Mary Elleanor Pierce

Burial record and obituary:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/72070739/mary-elleanor-pierce

Obituary in Fallon Eagle Standard- date of death Feb. 15, 1917

Death Calls Pioneer Woman to Last Reward

Mrs. Mary E. Pierce Passed Away Sunday at Home of Her Son At Stillwater

On last Thursday evening, February 15th, while returning from a pleasant day spent with a neighbor, Mrs. Pierce was stricken and died suddenly when only a short distance from her home. The cause of death was due to heart failure, she being subject to these attacks. Mr. Lawrence, her son, started to meet his mother thinking it about time for her to return, but, seeing her coming back to the house and when she failed to appear a few minutes later, he went to find her and was shocked to discover his mother lying in the road dead near the spot where he had seen her walking only a few minutes before. Life had already left the body and nothing could be done. She evidently had passed away without a struggle as her walking stick was still clasped in her hand.

The deceased was in her 79th year and was still most active, attending to all of her household duties and as she reached the evening of her life it only seemed appropriate that she should enter the life of rest just as the sun was going down in the western sky.

Her maiden name was Mary Eleanor Dunbar and was born in Charleston, Ill., the daughter of Col. Alexander P. Dunbar and Susan Frances Mason, and later going with her parents to Kentucky, where she spent her girlhood days. Her father was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln and often when Lincoln was a young lawyer, prepared meals for him in her home and as a little girl sat on his knee.

In 1856 she was married to Theodore C. Lawrence, Ind., and to this union six children were born, two of whom survive, Sibley of Peoria, Ill., and Chas. A. of Stillwater, Nevada, with whom she lived at the time of her death.

In 1900 she was married to J. W. Pierce who died in 1908. "Grandma" Pierce as she was familiarly called, was loved by all who knew her and her friends extend to the bereaved sons their sympathy and especially to the lonely son with whom she lived, who will miss her loving presence.

The remains were laid to rest in the Fallon cemetery Sunday, February 18th. The funeral services were conducted at the home by Elder Needham of Ind., who is visiting in Fallon at the present time. The following poem seems fitting here:

I cannot say---I will not say That she is dead

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she is just away; With a cheery smile, and a wave of her hand, She has wandered into an unknown land, And left us dreaming how very fair, It needs must be, since she lingers there. And you

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oh, you, who the wildest yearn For the old time step and the glad return, Think of her faring on, As dear in love of there as the love of here, Think of her still the same, I say, She is not dead---she is just away.