The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1921-09-09
MRS. HUBBARD SEES
MOLINE RISE FROM
VILLAGE TO A CITY

Only one person in 10000 lives
to be 100 years old and only one in
220 lives to be so, according to
Rev. P. c. Ladd, pastor of the First
| Congregational church, Moline.
Rev. Mr.. Ladd delivered the funer-
al sermon for Mrs Maria Hubbard
| DiInock, Moline centenarian, and
because of its historical interest it
is reproduced today, in part, as fol-
! lows:
Mrs. Dimock's life spanned more
than the history of our city, with
whose growth she was identified so
closely. When she came here in
1S43. at the age of %, oMline had
just been incorporated as a viii
/ lage whit Daniel Gordon as town
clerk. It was a struggling group
/ of cottages in the neighborhood of
| Sylvan park.
! Rock Island was a village hard
/ ly more htan 10 years old and
! Davenport post not yet 20. There
was not as yet hotel nor church.
The industries were the making of
furniture and barrels to meet the
immediate wants of thehousrdmor
settlers.
John Deere had not yet come to
the village and it was vet II wears
to the whistle of the first railroad
train. With Is others Mrs. Dim
ock saw the founding of the first
church. We have to tax our mag
ination to throw bridge over the
life of that day and see her max
ing tallow candles, weaving the
homespun, avoiding the mud of the
streets, mounting the stage coach
and waiting many days for the
mail, and all the other ways of a
century ago, a century that has
seen more internal changes than
any, and more mental changes
than any, except perhaps the cru
sades and the discovery of Amer
lea.
Only II years before Mrs. Dim
ock was born Jefferson made the
Louisiana purchase. The popula-
ton OF the nation was about the
present population of New York
state. The Erie canal was not vet
built, when she was born, and the ,
midwest was almost an unopened
empire. Chicago was II years in
the future, still a swamp around
Fort Dearborn.
She vas born only six years aft !
er the close of the war of 1912, |
when the nation was still almost |
an experiment in Self-goyernment I
1t was yet three years until the /
Monroe doctrine. In the same year ,
she was born congress made the /
Missouri compromise 1t was rot |
till she was 10 years old that Web
ster made his reply to HAYES.
What has she not seen in one .
Its area stretching to the |
Pacific and Behring straits; its
land purged of that fulIblown |
curse of slavery by the blood of a |
million sons: its vast natural re-
sources developed till it leads the
world-a little struggling people.
full grown in wealth and power.
rescuing the world that threatened
TO engulf her, now the hope and
fear of the nations.
In the span of her lifetime what
hath man and God wrought? Only
six years before her birth Stephen
son made the first locomotive.
which, with electricity, has made
he world a neighborhood. In her
middle life Morse invented the tele-
graph and the cable. In her later
ears Bell perfected the telephone.
INVENTIONS have revolutionized all
our living. Born in the days of
l1ngs she saw the day of peoples;
n the day of authority in faith, she
aw the day of free untrammeled
linking; in the day of simplicity,
he saw that TO complexity. i
Born at the moment the last
o see world utterly new. Before
entury began to change, she lived 1
Ter eyes the world enacted that
tremendous, awful tragedy of the [
World war. She lived to ask: {
What will we make of the future?
The life of Mrs. Dimock inter- {
SITS us yet more in the fact of her
ge itself. 1t is an illustration in a,
he way of a beautiful old age /
This is important in these DAYS q
when the average age at which ma l
lve-born Americans die is only Sc t
ears. IL
Possessed of a strong constitu- a
ION, she cared for it in advanced
ears by regularity of habits nv n
oing constantly what she was c
bic TO do, by a diet suitable to her il
ge and habits. Since being old is C
o much matter of mind that she X
ept young by keeping up an inter v
st III what she could do, in what 1
'aS going on in the world and q
specially IN what the younger ueo- d
lie around her were doing She rs
ept young by feeling cheerful. un-
alnsh and helpful.
She reminded US that onlv one
ing really matters. heavenly tr
eace. We went to her from our a
GRID that takes away the soul II
18th its speed and gold and its NJ
arch for vanity; and learned
lat lie has but one true aim. to
true and noble, and that in the
ldst of all our action and COM
exlty We must not lose sight of g :.
-e eternal, which is to know ~
ID. 81
With her peaceful and content
mind she made her room [
nctuary, place of prisons. Hay- |
g attained to harmony with God |
I'd His world, and found thar in
'eatness and confidence is our
rength, she gave it as her hene- fl
ctloh- Hers was the true glory NJ
Old age as she looked upon ms ce
tn happiness and love, and IN on
I'd with faith