparatively well all her life. she was an ardent lover of flowers, and every person in this town has often stopped to admire her little flower beds, in which she worked until the last. No wonder she loved the beautiful little flowers, for her own life was more beautiful than any flower, and filled the lives of all who knew her with a perfume far sweeter than the odors of the helitrope. But, death came at last. The pale rider and his horse, whose efforts she had baffled for nearly a hundred years, overtook her in his flight, his pointed javelin pierced her heart and it was dust. The funeral services were held in the M.E. church, Rev. Dr. John H. Hull, of Danville, preached the sermon. He was stationed here in the year 1838[?], and again in 1841, and his circuit extended to Ft. Wayne. Of course he became [The remainder of this paragraph becomes unreadable as well as another paragraph which appears possibly to be a description of the funeral service.] ...If every girl of the rising generation was thoroughly possessed of her sterling virtues, her unswerving integrity of purpose, her unbending and unyielding will, in simple virtues and exalted piety, they would turn society inside out in a quarter of a century and bring about all needed reforms before we can even begin on them under present conditions. Aunt Polly will be long remembered by all who knew her. She should not be forgotten for hers was a career remarkable in many things and full of romance and thrilling episode. It is highly satisfactory, highly pleasing to know that, in her declining years, she was surrounded by every comfort she desired. Her desires were few - they were supplied. The end was one of peace. With mind clothed in all its rightful powers, with heart throbbing love for all her many friends, with memory reaching back over a wonderful span of eventful years, she passed away - passed serenely as the autumn dies. The western slope of life's steep hill was a long one to her, but the evening was tinged with the colors of a glorious sun. She stepped into the shadows which fringe the world to come with unfaltering tread, and, with a smile of love for those she left behind, she put her hand trustingly, confidingly in the great palm of Him whose virtues she had loved, and where the earth of this life and the sky of the next one seemed to meet, stepped as peacefully and quietly into eternity as the dove flies to her nest and was robed and crowned by angelic hands with the splendor! s of immortal joy. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. 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