Samuel Messenger
Dec. 10, 1821-Oct. 28, 1908
A tribute to the memory of Samuel Messenger.
On December tenth, eighteen twenty-one. Samuel Messenger was born in Easton, Pennsylvania. He died at his home in Niles, Michigan on the morning of October twenty-eighth, nineteen hundred and eight, having rounded out nearly eighty-seven years of life. He was born of German parentage and of the German ancestry he never ceased to be proud. He was one of eight children, five sons and three daughters. When he was a year and half old his fathers family moved near Ithaca, NY, in what was then and long afterwards know as the “Mack settlement.” Here he received a common school education which was supplemented by a somewhat extended course in a select school: in Lewistor. His father died when Samuel was a lad of ten, leaving the care of the family on his oldest brother, Charles. As the brothers, moved into what was then considered the far west,: Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. In 1845 the mother sold the home farm and with Samuel, her youngest son, came to Michigan. They traveled by way of Lake Erie and various stagecoach routes, stopping for dinner the old hotel in Bertrand, a hotel still standing and a town then considered of much more promise than Niles. Soon the farm on Portage Prairie was purchased where Mr. Messenger, continued to reside for many years, the same now owned by his son, Schuyler C. Messenger.
Samuel Messenger was married in 1850 to Miss Ann Mary Wood, four children were born to them. Two of whom, Hetty and Banks, died in infancy, Genevieve Messenger Hammond who died at Arlington, Neb., and Schuyler C. who alone survives. Mrs. Messenger died in 1874. In 1886 he was married to Mrs. Lavinia Wilitts Kellogg, who with his son, Schuyler, nine grandchildren and a great-grandchild, mourns his loss.
Mr. Messenger held many offices of public trust in his own community, all of which he filled faithfully and acceptably. He was one promoters of the Farmers’ United Fire Insurance co. of Berrien County, and was one of its directors for many years. His character was one of sterling worth, of utmost integrity of loyalty to friends of faithfulness to duty. As one of his lifelong neighbors said, “He was as true a man as ever walked.: in politics he was of the old line of Whigs and, as was natural always stood as a staunch republican. In his church affiliations he was a Presbyterian having attended the First Presbyterian Church of Niles, Mich., for over sixty years, and for more than thirty years of that time acted as one of it trustees. His church life as his civic and family life was remarkable for its trueness, and ostentationally its generosity. The last of his father’s family, he lies in our beautiful Silverbrook cemetery, not alone, but surrounded by many of his own loved ones., his mother, wife, two children, three brothers and a sister resting not many feet away. Nay, his body lies in Silverbrook, he has gone to one of the Many mansions, a man sincerely mourned, by all who knew him. His funeral was held at the home on south fourth Street on Saturday, October 21, attended by Rev. W.R. Yonker, pastor of the Presbyterian church.
Submitted by family member; publication details unknown
(NB: Gravemarker bears name Samuel Messinger, 1821-1908)