BIRTH 24 SEP 1842 • Ohio
DEATH 9 OCT 1909 • Sterling, Kansas
Obituary: Mrs. Dr. Spencer
Mrs. Ella Anderson Spencer was born on September 24, 1842, near Cedarville, Green County, Ohio, and was the daughter of William and Mary Collins Anderson. On the farm where she was born and on another a few miles distant she spent her early life, with the exception of three or four years spent in the home of Rev. Doctor J. B. Clark in Canonsburg, and in Allegheny, Penn., part of the time in school and part of the time in charge of Dr. Clark’s home, and caring for her invalid aunt, Mrs. Lydia Clark, while Doctor Clark served as colonel of a regiment of volunteers in the Union Army.
In early life, she professed her faith in Christ in the Caesars Creek congregation under the pastorate of her uncle Rev. Cyrus Cummins, and has been a life-long member of the United Presbyterian church.
On November 2, 1871, she was united in marriage to Rev. F. M. Spencer, D. D. These two were born the same year on farms about a mile apart. Ten years later the families of both moved to adjoining farms and here the two who were to spend 38 years of united service in the work of Christ were schoolmates for several years. Eight of these 38 years were spent in Leavenworth, Kansas, ten in New Concord, Ohio, and twenty in Sterling, Kansas.
To this union were born six daughters: Mrs. Della Lees, Mrs. Josephine Mathews, Mrs. Edna Woleslagel, Mrs. Francis Kilbourn, Mrs. Wilda Irving and Miss Eula Spencer. All of these survive their mother.
Until twelve years ago she had excellent health. Since that time a complication of diseases has gradually worn out her strength, till in the early morning of October 22th she passed into a better life.
Her godly training in her father’s home and her life in Dr. Clark’s home was an excellent preparation to the duties which came to her later as the wife of a pastor and as an associate in college work for twenty-seven years. It was a pleasure to meet and entertain in her own home the young people of the congregation of college. The hundreds who have been thus entertained have known her as a friend and helper, ready to do for them any service in her power. It was always her wish to become acquainted with the students so that she could do more for them, and the more she could do the better satisfied she was.
One of her strong characteristics was to treat poor and rich alike. It was a real pleasure for her to entertain her friends and at times to have in her home and to entertain those who could not make returns in kind. It has been a great cross to her in some of these later years not to be able to have her friends in her home as much as she would have wished.
Although fitted by birth, by training and by grace for a life that might have given her a place among those who have been much in the public eye, she rather gave herself to her husband, to her children and to her husband’s work, thus making for herself in her six daughters a better monument than any that might be found in the hall of fame, and doing thru the students of Muskingum and Cooper Colleges a work which will be more lasting than any that public position might give. Not many women had a deeper interest in the work of the W.C.T.U. What she was able to do to help on the work of temperance, she did, with great pleasure, until physical weakness compelled her to leave this work to others.
Sixty-seven years and seventeen days sum up the years of her life as man sums them up, but as God sums up her life will be continued in the lives of her children and grandchildren and in the lives of the many young men and women, who will always be the better because of the impetus she has given them. She “rests from her labors, but her works do follow her.”
The funeral services held in the U.P. church Wednesday afternoon were impressive and touching. The faculty, the board and student body of Cooper College acted as an escort from the home to the church. The W.C.T.U. attended in a body, there being between 60 and 70 present. The White Ribboners lined up on either side of the walk while the casket was borne from the church.
