This is from the the Osage Co., KS list ----- Original Message ----- From: Jim Laird To: Jim Laird Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 2:06 PM Subject: Obituary: Rev. Alonzo Watts LAWRENCE.. The Debtor and Workingman Friday March 8, 1895 Obituary. Rev. Alonzo Watts LAWRENCE was born in Centerville, Butler county, Pennsylvania, August 9, 1850. He was married to Miss Maggie A. TIDBALL at New Castle, Pennsylvania, June 24, 1878. Mrs. Lawrence is the youngest of four sisters, all of whom married Presbyterian ministers, and all, save the oldest sister, are now widows. Three children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence, Mary Lillian, James Charles and Mabel Evans. The bereaved wife and two daughters survive him. He died of pneumonia at the Presbyterian parsonage in Burlingame, Kansas, on Wednesday, February 27, 1895, at five minutes of nine a.m. From his earliest years Mr. Lawrence has had an unusually bright and vigorous mind. During the long years of his student life he easily stood at the head of the class. After leaving the public schools he attended the Grove City, Pennsylvania, academy, now the Grove City college, where he prepared for the sophomore class and entered Western Reserve college, from which he graduated as one of its best students. He then entered the Theological Seminary at Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, and graduated with the highest rank in his class in April, 1878, and became the pastor of the Presbyterian church in Pleasant Valley, Butler county, Pa., in the same year; in the summer of 1879 he also assumed charge of New Hope Presbyterian church in the same county; in April 1880, he resigned, visited several churches and on September 1880 became the pastor of the Presbyterian churches of Cameron and Lathrop, Mo., where he remained until May 1883, when he resigned and accepted a call to the Mob! erly, Mo. Presbyterian church in June, at the same time he had a call to the Presbyterian church of Mechanicsville, Iowa, but declined; he remained at Moberly till the last of October 1885, and then came to Burlingame and preached his first sermon as called pastor on the first Sabbath of November 1885. He preached her until the last Sabbath of 1890, and then accepted a call from Minden, Neb., and commenced his work in the Presbyterian church of that place on the second Sabbath of 1891; he resigned his pastorate there and accepted a call to his second pastorate here the first Sabbath of May 1892, where he remained until the death angel pronounced his live work ended. During the most of the time of his pastorate here he has preached every two weeks at Red Pepper school house, 5 miles north of Burlingame, where he was as greatly beloved as he was at his own church. Why is it that in this world where there is so much need of earnest Christian workers that he should be cut off in the prime of life, as it would seem, with his life's work only half done? The only answer is God's ways are always right and we can only look to him through our ears and say, "Thy Will be Done."