Martha Beckwith Yeatman
Birth 1796
Death 14 May 1815 (aged 18–19)
Burial
Nashville City Cemetery
Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee, USA
Gravesite Details: Consort of Thomas Yeatman
Martha (Beckwith) Yeatman's Obituary
Communicated to the Nashville Whig on Wednesday, May 17, 1815
Died at the residence of Anthony Foster, Esq., in the vicinity of Nashville, on Sunday, May 14, 1815, MRS. MARTHA YEATMAN, consort of Thomas Yeatman, merchant.
In the death of this truly amicable woman, society has sustained a loss which will not be easily repaired. Though associated with the great world by her connections and expectations of life, she neither practiced its follies, sighed for its pleasures, nor dreaded its vices.
Pure and instant in herself, as the dewdrop which the power of repulsion scarcely suffers to embalm the rose in its spangles, she never imagined the existence of that depravity which so blackens the human heart. To view the world with an eye of indulgence; to look alone upon the fairer side of human nature; to never believe in guilt while there is yet hope of innocence, were the bright characteristics to which she was adorned. To base and unworthy examples of the tenets which they teach, she left the entire possession of their favorite maxim, that man by nature is deformed and vile. In a judgment naturally strong in Mrs. Yeatman, was added a liveliness of fancy seldom surpassed; a fancy which frequently created a visionary Paradise of lengthened duration.
Softness and animation were happily blended in her disposition; and a most exquisite sensibility was early taught her to feel for the woe of others. Her highest wish was gratified when she coulld steal from the brow of a friend, the sadness by which it was beclouded; and to make a mourner forgetful was to her a work of delightful enjoyment.
Such was Mrs. Yeatman as a general member of society, but in what language can she be described when we contemplate her in the endearing situations of wife and mother?
Devoted to her husband with a singleness of affection seldom equaled; attached to her offspring with a maternal tenderness almost unparalled, but who can adequately disclose the heavenly charm of those domestic and holy relations? Alas – we can only feel!
Yet, amid all these animated and innocent enjoyments, this amiable woman is cut off in the bloom of her days – at the very moment when she was tasting with a purity unspeakable all the sweets of life. The destroyer came; disease with its most appalling aspect attacked her lovely form, and she, who but a few months ago was the delight of her husband and the pride of her friends, is now a lifeless corpse.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/9070202/martha-yeatman
