A Sad Death

Mrs. Annie P. Slaughter, wife of Henry J. Slaughter, died suddenly Wednesday afternoon.  She had been sick since the holidays, but recently her condition was thought to be much improved.  Wednesday up to just before her death she was feeling unusually well and was bright and cheerful until about 1:30 when she died.  No warning of immediate death or indication of intense suffering was given to those who watched at her bedside save the ghrowing up of her hands and the death-look upon her face which came with the instant.  Physicians were called, but before one could reach the home she was dead.  The children were at the college and were notified in a great hurry, but failed to get home in time to find their mother alive.

These are the circumstances that cast a gloom over the entire town and community, a death out of deference to which all places of businesses closed; a death, to attend the funeral of which, caused a large crowd of people to leave their comfortable homes and brave the severe cold and snowstorm at the time raging to show appreciation for the departed.  It is sad to comment upon the death of a friend.  How much more preferable it is to comment upon the release of one whose conduct has been such that exaggeration of praise is impossible; one beauty of whose life is always paramount.

January 16, 1859, to Mr. and Mrs. Ashley McKinney, the latter of whom has long since departed, but the former still lives to do good, there was born a beautiful daughter.

When a child that daughter was a member of the Methodist Church, married when a young woman and lived to be the mother of ten children, eight of whom still live.  As a child, as a young lady, as a married woman, by the exercise of a disposition of which it was a pleasure to take notice, a character, that makes a woman womanly, Christian virtue that adds strength and happiness to church, neighbors and home, day by day, one...and one new,o n and on through . . . years that daughter has enlisted friends until now she has . . . all; and they feel the keen loss of His election for her departure.  We who knew her loved her.  Her friendship was ours, and upon its well we constantly drew without signs of exhaustion.

The funeral services were held by her pastor at the Methodist church, J.D.L. McKinney, who remembers not the day he did not know her, made a talk of her early, middle and later life that brought tears to eyes that do not easily shed them.

To the broken hearted father..... ( incomplete clipping)