OBIT: Jane (GARDNER) MAYS, 1890, Tyrone, Blair County, PA

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TYRONE TOPICS.

  Our oldest citizen has passed to the great beyond.  Mrs. Jane Mays, 
born on the summit of Brush mountain within sight of the now 
flourishing city of Tyrone, then a dense wilderness, April 15, 1872, 
died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Mary Henderson, on Main street, 
yesterday morning at 2.15 o'clock, from the effects of a paralytic 
stroke, which occurred on Saturday last, aged 98 years, 6 months and 26 
days.  Mrs. Mays was the daughter of William and Mary Gardner.  Her 
father for many years was employed at Tyrone Forges.  She was married 
to Thomas Mays May 30, 1816, to which union eight children were born, 
four of whom survive - Mrs. Mary Henderson, of this place; Mrs. Sarah 
Goss, Mrs. Eliza Jane Dugan and William Mays, of Clearfield county.  
Besides these she leaves thirty-four grandchildren, forty-four great-
grandchildren, and one great-great grandchild.  During the parade of 
the Patriotic Sons of America July 4th last, she sat on the front porch 
of her home and was an interested spectator.  On the 15th day of 
January, 1827*, her husband died, since which time she has made her 
home with her daughter, Mary.  For many years her husband kept the 
Clearfield hotel, which was while under his management a great resort 
for teamsters and lumbermen from Clearfield and the back counties.  It 
has been the pleasure of the writer to have known the aged woman and 
her family for many years intimately, during a period of some years 
residing near neighbors, where we saw grandmother daily.  She was a 
noble-hearted, good, true woman and in her presence you were in a 
manner compelled to forget earthly surroundings.  She had been a very 
consistent and faithful member of the Methodist Episcopal church for 
the past forty years.  The funeral services will be held at her late 
home at 2 o'clock Friday afternoon.  Interment in the Tyrone cemetery.  
And thus has been broken a link connecting the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries.  "The young may die and the old must die."

Morning Tribune, Altoona, Pa., Thursday, November 13, 1890

1850 Decatur Township, Clearfield County census -
Thomas Mays, 59
Jane Mays, 54
William Mays, 19
Eliza J. Mays, 16

* Thomas Mays died in 1867, according to the Blair County Genealogical 
Society publication, Grandview Cemetery, Tyrone.