Mrs. Melanie Mary Carroll Obituary, 1869, Jefferson County, AR

***********************************************************
Submitted by: Mary Brown<marybrownrn@alltel.net>
        Date: August 10, 2003

Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm
***********************************************************


Mrs. Melanie Mary Carroll February 25, 1869 Pine Bluff Weekly Press

Died on the 11th February A. D. 1869, Mrs. Melanie Mary Carroll, 
consort of our esteemed fellow citizen Hon. D. W. Carroll, aged 47 
years.  She was in apparent vigor of health a day or two previous 
to her illness, and her sudden demise surprised and shocked a large 
circle of friends.  The truthful scriptural aphorism, "in the midst 
of life we are in death", occurs to us only when its solemn and 
mournful truth comes directly home to us.  The deceased was born at 
the Post of Arkansas at that day the capital of Arkansas and the seat 
of great refinement and the most distinguished society.  A stranger 
to the history of Arkansas would imagine that few educational 
advantages were afforded in her early history-generally, this was so, 
but such was not the case at the Post.  To look, at its crumbled 
edifices, and desolation, like "Niobe, voiceless and crownless, in 
its woe" at the present day, it would be difficult to conceive that 
it was once the abode of refinement, opulence and gaiety.  In such 
scenes in her earlier days, the deceased moved.  She was descended 
from an honorable French family, who were the early pioneers of 
Arkansas-a people of very great gallantry, not merely in the sense 
of heroism, but boundless generosity, open hospitality, and all the
"small sweet courtesies of life," which the poet loved to hail and 
the unknown and friendless stranger to receive.  That noble 
generation of people, who gave law, liberty, virtue, and good morals 
to Arkansas, are rapidly passing away. May their descendants emulate 
their virtues.  We indulge in no idle panegyric when we say the 
deceased was worthy of such ancestry-that the whole tenor of her life 
was an unwavering observance of duty-duty in her relations to her God 
and her Church-duty in all the relations of society, as a most 
affectionate wife, indulgent parent, dutiful daughter, and loving sister.  
She died as she lived, an exalted Christian. Most aching is the void 
left in a large and interesting family, and they must console themselves 
with the comforting reflection with which she went to rest.
"I am the resurrection and the lite; he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live again, and whomsoever, liveth 
and believeth in me, shall never die."