Union-Delaware County OhArchives Obituaries.....Bigelow, Alpheus Russel April 11, 1908 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/oh/ohfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Nancy Katzenbach nkatzen@earthlink.net March 29, 2007, 2:49 pm Newspaper clipping from gr. grandmother Alpheus Russel Bigelow was born at the old family homestead on the Post Road in Union County October 29, 1851, and died while visiting at Texarkana, Texas, Saturday, April 11, 1908, aged about fifty-six and one-half years. His grandfather, Eliphas Bigelow, and his grandmother, Meriam McCloud Bigelow, were among the earliest settlers in what is now Union Township. Their only child who reached maturity was Alpheus, who married Melinda Converse. Of their two children one died in childhood, and the other was Alpheus Russel Bigelow, who was named for his father and for his granduncle, the famous Methodist minister of Ohio pioneer days. Alpheus Russel, or as he was better known among the citizens of Union Township, A.R. Bigelow, spent his boyhood in part on the old home farm with his grandmother and in part on a near-by farm owned by his step-father, the late James McCloud, of Milford Center. For two or three years in the late sixties he was a student at Delaware. In 1871 he assumed the management of the farm on which he lived almost continuously up to the beginning of this year when he came to live in Milford Center. In 1871 Alpheus Russel Bigelow married Hattie R. Parthemore, who survives him; and to them were born six children: Maurice Alpheus, now a member of the faculty of Columbia University in the city of New York; Amy R., now residing in Milford; Walter Russel, now managing the home farm; William F., a member of the Editorial Staff of the Cosmopolitan Magazine in New York City; Dessie H., wife of Guy D. Mitchell, residing at Dover; and Merle E., who lives at the old homestead. For many years Mr. Bigelow had taken an active interest in the work of the Milford Center circuit of the M.E. Church, particularly at Lewis Chapel where he was long the superintendent of the Sunday School and a member of the board of stewards of the church. Since boyhood he had been a member of the church; but his religious faith was intensely strong during the last twenty or twenty-five years of his life. Especially was his belief in the goodness of the Almighty and in the life beyond the grave a never-failing support in the last weeks of his life when he realized that his earthly career was drawing rapidly to a close. Calmly he made preparations for the arrival of the Angel of Death, and when the messenger came he was ready to lay down life's activities, which for him had ever been intense. For him the crossing of the bar into another life had no terrors, for he felt that he was going to be forever with the Lord Bidding his wife "good-bye" and with farewell messages to his children, he quietly passed from this earthly life. Funeral services were held at the M.E. Church, Wednesday at 10 o'clock a.m. conducted by Rev. A.L. Rogers of this place and Rev. Mann of Delaware. Interment was made in the cemetery at this place. Additional Comments: Alpheus was my 2nd gr.grandfather File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/oh/union/obits/bigelow1631ob.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/ohfiles/ File size: 3.5 Kb