| Mary Myers Holdstock |
|---|
About the time she had grown up to young womanhood they removed to Elkhart county, Indiana, and settled in what is now the beautiful little city of Goshen. After they had crossed the prairie and were approaching the village, the first thing which attracted their attention war the liberal supply of hazel-brush. They went to housekeeping in their wagon until a house was erected for the,. In a few years she was married to John Derlin, with whom she lived about fourteen years. By this marriage ther was born one son, who died early in life. She was again married, to the Rev. Enoch Holdstock, in 1856, with whom she also lived most happily until his death, in 1894. She had with him an experience of about thirty-five years as the wife of an itinerant Methodist minister, in the States of Michigan and Indiana. She was mich afflicted with lameness for many years, and yet she was frequently found, with her husband, in the homes of so many who needed sympathy because of their sorrow. She was a most kind and affectionate wife and mother, and was greatly honored, by the testimony of her blind step-son, James Holdstock, who said to her a short time before he died, "You have been a good mother to me." Many of us who have been much about their home can corroborate that testimony. Not unfrequently step-mothers perform as faithful and tender a part toward even afflicted children as any mothers can possibly do. No one, perhaps, enjoyed the society of her friends and neighbors more fully than did Sister Holdstock. She specially enjoyed the company of ministers of the gospel; hence, after the death of her husband, she greatly missed such associations, and felt that it was a real and painful loss that they did not come to her home as formerly. Perhaps in this fact there may be to us, as ministers, a significant suggestion as to our duty in similar cases of bereavement. The influence upon the home life can scarcely be over-estimated, either for good or evil, in the fact that a good or bad home life, whichever it may be, must so largely determine the character of influence sent out upon the world through children and others who have been nurtured in the home. In the home was where Sister Holdstock's work was mostly done. Providential environments, as they seemed to be, largely confined her to that sphere. She sends out into the world a lovely Christian daughter, her only living child, who has already exerted a marked influence for good in her work, especially among young people. We might hesitate, for her sake, to say these things if she were present. We refer to the wife of Rev. J. E. Brown, a pastor in the Presbyterian Church. In her eighty-second year, our dear sister passed from her home on earth, as we doubt not, to her home in heaven. We deeply and tenderly sympathize in the behalf of the daugh ter, because of her peculiar and profound bereavement, and ask for her the sufficient grace and the encircling of the everlasting arms. Her funeral was held from High Street Church, Muncie, conducted by her pastor, Leslie J. Naftzger, assisted by Ezra F. Hasty and others. She was interred in Beech Grove cemetery. -E. F. Hasty. |
Held at Hartford City, March 23 to March 28, 1898 Richmond, Ind.: Nicholson Printing & Mfg. Co., 1898, p 85. |