SIDNEY LEANDER DOWNS OBITUARY, SUFFOLK, NEW YORK

Copyright (c) 2000 by Kathy DiCioccio (Kathy.DiCioccio@na.bestfoods.com).

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The following is a transcription of the obituary of my great-grandfather
Sidney Leander Downs of Riverhead, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York,
removed to Millsboro, Delaware in 1884. He died on December 2, 1887.  It
was written by his brother James Lewis Downs, also of Riverhead.

"In memoriam of the late Capt. Sidney L. Downs, who died so suddenly on the
evening of Dec. 2, 1887. The writer having attended the funeral at
Millsboro, Del., learned as much as anyone knows of the manner in which he
met his death. On the afternoon of that day, in company with his two sons
and a colored friend, he went about six miles down the river to shoot
geese. The men were all upon an island, when a flock of geese passing
overhead they fired at the birds, and one fell wounded. Capt. Downs, taking
a gun with him entered a boat and started for the goosse. His sons heard
his discharge three guns after he left them but as nothing further was
heard they became alarmed, and about sunset the eldest son, a young man of
twenty years of age, started a search for the missing man. The young men
soon found the boat and within, lying upon the bottom, their father dead
with the gun beside him. There was no mark or wound upon the body, the
cause of death, undoubtedly, being heart disease. To human sight and mind
his sudden death seems a hard blow, leaving as he does a large family to
mourn his loss. He was a man upright in his business, loving mercy and
walking humbly before God. We shall see him no more upon the earth; he
sleeps in death, far from his native home, Long Island. We hope to meet him
again in a better land where there will be no more death and of him we now
say Requieth in pace."   JDL. James Lewis Downs.