| Blair Courier 1 Dec 1898
This community sustains a great loss in the death of Mrs. Belknap, beloved wife of W. H. Belknap. For many years she was a communicant of the Episcopal church and exhibited all through her life those Christian graces which are the fruit of constant abiding in the Master. Her death was sudden and is a great sorrow to the entire community, especially to the husband and the two surviving children. She was in the fifty-third year of her life when she passed into the peace of the Beyond on Tuesday afternoon, the 29th day of November. Mrs. Emma A. Royster-Belknap was born in Indiana April 3, 1846, and was married on December 22, 1867, to William H. Belknap. They resided at Woodbine, Iowa, for a number of years and then moved to the state of New York, and finally coming to Blair from Yonkers, N.Y., about three years ago, when Mr. Belknap became interested in the reorganization of the Haller Proprietary Co. and was made its secretary and manager. Four children were born to them, two of whom survive to share the father’s great burden of sorrow over the deep loss of his companionable wife. Mrs. Belknap always enjoyed the best of health up to last spring, when she began to gradually fail, but it was thought that with the treatment commenced about six weeks ago the disease would be successfully baffled. But on last Saturday afternoon she was suddenly seized with violent pains and had to be carried to her bed, from which she never arose. The funeral will occur from the home at 2 o’clock tomorrow (Friday) afternoon and will be conducted by Rev. A. T. Young of St. Mary’s Episcopal church, after which interment will be made in the Blair cemetery. The life of Mrs. Belknap was a quiet stream, its sources in the hills of Eternity, its enlarging flow supplied from heavenly rains; not spectacular, with no roaring Niagras, but placid, deep, mirroring heaven, blessing earth. To such minds a life like Mrs. Belknap’s is clear proof of the existence, love and power of a Higher Being. She had good sense, level judgment, seeing large things large and small things small; the spiritual world as real to her as the natural, and she was never greatly moved. Without much talk about it, she just lived her faith day by day performing with fidelity, unreckoned sacrifices and steady love her duties as a Christian wife and mother. Courage to bear burdens without outward or inward complaint, to be hopeful in disappointment, to be sweet under petty trials and severe pains, and to always forgetful, requires grave divine. She went willing to her long home. One loves to note such a life, quite unnoticed by the great world, the sort of life which convinces those whom it touches of its heavenly origin, and which counts for more in the church, in national life and in the progress of humanity, and doubtless in the heavenly annals, than the lives of some applauded heroes.
Note: Buried in Blk 55, Lot 6, Grave 8 Blair Cemetery; Find A Grave #8556074.
~~~ Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair Public Library at Blair, Nebraska.
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