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Peter Roble, my grandfather, came from Germany to the United States in 1760, and settled in or near Hagerstown,
Frederick County, Md., and was married, March 19, 1770, to Miss Catherine West, who was also a native Germany. Of these
German parents my mother was born, June 2, 1780, and from them she inherited a strong, healthy body, and a good, sound mind,
with which to begin her earthly life. She was their tenth child. The following are the names of her brothers and sisters: Susan,
Jacob, Barbara, Henry, Catharine, John, Magdalena, Peter, Elizabeth, and Eve, the youngest. All of these had ended the journey of
life and passed over the river of death before the soles of mother’s feet were dipped in the brim of its waters. In 1798 her father
moved to Washington County, Tenn., and settled five miles south of Jonesboro, where he lived until his death, which occurred about
1834. I have now in my possession his old German Bible and hymn book, out of which he used to read and sing; and in this same
old Bible, an heirloom of the family, may be found a beautiful record of the birth of each child in her father’s family, all
of whom were trained by their parents to fear God and keep his commandments. Under the influence of such teaching mother
made a profession of saving faith in Christ and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church in the days of her early youth.
Of her subsequent religious life, while growing up to mature womanhood in her father’s house, I know but little, and can
only judge of her heart, the fountain-head, by the streams of hallowed influences that flowed out from it for more than
three-quarters of a century. And these influences, through her generations, are still multiplying and flowing on farther
and farther, and spreading wider and wider, and blessing more and more of our race. Thus it is with those who hearken to
God’s commandments, their "peace is as a river, and their righteousness as the waves of the sea." She was married to
Greenberry Boring, of Washington County, Tenn., Oct. 11, 1807, a young man of robust health and vigorous manhood,
with whom she lived about sixty-seven years, and became the mother of twelve children, nine sons and three daughters,
all of whom she gave to God in their infancy by baptism, and lived to see them all grown, and nearly all religious. Four
of her sons were called to preach, viz., Peter Roble, Lorenzo Dow, Washington, and the writer. These all, except myself,
fell at their post; all died on the field; and together with father and sister Elizabeth, had all finished their work and
gone to rest before the sun of mother’s life went down. The means and advantages of acquiring even an English education were
few and feeble in Washington County, Tenn., eighty years ago, when my mother was a girl: consequently, she received quite a
limited education while in her father’s house, and having married in her seventeenth year a man in moderate circumstances,
she, like her husband, had to work for her living, which left but little time for the cultivation of her mind. And when the
responsibilities of a mother and the cares of a growing family claimed her attention she had still less time to improve her
education. As a consequence, she was not well versed in books, science, art, and literature. Yet she was one of nature’s noble
women, having a large share of common sense and a practical knowledge of the business of life, which enabled her to fill all the
positions in which providence placed her in this world with credit and honor, and has left to her children and grandchildren the
legacy of a "good name," which, according to the Bible, is more to be desired than great riches, and I will add, than great
learning also.
While father was in the War of 1812, mother had many hardships to endure in providing for her little family, but having been
trained by domestic parents to habits of industry, economy, and perseverance, she was well fitted to be a soldier’s wife, possessing,
as she did, great decision of character, indomitable energy, and heroic courage. These characteristics enabled her to fight the
battles of domestic life successfully at home while father fought in the battles of his country abroad. But the strength of her
life then, as she has expressed it since, was a deep, settled faith in God, that he would never put more upon her
than she was able to bear. She was a woman of uniform habits, of great physical endurance. She has been heard to say that there
was a period in her life that she did not take one dose of medicine in forty years. As a rule, she was the last to retire at
night and the first of her household to rise in the morning. She was one of whom the Bible speaks, who "seeketh wool and flax,
and worketh willingly with her hands; who looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness."
God has said, "Six days shalt thou labor and do thy work." This command mother kept, both in letter and spirit. I have known
her nearly fifty years, and cannot recall one hour of all that time that she spent unemployed, except on the holy Sabbath, the
day God said, rest. And such were her views and habits of working with her own hands, that she held on to the distaff and spun
her flax when she was in her eighty-eighth year. This she did, not then of necessity, but of choice. And I thank God that I had
a mother that could spin and weave in her day and generation, and clothe her offspring, and thereby imitate her Heavenly father,
who turns the worlds, spins out the seasons, and weaves the webs that carpet the meadows, covers the fields, robes the forests,
and clothes the world. Mother was preeminently a motherly woman, having much of the milk of human kindness in her heart. She was
a great sympathizer with all sufferers, even including all domestic animals about the whole premises. During the winter season
she would frequently inquire of father and others, whose duty it was to look after the stock, if all had been cared for, and
never seemed contented until each one, as far as possible, had been sheltered and fed. She had special attention given to the
young, the poor, the lame, the sick, and the dying. In this she was also like the Father in heaven, who carries the lambs in
his bosom, giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry, and who opens his hand to satisfy the desire of
every living thing; not even a sparrow escapes his notice, in its life or death. Mother had a transparent character; there
was nothing hidden about her; she was candid and outspoken; she never dissembled; she was truthful in thought, word, and deed.
And this lesson of truthfulness in the inner and outer life she taught to her children, both by precept and example, together
with other kindred lessons, to be honest and honorable in all the social, domestic, and business relations of life. The influence
of such a mother in the home circle is great indeed in forming the habits, molding the character, and shaping the destiny of her
children, both for this life and the life to come. Father himself was not religious for many long years after his marriage,
and this fact was a great drawback to mother in developing her own religious character: still, her moral influence over him
finally won him over from the paths of sin to the ways of righteousness. And she had the pleasure of living to see her husband
a Christian man the last twenty-five years of his life. I never knew mother to turn anybody from her door who came for bread
because they were hungry, or to borrow because they were needy. During the last two years of her life, while I was her guardian,
having been appointed by the court to look after her interests and take care of what she had, I felt sometimes that she had too
many applications for help from those who had no special claims upon her bounty, in her condition, and having called her attention
to this fact, she looked at me and said "John, doesn’t the good Book say we must be kind to the poor?" I felt reproved, and said no
more. Mother was "discreet, chaste, a keeper at home, good, obedient to her own husband," as saith the Apostle, one who attended to
all the routine duties of domestic life for seventy-five years, laboring on and on in her little home-kingdom, looking after her
children, who, like thrifty olive-plants, were growing up around her table. In this nursery she wrought with head, heart, and hand,
for many long years, with her history unwritten and her name unknown to fame. Such was mother’s life here, but wait till the
great school-session of time ends, and the Master reads out on the last day the grade of each scholar. When the grade of the
subject of this sketch is announced on that great occasion it will be such as to correct the judgment of earth and justify the
ways of God with man, "for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are God’s ways higher than our ways, and his thoughts
than our thoughts." When mother finished her earthly pilgrimage she was in her ninety-first year, and had lived about half that
time at the old family residence on Watauga River, in Washington County, Tenn. Some of her children and grandchildren had come
on a visit from Dayton, Ohio, and had persuaded her to return with them; and the morning she was to leave many of her old neighbors
came to see her for the last time on earth and to take their final leave of "grandmother," as they called her. O what a time of
sorrowful crying was witnessed when mother walked out of her room into the porch to take the parting hands of those whom she had
known and loved so long! In the midst of this farewell scene at the old home mother passed through the crowd in the yard, and
I helped her into a covered buggy and drove off. She never looked back, and made no mention of all she was leaving behind where
she had lived and labored so long. She staid one day and night with me at Johnson City, and next morning took the train with her
children for her new home with them in Ohio. She stood the journey remarkably well for one of her age, and was highly pleased
with the scenes of the trip. In six or seven weeks after her arrival there she was stricken with paralysis and lost the use of
her speech. She continued in this state about two weeks, and when her children saw that she was slowly sinking and could live
but a few days, they sent me a dispatch to come at once. I took the first train, and reached Dayton, Ohio, Jan. 1, 1881, and
the next day, at 2 o’clock and 20 minutes, at the residence of David Dyer, her son-in-law, my dear old mother, with her hand
in mine, breathed her last in the presence of three generations who had descended from her, and who stood around her bed to
witness the closing scene in her long and useful life. If all of her father’s family who had gone on before mother, had reached
the city of God, what a shout they must have raised to God and the Lamb when they saw her, the last absent member of the household,
coming up, fresh from the battle of life, flushed with victory over death, and robes all radiant with light, approaching the gates
of the city to complete the family circle above, and to take part in the great song of the saved as they sing "unto Him that loved
us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood"! After her body was dressed for the last time it was placed in a richly-cushioned
bed in a costly casket, where her position, appearance, and every thing about the body, indicated a state of comfort, quietness, and
peace, such as she never had on earth before. And as I gazed at her peaceful form she seemed to say to me, "John, don’t you think
I can sleep here, ‘where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.’" And while lingering by her side I looked
at her folded hands resting upon her cold, cold bosom, and thought, "O how much faithful service they have performed for me and
for all her children, and what a great blessing it was from God to have had such a mother on earth!" On Tuesday, Jan. 4, 1881,
her body was taken to one of the city churches, where the pastor, the Rev. Mr. Clark, of the M. E. Church, preached her funeral
sermon from Rev. vii, 14-17. Then, when the earth was covered with a deep snow, and more falling fast from the clouds, we
followed her remains in a solemn procession that moved slowly through the streets of Dayton out to Woodland Cemetery, where
she was buried in a manner highly gratifying to me, in the family square belonging to my Brother Wesley. That city of the dead,
where her body is to rest till Jesus comes, embraces about forty acres of elevated land, inclosed, and kept clean and sacred,
and where the great white monuments contrast beautifully with the evergreens and many other trees and growths common in the
American forest. The deep interest many of the Christian citizens manifested in my mother’s affliction, death, and burial,
endeared them to me very much and for them I expect ever to cherish feelings of grateful remembrance. When the last sad
services had been performed at the grave we turned away with feelings of lonely sadness that she could not return with us,
and that we would never, no, never, see her face again in this life; but these shadowy feelings soon passed off when we
remembered that mother’s body was left in that mysterious house of death by God’s own appointment, who doeth all things
well, and who seemed to say to me at the time, "I will remain with her body in that lone land of silence, I will watch over
it and take care of it. It is now sleeping in Jesus, and resting under my promises of a glorious resurrection at the last
day, when ‘I will swallow up death in victory’ and then your mother shall live again."
Yes when the night of death is past,
And the bright day of heaven has dawned
Sun then will hear the trumpet-blast,
And with the saints her robes put on,
Then with them rise to joys above,
And as the sun forever shine,
In worlds of life and peace and love
With beams of glory all divine.
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