Person:Elizabeth Murphy (35)

Memorium Eliza Ann Tabor 1851-1938 

    Obit--Eliza Ann Murphy, daughter of Alan and Minerva Murphy, was born August 13, 1851, in Fisher Co, OH  She died May 7, 1938, at the age of 86 years, 8 months and 24 days.  November 4, 1869, Eliza Ann Murphy was united in marriage with Lewis B. Tabor, assuming the responsibilities of a wife and stepmother to her husband’s three small children at the age of 18.  She was preceded in death by her husband, who passed away December 1, 1916, and by two of her step-children Melius S. Frisy, who passed away January 12, 1919, and Baby Lewey, who died in 1870.  She is survived by one daughter, Minerva Bascom, who resides here, one step-daughter Anne Blumhart of Battle Creek, Michigan, six grandchildren, seventeen great grandchildren, two sons-in-laws, one brother and two sisters and a large number of more distant relatives. Mrs. Tabor’s early childhood was a training school in the stern realities.  As an older girl in a large family, in a day when each family was in industrial unit, she learned at a tender age, to spin her own yarn with an old-fashioned spinning wheel and then to weave cloth on the household loom.  She also learned to cut both men’s and women’s clothes and sew them by hand.  She could make her own lye, soap and candles, cure her own meat as well as raise a garden, work in the fields or milk cows, and harness and drive a team.  During the Civil War each family was expected to furnish a nurse for its wounded soldiers.  When not more than 13 years old, Mrs. Tabor nursed two of her uncles, who had been wounded in the army and sent home to the hospital near her home in OH.  The doctor observed her natural ability to care for the sick and her willingness to do any and everything to be done and persuaded her to nurse other recuperating soldiers.  While working in the hospital she learned much that made her efficient in helping the sick at later periods in her life.  Following their marriage in IL, the Tabor family moved to IA, enroute to a homestead further west, arriving in Guthrie Co. a day or two before the terrible three day blizzard of March 13, 14, and 15, 1870.  The treking pioneers took refuge from the storm in a pioneer shack, but the unaccustomed exposure proved too much for baby Lewey, who became ill.  Further travel was abandoned for the duration of his sickness and when he died and was buried in the Bear Grove Cem., further migration westward was not resumed and Mrs. Tabor took up the duties of a pioneer woman with true courage and unfailing resourcefulness, spending most of the remaining years of her life in Guthrie Co.
    Never was a night too dark for her to answer a call of distress by hastening to the bedside of a sick neighbor.  Her capable hands have calmed the fears of many a young mother who faced the pangs of motherhood for the first time in a new country where doctors were scarce and no means of travel or communication adequate to procure their services.
    When epidemics raged and others shrank in fear from contact with scarlet fever, diptheria or some other plague, she was always ready to go, working just as faithfully for those who could not pay as for those who could.  Later when the Laws of Iowa made provision for licensing doctors, Mrs.

Tabor became a licensed Midwife. Soon after coming to Iowa, Mrs. Tabor joined the Methodist church. In 1892, she joined with the Baptist Church. Her last church attendance was when she accompanied her daughter to the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Guthrie Center. She never talked much of religion, but throughout her long life, as long as she was able to work, she cheerfully did the disagreeable tasks, such as cleaning a church, bathing the sick, sitting up with the dead. Truly she was one who ministered unto others.

    After the death of her husband, she spent several years in Montana and Washington.  During the Influenza epidemic of 1918, she nursed the stricken sufferers from that dread malady in Harlowton, Montana.  She took charge of a birth in an emergency after she was 80 years old.  Mrs. Tabor asked to cook the dinner on her 83d birthday in her daughter's home.  She made biscuits and prepared a tasty meal on that day.  Never a wayfarer was turned from her door without food and a place to spend the night.  During the pioneer days when no conveniences were available with which to lighten the task of laundry work, she would arise early in the morning after keeping some tramp or peddler, and boil the bedding with never a word of complaint at the extra work entailed.
    Many a happy bride wore a wedding dress Mrs. Tabor had made sitting, if need be, until the wee small hours of the morning to complete it on time.  Many a baby's christening dress and many a shrowd were made by her busy fingers.  Flowers from her garden brightened the church for Children's Day or were carried to funerals and out into the cemetery on Decoration Day.  The last sixteen months of Mrs. Tabor's life have been spent in the home of her granddaughter, Dr. Florence Bascom-Phillips of Panora.  During the past few months, she has been bedfast and helpless.  Part of this time she suffered much, but no word of complaint ever passed her lips.  Much of the time, when she realized that the end was near, she hummed a tune to herself, the words of which are:

"Bright angels are from Glory come, They're round my bed, They'r in my room, If this be death, I soon shall be, From every pain and sorrow free."

    It can be said of her by those who knew her best, that she grew old gracefully.  Instead of growing disagreeable with the years, she grew sweeter as the days went by.  Her last trip away from home was to see her great grandson, Virgil Phillips graduate from the eighth grade in Guthrie Center last June.  Mrs. Tabor's grandchildren are as follows:  Dr. Florence Bascom-Phillips, Panora, Iowa; Prof. Victor Bascom, Shelton Academy, Shelton, Nebraska; Raymond Bascom, Keene, Texas; Hugh W. Bascom, Keene, Texas; Dr. Lewis A. Bascom, Mercy Hospital, Cedar Rapids, Iowa; and Arthur Bascom, Panora, Iowa; all children of Maurice T. and Minerva Bascom.  Mrs. Tabor's daughter, Minerva and her granddaughter, Florence, were with her when she breathed her last.  They feel their loss most keenly, but other relatives and friends will miss her.  Especially her sister, Mrs. Ed Wolf of Guthrie Center and her nieces, Sylvia Shaeffer of Stuart, Margaret Moore and Halley Hice of Guthrie Center and her nephew, Sid Wolf of Guthrie Center.

Written by Dr. Florence Bascom-Phillips, Panora, Iowa

Post Card picture sent by Eliza Tabor to Miss Sylvia Wolfe

1. ↑ There does not appear to be a county named Fisher in Ohio. There is a town Fisher in Athens County, Ohio.