Sarah D. BYNUM was born August 6th, 1808, and departed this life March 3, 1886, aged 78 years, 6 months and 28 days. Tis due this aged and highly respected member of our community, that we give more than a passing notice of her death. She was married to Edward BYNUM, October 5, 1833, and was the mother of one son who was burned to death here in Bolivar in 1877, leaving a wife and three children who like Ruth, has since shared the sorrows of her mother-in-law. Sister BYNUM professed faith in Christ in her 14th year, and became a member of the Baptist Church of which she was a member until she was moved to the church triumphant. Her career and life are too well known her for me to attempt a description. Suffice it to say that t’was one continued battle against affliction, suffering and deprivation of every kind. She was unremitting in her labors, and by the strictist economy and industry was enabled to steer her way through. She was kind and helpful to all, attentive to the sick and none could do better service in the room of the suffered that she. Said a gentleman to me, “her frequent visits to my house during the sickness of a member of my family have endeared her to me very much.” Said a lady, “she was my neighbor for 30 years and a kinder one I never had.” Though aged and infirm the grief of loved ones bear indubitable evidence to her intrinsic worth and merits. Her superior excellence manifested itself in her christian character and life. If this community has ever had a Job, she was that one ,for with a sublime resignation, leavened with patience and christian fortitude. She bore her trials without murmur or complaint. I have been pointed to her silvery locks whitening under the sorrows of life, as evidence of trouble so deep that none could fully understand but God, still, by grace she was enabled to “say not my will but Thine be done.” We could but expect such a life to close “as sink the summer’s sun to rest.”
She requested the reading of the Word and prayer the day before she dies and during the night, she sung a few stanzas of an old familiar song of early life “Joyfully, Joyfully I Go Home. There amidst the threes of dissolving nature in transports of joy she was borne by angels to ‘Abrahams bosom.’
The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.), 12 March 1886, Page 3. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
