Published in the Pilot April 21, 1926

Mary E. Kemp was born in Vermont February 15, 1835, and closed her earthly life at Naper, Nebr., April 15, 1926, having reached the great age of 91 years two months. Mrs. Kemp was one of fourteen children.

As a child of three years she was taken by her parents overland in a covered wagon to the new state of Wisconsin, where the family settled at East Troy, Walworth County. This was in 1837, the year in which Victoria was crowned queen of Great Britain. At East Troy she passed her childhood and youth.

In 1855 she was married to Thomas A. Kemp. Four children were born, two girls and two boys, Mrs. Louise Ericksen, late of Naper, Nebr., Mrs. Ella E. Eller, late of Blair, Nebr., Mr. S. E. Kemp, of Blair, Nebr., and Mr. Charles W. Kemp, deceased; two brothers, Mr. B. F. Haller and Mr. S. G. Haller and one sister, Mrs. E. Castetter, and one son, Mr. S. E. Kemp all of Blair, and by six grandchildren, Mrs. Marry Morris, of Blair, Mrs. Pauline Roush, Des Moines, Ia., Mrs. Vera Peppel, Naper, Nebr., Miss Lucille Kemp, Blair, Nebr., Mrs. Frank Stewart, Blair Nebr., and Mrs. Gladys Wilst, Mr. Carmel, Ill. Ten great-grandchildren also survive to remember “the little grandmother” who attained so great an age.

Mrs. Kemp had been in failing health for some years past. She made her home for the last three years with her daughter, Mrs. G. A. Erickson, at Naper, Nebr., who cared for her mother with unselfish devotion until her own death last month. At that time Mrs. Kemp went to live with a granddaughter, Mrs. Vera Peppel, near Naper, Nebr., in whose home she passed on this week after two years of great suffering.

Early in life Mrs. Kemp was identified with the German Methodist branch of the church Universal. She was a constant reader and intelligent student of the Bible. During her long life in Blair she was a member of the Congregational Church here entering its fellowship August 18, 1877, 49 years ago on confession of her faith and her devotion to her church was of so conspicuous and outstanding a sort as to be know of all men. When obliged to be away from Blair she was homesick for her church, punctually sent back her annual contribution and rejoiced exceedingly when she was able to sit among her long-time friends in Christ. Mrs. Kemp’s sympathies were wider than her town and church, and by her presence and gifts she made herself felt in the Missionary Society of this church. The world does not have too many such faithful and uncompromising friends of God. We can but say “hail and farewell” and add the words of her Lord, “of such is the Kingdom of God.”

So much for a formal “obituary” but this bare outline is not the life of Mrs. Kemp any more than a picture of sky-line of New York City is a story of the life of that metropolis; any more than an etching of serrated peaks of the Great Divide, comprehends the riches of the Rocky Mountain range; any more than a table of contents in the book.

Is not enough to say of any good woman “she was born, she grew, married, begot and died.” These are outstanding events, but not life. It leaves out all hopes, dreams, high ambitions, all beautiful romance, all disciplining tragedy, all noble striving all kindness shown, all worthy effort, all attempts to make or to leave the world better.

This is not the time for much speaking, many words. A worthy life is its own best eulogy. At the burial of any genuine Christian it may well be said “He, she, being dead, yet speaketh.”

It is my regret or loss that I did not personally know this wife, mother, sister, grandmother and great-grandmother of Swiss extraction and Christian faith. Like my own mother who fell asleep at a great age and like your mother, she was human and undoubtedly had her weaknesses and limitations. But as we consider the great, elemental virtues which underlay the lives and formed the character of these Christian women in years not gone, their infinite material tenderness in out helpless infancy, their Godlike abhorrence of evil, their passionate devotion of goodness and truth, their consistent high-mindedness; when we consider these fundamental things we lay aside as unworthy of remembrance the lesser things, as we hope that our own failings may be forgotten.

I am thinking of this woman as one of our brave western pioneers. I have often been called upon to say the last words at burial of many of these men or women who made it west. Theirs was the hardship, ours is the relative ease. They broke the sod in loneliness, we plant the seed in midst of neighbors.

Mrs. Kemp was a prairie schooner child. When scares 3 years old she rode the weary track from Vermont to Wisconsin. Through all her girlhood and vigorous young womanhood, in all its romance of high hope and maiden-dreams, she knew the deprivations of the pioneer and attended the hard school of labor.

No history of our great western empire can be rightly written without giving full acknowledgment and the greatest credit to these hardy folk out of who loins so many of us sprang. Beneath the foundation stones or our immense western states lie, shall I say, the holy bones of these men or women upon whose toil and character we have built our institutions. We must not forget them. And one of them, truly a mother of the west, we are laying away today with Christian rites.

I am thinking of this pioneer mother sending out sons and daughters, bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, with the prayer that they might carry on, holding high the Christian ideals which dominated her life.

And I am thinking of the Christian woman, so devoted to the Book of Books, so Loyal to the church and to the Christian fraternity she found within it.

Honestly she could sing: “I love thy kingdom, Lord; The house of Thine abode, The church our dear Redeemer saves-With His own precious blood. For her my tears shall fail, For her my prayer ascend; To her my care and toils be giv’n-Till toils and cares shall end. Beyond my highest joy,I prize her heavenly ways, Her sweet communion, solemn, vows, Her hymns of love and praise.” No lines of the Palmist could more appeal to her than these: “I was glad when they said unto me, let me go into the life of the Lord,” “How amiable are tabernacles, O Lord of hosts! My soul longeth, yes even fainteth for the courts of the Lord.” “A day in they courts is better than a thousand.” “The Lord is in His Holy Temple.” “The Lord in the beauty of holiness.”

And so, as we lay away the frail and broken body of this aged sister in Christ, shall it not be with a prayer of thankfulness that our faith can produce and sustain such should of unswerving character and indomitable spirt.

And shall we not also pry that the mantle of such ascended Elijah may fall upon our shoulders, girding us with a new power to carry on in faith and hope and with a devotion worthy of these who have lived greatly and lovingly and have now fallen asleep.

Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clipping on file at the Blair Public library.