Wayne County, NC - Obituary of Col. Wylie B. Fort, 1926

Goldsboro Dailey Argus
Goldsboro, NC Saturday Evening, December 18, 1926

COL. W.B. FORT PASSES

End of Widely Known and Universally Esteemed County and Confederate 
Navy Veteran Came at Noon Today at His Colonial Home Near Pikeville.

It is meant that in life's purpling twilight, the drowsy twinkling
of even tides should lull to sleep, and so becomes our sorrowful
province to chronicle that at noon today at his colonial country
home near Pikeville, our widely and universally esteemed countyman 
Col. Wylie B. Fort, in the 86th year of his age "fell on sleep" after 
six months of slow decline, which he was in tender care of devoted 
daughters, solicitions, phyicians and nurses and an army of friends.

Col. Fort was born December 11, 1841 and had barely entered in
his 86th year when summons came to him to "cross over and rest
beneath the shade of the trees." He was a student at the N. C.
University when the war between the states broke out and he at
once volunteered and entered the Confederate Navy, and was in
a historic engagement between the Merrimac and the Monitor off
Hampton Roads, and was perhaps the last surivor of that great
battle.

While Col. Fort suffered all the travail of war and reconstrution
in common with his people, he was reduced to the keen physical
suffering of want that many others experienced because he was
possessed with wide acres of fine farming and timber lands, and
these were ever at the use of his needy neighbors during the 
privations of reconstruction and he generously shared with 
them whatever he had; so that all through the subsequent years
no man has been so by his neighbors as Col. Fort, and now 
that he is gone from them they feel sorrowful indeed; but are
comforted by the belief that he has the words of the King: "In
as much as you have done unto one of the least of these my
brethren, ye have done it unto me. Enter thou into the joys of
thy Lord."

While attending the commencement last June, at his class reunion 
he was taken suddenly ill on June 7, during the exercise and was 
hastily conveyed to the Durham hospital where for weeks his condition
was so grave that he could not be moved: later he was conveyed by
easy conveyence to the hospital at Morehead City in the hope that
the sulubrious salt air would prove conductive to his recovery; but
at length he was conveyed to his home, where the end came at noon 
today.

Col. is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Fred Parker, of this city,
and Mrs. R. A. Fetzer of Chapel Hill, four grandsons, Messrs. Talbot,
Fred, Jr., Ogden and Wylie Parker of this city.

The funeral will be held from the home, near Pikeville, tomorrow 
afternoon at 3:30 o'clock, and the interment will be made beside
his late wife and two sons in the ancestral Fort buying ground.

The following pall bearers have been selected:
Active: Lonnie Smith, Leslie Crawford, Arthur Crawford, 
A. S. Vinson, Harrison Yelverton, Jno. K. Bridgers, R. Jack
Smith, J. B. Hooks.
   Honorary: T. R. Robinson, Joe Rosenthal, N. O'Berry, Joe A.
Parker, W. F. Taylor, D. C. Humphrey, Latium Williams, of
Wilson, Percy Munson of Wilmington, A. H. Edgerton, F. K.
Borden, W. T. Yelverton, B.G. Thompson, Dr. J. Y. Joyner,
Ray Wooten, Council Wooten, M. J. Best, Col. A. C. Davis.

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This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by
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