Catherine Pearson

She was the daughter of Dr. Charles Worthington. She was married to Joseph Pearson.

Daily National Intelligencer Thursday, June 25, 1868 Obituary Entered into rest, at evening, June 5, A.D. 1868, Mrs. Catharine Pearson, at Brentwood, D.C. Widely known, universally beloved, beloved of God. Blessed is she, her works do follow her.

Mrs. Pearson was a daughter of the late Dr. Charles Worthington, of Georgetown, D.C. and was born July 6, 1791. She was married in January 1821, to the Hon. Joseph Pearson, an ex-member of Congress from North Carolina. Her eldest sister was the wife of the Hon. William Gaston, also a Representative from the same state.

Mr. Pearson died in October 1834 at Salisbury, North Carolina, while there upon a business errand, leaving his widow with a large family of young children. How nobly and faithfully she fulfilled her trust toward her orphaned children the Recording Angel shall bear witness in the last day. But one survives her now the wife of Carlisle P. Patterson. The rest were taken one after another, in the freshness of youth and full of promises of earthly usefulness and distinction, just at the age when a fond and careful mother looks to see the reward of her prayers and solicitudes. One brother also survives her, Mr. John G. Worthington, of Georgetown, D.C.

Amiable, affectionate, generous, hospitable, beautiful and brilliant, the very soul of the distinguished society in which she reigned a queen, Mrs. Pearson’s name is a memory that knows no fading. The centre of a large circle of relatives and of an almost limitless circle of friends, she won and kept all hearts. She could not make an enemy, her presence was the victory of love; for love in her and as it shone forth in her life, was no poor faulty, earth born grave and charm, but the heavenly gift of charity. With all her winning attractiveness by nature and by acquirement, she was nothing so truly and so manifestly as she was a Christian – a Christian everywhere, by all confessed, in society no less than in the church; in the world. To a degree which few can endure without injury to Christian character, she was not of the world. Sharing in all that was brilliant in the social life of the capital, her conversation was in heaven and all took knowledge of her that she had been with Jesus. Without austerity and without frivolity, she received all God’s gifts with thanksgiving and used this world and not abusing it. Often bereaved, she was never disconsolate; her Christian cheerfulness could not be cast down.

Five years ago she was smitten with paralysis as she was about to enter God’s house. Reviving a little, she would not be persuaded to return home and not suspecting then the nature of the attack, she was allowed to enter the church and remain until the sermon, when, her feebleness alarming her family, she was assisted to her carriage and conveyed to her home. She was taken from her carriage a helpless cripple and for the remainder of her life could hardly endure to be raised from a reclining altitude long enough to have the pillows stirred and changed. In all that weary period her Bible and her Prayer Book were her constant companions, the visits of her pastor to give her the Holy Communion her highest anticipation. Her interest in all her relatives and friends never flagged; but when her mind wandered through infirmity, it wandered to her Lord. In the last few months of her illness, when her mind began to be seriously enfeebled, a social call from her pastor was unintelligible to her except as an opportunity for receiving the Sacrament and though he came unprepared to celebrate, having given her the sacrament a few days before, the paten and chalice had to be brought to satisfy her eager expectations and in her last Communion, when she was past speed and past consciousness to almost everything else, it was touching to see the mute eloquence of her right hand empathizing the familiar words of prayer and consecration, praising God with the only member that she had and dying, as she had lived, in love and holiness. Ye who loved her follow her.

• Reference: Find A Grave Memorial - SmartCopy: Mar 30 2017, 8:53:25 UTC