from The Central Record, Lancaster, Garrard County, Kentucky

January 7, 1898

Mrs. Elizabeth Hudson

Remarks of Elder George Gowes at her Funeral

Mrs. Elizabeth Hudson, whose maiden name was Arnold, was born in this county, April 21, 1822.  She was, therefore, seventy-five years of age last April.  She was married to Morgan Hudson fifty-five years ago last July.  On the 20th of July she went with him to live at the old home near Sugar Creek, and continued an unbroken residence there until the 12th of January last, the time of brother Hudson’s death.  She then seemed to be in robust health, but his death lay so heavily upon her, and the breaking up of their old home was such a revolution in her life that she did not survive him quite a year.

It seemed that the whole of her life had gone out with his death.  Their lives had certainly mingled into one.  Even when she was comparatively well she constantly longed for the time of departure when she might meet her life-long companion where lives are never rudely swept asunder.  One brother and one sister survive her.  When sister Hudson was yet quite a girl she accepted Christ and never after faltered in her devotion to Him.  Her husband came into the church late in life.  he was entangled in the doctrinal difficulties of these days and could not see his way clear.  But when he saw the steadfast devotion of his young wife, and how she would saddle up a horse, and with one of the children behind her, always go, even to the Saturday meeting, so common in those days, he yielded to the persuasion of her life.  What logic and argument would not do for him, a consecrated personality did.  When he saw through her earnestness in the way of Christ, he himself obeyed the gospel.

And sister Hudson was a woman of strong convictions about everything.  She did nothing in doubt.  She believed something until the very last.  Her religion was not of the jelly-fish sort.  She was brought up in times that tried men’s souls in almost everything, especially in religion.  She had a firm hold on the future.  In my conversations with her during and before her sickness, it seemed that heaven was as real to her as the present life.  This is always so with people of strong faith.  She was a woman of robust common sense, a devoted house-keeper, wife and mother.  One of the type of women who have made historic and glorious so many of the older homes in our country.  She fills the description given by Solomon in Proverbs 31:10:31.

Four children survive her – two sons and two daughters.  They all can rise up and call her blessed.  Almost her last words to me were words of commendation for her children.  She died in perfect peace in the remarkably full and free exercise of all her faculties.  With the dissolution of the body there came a triumphant Spirit, which, released from its prison-house, mounted upward to the skies.  Her last words and actions bespoke her kindly welfare for others’ interests before her own.  With intellect unclouded and heart aglow with love to the very last, she called each member of the household to her side and bade them good-bye as she went with the Savior through the valley of the shadow into the light and splendor of the eternal morning.