A few years ago I wrote about a scrapbook at the Tioga Point Museum that I concluded probably belonged to Athens church member Ida Winifred Corbin.  Here are some Universalist tidbits from newspaper clippings in that scrapbook:

Obituaries of Obadiah Gore and Matilda Shaw Gore

Matilda Shaw and her soon-to-be husband Obadiah Gore were among the first documented members of the Sheshequin Universalist Society.  The church record book indicates that the first membership list is from 1843, but my research suggested that it was really from 1833.  I was gratified to read the following in the obituary of Matilda Shaw Gore, who died on Jan. 30, 1895:

“She united with the Universalist church in Sheshequin in 1833 and was the last survivor of the original members of the church.”

Matilda was described as

“a devoted and working member, zealous and with a firm and steadfast faith in the truths of the church, and in her mind there was no lingering doubt of the goodness of the loving Father and of the ultimate holiness and happiness of all mankind, and that His love was broad enough to draw all unto Him.”

Obadiah Gore’s obituary was brief.  He was described as “one of the oldest and most respected citizens of Sheshequin.”  He died on Oct. 12, 1893, and was buried with Matilda in the Sheshequin cemetery.

Obituary of the Rev. Myra Kingsbury

Myra Kingsbury, a third-generation Sheshequin Universalist, was born in 1847 and was ordained as a Universalist minister in Sheshequin in 1881.  She served the Athens and Sheshequin congregations briefly in 1880 and again in 1896.  In between she held pastorates in Vermont and Maine.  She died of cancer at her parents’ home in Sheshequin on July 11, 1898.

I had found an obituary for her in the Universalist Register, an annual denominational publication, in 1899, but I had not seen a local obituary until I found the one in the scrapbook.  It is probably from the Athens Daily News.  I had known that Myra Kingsbury attended the State Normal School at Mansfield (now Mansfield University) in the 1860’s.  I learned from this obituary that Kingsbury had also studied telegraphy.  The obituary notes that telegraphy “not being congenial work, she studied for the ministry under the direction of the Rev. Dr. Taylor.”  Dr. William Taylor was a physician and Universalist minister who served the Towanda congregation from about 1879 to 1882.

Anna Moulton Tillinghast

Under the headline “Mrs. Anna M. Tillinghast Is a Woman Who Does Right Things the Right Way” is a story about Mrs. Tillinghast’s organization of a Girls’ Club in Titusville, Pa.  This article was probably published between 1901 and 1909.

Anna Churchill Moulton Tillinghast (1874-1951) attended Tufts and Brown Universities, and the Emerson College of Oratory.  She married James D. Tillinghast, who was ordained as a Universalist minister in 1895; Anna was later ordained in 1913.

James Tillinghast served the Towanda and Sheshequin Universalist churches in 1900.  After leaving Bradford county, the Tillinghasts moved to Titusville, Pa., where James served the local Universalist church until 1909.  Tillinghast was also the State Superintendent during this time and occasionally visited Athens in that capacity; he preached at Athens a few times in 1901.

Anna Moulton Tillinghast was a suffragist, prohibitionist and political activist.  She was a committed Republican, which led to her appointment in 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge as district commissioner of immigration for the port of Boston. She was the first woman appointed to this position in the Department of Labor’s Bureau of Immigration.