Yesterday morning at 3 o’clock at the home of her daughter, Mrs. J. B. Sully, at DeSoto, the immortal soul of Mrs. Daniel Fenton passed into the world beyond.

Mrs. Fenton was perhaps the best known person in the county, having come here with her husband a half century ago and had made Washington County her home continually ever since. Mrs. Fenton had been taking care of her daughter, who is ill and had overworked herself. A few nights ago she contracted pneumonia and death came very suddenly.

The hardships experienced fifty years ago by Mrs. Fenton and her good husband would fill a large size volume and the obituary of this estimable old lady will appear in next week’s Tribune.

The body will be taken to Omaha for burial, but at this time funeral arrangements have not been completed.

#2 Printed in the February 8, 1912 Democrat, Blair, Nebraska

Grandma Fenton Dies

Mrs. D. Fenton died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. J. B. Sulley, just below DeSoto early Tuesday morning, after a very short illness. Grandma Fenton had been nursing Mrs. Sulley up to a few days prior to her death, and contracted a severe case of pneumonia. Mrs. Fenton was one of the early settlers of DeSoto coming there with her husband in the early sixties, and has resided on the old homestead ever since.

Mrs. Sulley was the only child, and for a number of years, Mrs. Fenton made her home with her daughter.

Funeral services will be held Thursday morning at the home at 8:30 and at the church in Calhoun at 9:30. The remains will be taken to Omaha for burial beside those of Mr. Fenton.

The daughter, Mrs. Sulley, has been quite sick for some time and it was feared to break the news of her mother’s death to her for several hours after it happened.

#3 Printed in the February 14, 1912 Tribune, Blair, Nebraska

Mrs. Daniel Fenton

Over forty years ago we first called upon the late Daniel Fenton and his wife on the old Blackwood homestead in DeSoto, three miles from Ft. Calhoun on the bottom road to Blair, and our friendship during all those years has been unbroken. Many a pleasant hour have we spent together. The Fentons were Catholics and Dan was a democrat and we were a Methodist and a republican, but we all three had the same feeling of the divine brotherhood of man and we shall surely miss them. They were noble pioneer people.

Grandma Fenton was born near Cork in Ireland about seventy-seven years ago and came from Boston, Mass., to Nebraska, about 1866. After the death of her husband some years ago she spent $700 in placing a large altar in our Ft. Calhoun Catholic Church in memory of him.

For a number of years James Sully, who married their only daughter, has had charge of the home farm and when we last saw her a few months ago she was very happy with her children and grandchildren.

A short service was held at the house, where her daughter lay sick, and another at the Ft. Calhoun Catholic Church by Father O’Driscoll, which Thomas Kelley of Blair tells us was very beautiful.

The body was then taken by train to the Catholic Cemetery in Omaha to be laid beside the grave of her husband on February 8, 1912. The pallbearers were James Maher of Blair, John Hineline, James Justice and Harry Seltz of DeSoto, James Shinnick of Garryowen and John Daily of School District 29.

Among others present were S. W. Chambers of Blair, Mrs. Herman Jacobson of 2725 Ames Avenue, Omaha, and many others who had known and loved her for years.

W. H. Woods

#4 Evening World-Herald (Omaha, Nebr.), February 8, 1912, p. 2, col. 2

MRS. DANIEL FENTON, A PIONEER, IS DEAD

Mrs. Daniel Fenton died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. James Sully, at Desoto, Tuesday morning at the age of 75 years, after a short illness of pneumonia. Mrs. Fenton was one of Nebraska's earliest pioneers, coming to this state in 1864 from Boston and settling on a farm at Desoto, where she lived for forty-eight years. She leaves surviving her a daughter, Mrs. James Sully, and four grandchildren.

The funeral will be held from the Webster street station at 12 o'clock today, and the interment will be in the Holy Sepulcher cemetery.

~~~~~Obituaries courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair, Nebraska library.~~~~