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Show A TRIBUTE TO MRS. L. R PARKER. A noble and beautiful earthly life ended on Tuesday, June 5th, 1900, when Mrs. Sarah C. Parker entered upon the heavenly life. Her long time of suffering and weariness has changed into an eternity in which there shall be no more pain, but a rest that remaineth. Seventy-two years ago Sarah Candace Pearse was born in Sudbury, Addison Co., Vermont. She was of puritan ancestry, and her family was interesting in a high degree. An intellectual and christian ideal was a very intense factor in the family life. This love of education led the father to build up the home schools, and to make use of more distant advantages for his children. Anti-slavery and temperance were household topics of conversation, and the children became posessed of strong convictions concerning them. Missionaries were frequent and welcome visitors in that house, and the children believed in prayer and effort for the conversion of the world. Music was such a part of the family life that parents and children seemed to have a song adapted to every oircumstance from the matin song that waked the children to the evening hymn that sent them to retirement. This singing not only beautified and graced their daily life, but ennobled it, because of the high motive and religious thought of which that music was the expression. The foundation thought upon which this family of four brothers and sisters were reared, was that they were walking in the sight of God and their lives were to be a loving, intelligent and constant service to others. This conviction remained with all the children through life. When Sarah Candace Pearse left her home to attend school at Castleton Seminary and afterwards at Oberlin, her beautiful character was already formed, and these two institutions but refined, cultivated and strengthened it. Her love of music and ability as a singer, placed her at once in the choir at Oberlin, and her clear soprano voice-easily taking high C-put her at the head of that choir of one hundred singers, and she took chief soprano parts in all the fine oratorio concerts that were given in Oberlin at that time. She was a teacher also while in the college as a student, and interrupted her college course to teach two years in the high schools of Cincinnati, where she was offered the best place in those schools that had ever been offered a woman; but she returned to Oberlin and graduated in 1851, in the same class with Professor Parker, Colonel Cooper, |
