Hello,
This is the transcribed obituary I received from Joyce Martin.
From newspaper clipping found in my grandmother's family bible, which had
been the bible of Mary and Nick Icard.
OBITUARY:
Isaiah Icard was born in Pennsylvania, April the 4, 1839, and died February
the 23, 1901, age 62 years, 10 months, 19 days. He was raised in Taylor Co.,
WV, by a man by the name of Rice, near Middleville. He was converted and
found saving faith in the Lord, and joined the Baptist church when he was 18
years of age. He was class tender and superintendent in the Sunday school,
and was a faithful servant of the Lord, always in his place at church; he was
married to Julie M. Potts (Note from Joyce: all records I have found gives
her name as Watts, not Potts), shortly after he ws converted, and lived a
happy life. There were six children born to them, five of them are still
living, one preceded him to the better world. His wife was then called away
from him in 1878. He then came to Roane County, West Virginia, and was
married to Elizabeth Marcelia Morrison, July the 4, 1881. There were six
children born to them by his last wife, two of them preceded him to the
better world, four are still living. He was the father of 12 children in
all, nine of them still live tomourn the loss of a loving father. He
received a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit in 1893, and joined the M.E.
Church, and lived a faithful disciple of the Lord, til death. He died with
an abcess of the stomach. He bore his suffering with patience; when his
neighbors and friends would go in to see him, his first word would be that he
was ready to go when the Lord saw fit to take him. He said he did not fear
death, he said he could say as Paul said 'I have fought a good fight, I have
finished my course, I have kept the faith; hence forth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness.' In his life he exhibited traits of unswerving
faith in God; he was a good man who feared God and eschewed evil. The last
few days of his life, he was a great suffer, but no shut in sufferer could be
more patient than he was; casting all his care upon Him who careth for us, he
extended a sweet cheerfulness which transfigured his bed of lanquishing into
a throne of triumph; he lives today with the host of the redeemed beyond the
grave; he leaves a loving and bereaved wife and nine children, and a host of
friends to mourn their loss but God is ever ready to take care of the widow
and the orphans, if they but trust in him and follow him. Brother Icard's
remains were laid in the Roach cemetary by kind, loving hands. 'Dearest
father thou has left us, And thy loss we greatly feel, But the God that has
bereaved us, He can all our sorrow heal." (The clipping ends here - Joyce)