The funeral services of Mrs. M. J. Davenport were conducted at the Methodist Church Saturday morning by the pastor, Rev. E. F. Steele. Mrs. Davenport was probably the oldest communicant in the Methodist church in this city having been a member for over sixty years.
She was an active worker in the congregation before the old church was built, and when an itinerant minister preached once a month. Mrs. Davenport, who was Miss Malvina Gordon, was born in Macmindenville, Tenn., in 1820 and came to this city to live in 1830.
She married a Mr. Simms [Syme] in Van Buren and was left a widow at nineteen. She was afterward married to Mr. Charles Davenport, of Philadelphia, where a few years of her wedded life were spent. She was the only surviving member of a family of eight children, and her husband and son, having all preceded her to the grave, she was left very desolate in her old age.
She never rallied from the loss of her only son which occurred some six months ago, and has been in bed, except at brief intervals, since her bereavement. Trouble and affliction seems always to have been her portion but she was patient , uncomplaining, dutiful and generous to a fault. For more than three score and ten years she lived an irreproachable life, and when health and fortune and loved ones had all fled with the years, her best friends could only be glad when the weary one was released from pain and sorrow to go to her reward.
The remains were laid to rest beside her husband in Gearings cemetery.
[Malvina was born Nov. 3, 1820, at McMinnville, Tenn., and died Aug. 16, 1901, at Fayetteville. Gearings Cemetery is better known today as Fayetteville’s Stearns Cemetery. A marker is not believed to exist for Malvina, although gravestones for both former husbands and her son are in the cemetery.]