Mary J. Samford

 
The Cartersville Express
Cartersville, Georgia
May 19, 1870, page 3
 
Transcribed by:  
 

A Sad and Unfortunate Circumstance.

A gloom has been thrown over this community by the untimely death of one of its brightest jewels.

On Saturday night last, Miss Mary J. Samford, daughter of Rev. A. M. Samford, living in this place, was engaged in writing a composition, and about 9 o’clock, the oil in her lamp having become exhausted, and she wishing to finish her writing, undertook, it is supposed, to replenish the lamp oil by simply unscrewing the top, without extinguishing the flame, in order that she might have the benefit of the light in pouring the oil into the lamp.  The flame was communicated to the fluid which set the lamp on fire.  She threw the burning lamp on the floor, in the breaking of which she splashed the oil on her dress, which took fire.  She hallowed to her step-mother, and ran outdoors and before proper assistance came to her rescue, her father being absent from home, she was so badly burned that death ensued the next morning, about 10 o’clock.  She was in her fourteenth year, and the very picture of good health.  Among the last words that she ever penned (which were in her composition on Truth) was that beautiful couplet:

“Jesus can make a dying bed,
Feel soft as dawny pillows are.”

These lines were penned without the premonition of how soon she was to realize this truth.  She was a very pious and lovely girl.  When told by her weeping father that she must soon die, she expressed her firm belief in her Saviour.  On Monday her remains were accompanied to the M. E. Church by the Sabbath School Scholars, of which she was a member, and her funeral preached by the Rev. J. L. Pierce, before a large and serious audience, after which she was carried to the Cemetery, and there deposited in the mother earth to wait her summons to the skies.  Her happy spirit, doubtless, has ere this greeted her mother on the shining shore.

[Resolutions of Respect by Judge Parrott’s Sabbath School Class can be found on page 2 of the June 2, 1870 issue]

 

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