Hardeman County, TNGenWeb

Died on the 26th of September, Mary Francis BAKER, wife of Isaac BAKER, aged 39 years and 4 months. For twelve months she lay prostrate on a bed of pain. Indeed her sufferings were very accute, and well nigh constant, from the beginning of her illness, and although she was habitually patient and unmurmuring, at times her agony was so intense that she would cry out in anguish of spirit as if pierced through by some sharp and sudden dart. But praised be God, suffering led her to the Saviour, and toward the close of her illness, she was enabled to say that her only hope of salvation was in Him. That she trusted not in her own righteousness nor any thing that she had done, but only and entirely to the love, mercy, and merits of her adorable Redeemer, “who loved her and gave himself for her.” Who when He was on earth “was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Her affliction seemed to help her to feel nearer akin to Him, and she became resigned to leave this world, to go and dwell with Him whenever it might please Him to take her away – she commended Him as a precious Saviour to her husband, and her children and exhorted them so to live as to meet, her, one day, in heaven. And thus triumphing through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, over sufferings such as mortals rarely experience, on the morning of the 26th of September her released spirit was repassing in the Paradise of God “where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.

The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.), 12 Oct. 1867, Page 3. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.