Amanda (Cleland) Harbison (1903)
CLELAND, HARBISON
Posted By: Pat Hochstetler (email)
Date: 11/8/2023 at 18:02:58
The Indianola Herald
Indianola, Iowa
Thursday, October 8, 1903
Page 7, Column 4Mrs. Amanda Cleland Harbison was born in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania, August 2, 1839, and died at her home in this city Tuesday evening, September 29, 1903, being therefore in her 65th year. She was one of nine children, and with her parents came to Iowa in 1855, passing through Indianola for the first time in December of that year, and proceeding just over the line into Madison county, where the new home in those pioneer days was established. Before she was 18 years of age, she had been authorized to teach school in Madison county; and for nearly 8 years following she was engaged in teaching in the schools of this and Madison counties.
April 12, 1864, she was married to William P. Harbison, with whom she lived in faithful and loving companionship for nearly 40 years. To them, three children were born, one daughter and one son dying in infancy. She is survived by her husband, and one son, Robert C. Harbison, now of California. Two sisters and two brothers also remain to mourn for her.
The first few years of their married life was passed on the farm, but returning from a disastrous trip to Kansas in the fall of 1872, with the health of all members of the family broken, they came to Indianola, and in 1873 Mrs. Harbison embarked in business, in which she continued almost uninterruptedly until 1898, when she disposed of it, to retire to the rest and quiet of private life, which she had so well earned.
But in all her work, and in whatever position she was placed, whether as the teacher, in the home, in business or in her social relations, the dominant characteristic of her life was her earnest Christian faith. In her eighteenth year she was converted, joining the Presbyterian Church. A woman of the deepest convictions, and of more than ordinary mental grasp of the riches of her faith, from girlhood she had been an earnest student of the Bible, and in later years her ability to draw at will from this store house, and her aptness in quotation was often the subject of comment among her friends. Truly, she had not only joined the church but was joined to Christ.
Her last illness, though an extremely painful one, brought with it no terrors of the end. Almost from the first she was persuaded she could not recover, and when leaving a message for an absent dear one whom she feared she would not see again, she said: “Tell him I am not afraid to die; I made my peace with my Maker long ago. And if I had not done so, what chance would there be now, when I am racked with such dreadful suffering.” During the last days of her illness she repeated many passages from scripture, the last being to quote the triumphant words of St. Paul, “I know when I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him, against that day.”
And in the fullness of that faith, she passed to the reward which crowns the earnest Christian life, of which hers was such a shining example. She is missed in the home, in her church, and its different branches of organized work, but her influence lives. R. C. H.
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