WILLIAMS, Lydia Ann Reed
Lydia Ann Reed Williams
Source: The newspaper is unknown.
At 2:30 o'clock a. m., Monday, Aug. 15, 1887, Mrs. Worthington B. Williams died of flux at the homestead near Putnamville, Ind. Mrs. Williams was the daughter of Rev. Isaac Reed, a pioneer Presbyterian minister of this State. She was born in Owen county May 23d [corrected in ink to 25] 1817 [should be 1823], and was married to Worthington B. Williams at Putnamville July 13, 1837. She was mother of eleven children, of whom ten survive her. Mrs. Williams has been a mother not only to her own children but to all the community where she has lived. None was sick and none in trouble but she was found there to aid and comfort, and if all others censured anyone she was ever ready to speak a kind word of excuse. Cheerful herself she helped make others the same.
On the 13th of last July seven of their children and some of the many friends gathered at the homestead to celebrate her and her husband's golden wedding. As she presided with kindness and hospitality for everyone we little thought that in a little more than a month we would gather again because death had been there and she had gone up higher. The lives of such wives and mothers cannot be written, but they make up the unrecorded history around which cling the tenderest memories of every community. She taught more than teachers, preached more than many preachers, by the purity and truth of her noble Christian life. When we heard that she had passed through the "valley of the shadow" we paused and asked, "Can it be true?" Vacant is her seat in the church; vacant her place in the community; vacant the position of wife and mother, and yet not vacant, for in all these her memory is green and will be long after her grave is grass grown and we have learned to look no more for her happy smile and kindly greeting.
The internment took place in Forest Hill cemetery on Wednesday evening. H. H. M.