Monday, January 3, 2011

Gust Doyle - Obituary Transcription

Gust Doyle is my paternal grandfather. I found this clipping in my mother's papers after she died. It was probably one of the few things (other than clothes) that my father carried with him when he left the farm after his father's death.

This obituary was published in an unknown (to me) newspaper but surely from one that would have reported the news of Stoneboro, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, in October, 1933. My mother recorded her father-in-law's death date in the left margin.

These are the ages of Gust's children at the time of his death: Lee, my father, was 20; Dorothy was about 13; Tressa was nearly 12; Evelyn was about 9; William was 7; Donald was 3 and a few months.
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GUST DOYLE.

Stoneboro, Oct. 4---Gust Doyle, aged 44, died at his home in Lake Township at 7:10 a.m., today after a lingering illness.

He was born, November 17, 1888, on the farm where he died. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. William Doyle of this place. He married Miss Twila Ransom on April 25, 1916. Mr. Doyle was a member of the Moose Lodge at Franklin.

Surviving are his widow, his parents, six children, Lee, Dorothy, Tressa, Evelyn, Billy and Donald, and two sisters, Emma, wife of C. E. Leathers of Stoneboro and Hazel, wife of F. Emerson of Naples, N.Y.

Funeral services will be held at the home on Friday at 2 p.m., with Rev. C. C. Clark, pastor of the Franklin Baptist Church, officiating. Burial will be made in Oakhill Cemetery.
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Thanks to John Newmark at Transylvanian Dutch for originating and hosting Amanuensis* Monday.
*Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

4 comments:

  1. How sad to died so young and leave so many small children. What did Twila do to support the family?

    My grandmother, Gertrude O'Rourke was a widow in her late twenties and she had to do housekeeping to support her two children.

    Her life must have been miserable because my father made sure my sisters and I had an education incase our husbands died.

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  2. Claudia, I don't know what Twila did. I know my father helped pay off the hospital bill before he moved away by digging and hauling coal in exchange for the bill. Twila was the "Cinderella stepmother" to my father and I'm sure my father was as ready to leave as Twila was for him to be gone. I suspect that Gust's parents helped with the farm until they passed away and by then, the other children were older. I don't have much history on Twila but one of her granddaughters said that she definitely had favorites (and my dad wasn't one of them).

    I don't think there were many options for widows in earlier years when women didn't/couldn't just go out and find a job. Hard times.

    Excellent forethought on your father's part.

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  3. Your father took the important things. Your introduction to this made me tear up. Can you imagine having to leave and trying to figure out what to take? He did good.

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  4. How sad. So many of our ancestors had to endure the death of a young father.

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