Clay County MO Archives Obituaries.....Withers, Abijah August 17, 1879
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Ronald J. Reid rreid21@cox.net December 7, 2007, 8:09 pm

The Liberty Tribune
DEATH OF ABIJAH WITHERS.
Died, in Kansas City, on the 17th inst., at the residence of his son (Webster 
Withers), Mr. Abijah Withers, aged about 80 years.
It is rarely the case, when no epidemic prevails, that we are called upon to 
chronicle, in such rapid succession, the death of three members of the same 
family.  If a deep and universal sympathy would lessen the sorrow of the grief 
stricken family, surely their’s would be assuaged.  The death of sold a 
citizen, who has lived so long a life, so uprightly and honorably, creates the 
most profound regret.
One by one the “ancient landmarks are being removed.”  For more than 80 years 
had Abijah Withers fought the battle of life, and storm-cloud and sunshine 
alike failed to wrest from him either his manly vigor or appearance.  He was a 
rare type of the sturdy pioneer, who a half century ago set up their household 
goods in the wilderness, and by indomitable energy and industry, made our fair 
county “bloom and blossom as the rose.”  A Kentuckian by birth, he has been for 
more than forty-five years a citizen of Missouri and Clay county.  He brought 
with him to Missouri’s wilds the inborn hospitality of his native State, and 
all over the State are men and women, now heads of families, who will recall as 
among the most pleasant episodes of their youth, the days spent beneath his 
hospitable roof, and will drop the ready tear of sympathy to his memory.
For more than four-score years, he has stood like a mighty oak, seeming to defy 
the ravages of time.  His children have grown up to do him honor, and have 
gathered families about their own hearth-stones.  Grandchildren have grown to 
man and womanhood – still he with the gentle, loving companion of his youth 
remained, the picture of a genial, jovial old age with a joke and a warm 
handgrip for every new comer.  But, alas, there are storms in which even the 
monarch of the forest is shaken!  When the old year grew hoary, and the wife of 
his youth, from whose lips, in all the long years of his wedded life no unkind 
word had ever passed to wound him, grew sick unto death, then it was the strong 
old man became as “a reed shaken by the wind;” then it was we knew how tender a 
heart beat beneath the eccentric exterior.  “I had hoped,” said he, as I 
grasped his hand in mute sympathy, “she could have waited for me a little 
longer.”  And I thought, the sundering of this strong tie will be 
the “beginning of the end.”  When his youngest born – the child of his old age, 
was so ruthlessly taken from him, then was the ancient oak riven to its 
center.  His sons and daughters thought to wile him from his grief; but the 
aged heart alone, knew its own bitterness; and while on his way back to the 
home in which he had lived, and had hoped to die, he gave up the struggle, and, 
as became his courageous manhood, died without a murmur.              FRIEND.


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