Josiah Grover, Obituary/Death NoticePorter County obituaries and death notices . . . .
Josiah Grover
Obituary.
Died, in LaPorte, at the residence of his son, Friday morning, Nov. 3, 1882, Josiah Grover, in the 79th year of his age.
Funeral services were held at the house the Sunday morning following, in the presence of a large number of personal friends. Besides the usual services, Firman Church, Esq., delivered the following memorial address on the life and character of the deceased:
I have been personally, and much of the time intimately, acquainted with the deceased for nearly forty years. By his death a voice is hushed that always had a word of praise for whatever in me was good, and a charitable word to cover faults. A funeral is a sad thing at best, but when a good man, who has lived to a good old age, dies, there is a satisfaction which robs death of a part of its sting.
A writer, for whose memory I have great respect, has said that "it is a good thing for a man to be born into the flesh and wear it awhile, and, when he has done his work, it is a good thing for him to be born out of the flesh and live elsewhere," and if we live natural lives we shall one day be glad to die out of the body and shall only regret that fact because we leave our friends grieving with some natural tears in their eyes. What a world it would be if nobody died! How old-fashioned and conservative and bigoted it would become!
Josiah Grover was born in Mercer county, Kentucky, the second day of June, 1804. His parents moved to southern Indiana when he was a child. He grew up with the State, conversant with its history and politics. His early life was spent in merchantile pursuits. In 1829 he was married to Sophia, eldest daughter of Dr. Sylvanus Everts, who survives him. He was the father of seven sons, five of whom are still living. He removed to LaPorte county in the spring of 1833, and engaged in farming and was so engaged until 1860, when he became enfeebled in health. He was a quiet, unobtrusive man. He made no loud professions of religion. His was a natural religion, shown rather by an honorable and upright life than by loud claims to piety. He had a helping hand for the weak and neglected, he administered to the poor, fed the hungry, clothed the naked and sheltered the homeless. He never accumulated much property, but was rich in the love, respect and memory of those who knew him best. If the assessors who had authority took an inventory of the spiritual estates which men have acquired from the human nature born in them, our departed neighbor would have been found a millionaire indeed, a kind of nobleness, "an emperor ruling whole realms of virture, wisdom, justice and love." Dear friends, our brother lived every movement of his life, in the firm belief that there was an Assessor taking such an inventory, and spent his life in accumulating riches to be written down in that vast book. He has a page written full, and every day he got an income from it. It is all posted in the ledger of life, God the great Accountant, "and the laws of matter and mind the book-keepers" that never erred.
Character to him was its own reward. He did not regard death as a misfortune, but a step forward. He believed the seeds sown in time would come up in blossoms in eternity. He respected nothing so much as integrity -- this he esteemed more than elegance of dress or person. Piety with him was not that merely technical and special thing which it is sometimes mistaken for, but that general steadfastness and integrity and faithfulness which always concedes to others what he would have of them. He believed that truth, justice, love and faith in the bosom of man, "were higher manifestations of God than the barren zone of the sun, and fairer revelations of Him than any thing written in books or spoken by man, or than all the brave grandeur of the sky. To him a funeral in its common forms showed a want of faith in God. He would have it taught in sermons, in churches, and set forth in prayer and psalm at funerals, that death is a blessing to the dead. That the grave is only the Golden Gate of immortality, its iron sides turned toward us, but its pearly golden side turned the other way, only the gate which lets the mortal through. In this night of sorrow then, when our eyes fail from looking upwards, not finding readily the star of Comfort in what seems the terror of the sky, may we not, as he was wont to do, cast forward our thoughts to the morning which will scatter the darkness, and pour the purple light on all the hills. And may we in this so follow him "that the soul of faith in God will shine out of our contenances and beautify the cold body which lies before us, whose soul has gone to its Father..
-- LaPorte Argus.
Newspaper: Porter County Vidette
Date of Publication: November 16, 1882
Volume Number: 26
Issue Number: 46
Page: 8
Column(s): 1
Key to Newspaper Publication Locations:
Newspapers Published in Chesterton, Porter County, Indiana
Chesterton Tribune
The Tribune
Westchester Tribune
Newspapers Published in Valparaiso, Porter County, Indiana
Porter County Vidette
Practical Observer
Valparaiso Practical Observer
Vidette and Republic
Western Ranger
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Obituary/death notice transcribed by Steven R. Shook