from The Life and Times of George F. Pierce:

It is not my purpose, however, to write an essay or a
eulogy, but mournfully to record the fact that my beloved
mother, Mrs, Ann M. Pierce, is no more. She departed this
life on the I4th May last, in the sixtieth year of her age.
Her death was sudden, without premonition, and without time
for word or sign. On the morning of that day (so sad to her
family) she was in her usual health, and engaged with her
household duties. While sitting in her chamber, assisting her
daughter (Mrs. Gambrill) with some needle-work, she suddenly
raised her hand, and exclaimed, ' Oh ! what a pain in
my head,' and before the shriek of my sister's alarm could
summon another member of the family, my dying mother fell
into her arms, and the spirit was gone. My father and myself
were at St. Louis, and it is no small addition to our grief that
we had not the melancholy privilege of looking upon the face
of the dead, and following the body to the house of earth and
silence.
My mother was born in Prince Edward County, Va.,
December, 1790, but was reared in Greene County, Ga.
Her early education was worldly in its nature, aim, and end.
She was gay—fond of the pastimes of fashionable society,
and until her seventeenth year, forgetful of God and eternity.
In 1807, at a camp-meeting In Greene, she was awakened—
came to the altar as a mourner, with heart subdued and re-
solved, joining the church as a seeker—laid aside her orna-
ments, and became Methodist in her attire and habits. For
weeks she sought the Lord, but found him not till near two
months after her awakening. She was converted at a camp-
meeting in Hancock County—in her father's tent—at a late
hour of the night, after a struggle of intense penitence and
prayer. Of this glorious event she never doubted. The
witness was clear, strong, permanent—her joys full-flowing,
rapturous. Her experience was distinguished for many years
by the same characteristics which marked her espousals to
God.
My father and herself were married on the 28th of
September, 1809. Henceforth the cares and anxieties of
wedded life, augmented by her peculiar relation as the wife
of a travelling preacher, seemed to modify the expression
of her religious feeling. The joyous emotion was substituted
by the self-denying principle—the gushing raptures of per-
sonal assurance by sympathetic yearnings for the good of
others. The spirit of self-sacrifice, prompted by natural
nobleness and love, and consecrated by grace and devotion,
was never more beautifully illustrated—more perseveringly
sustained than by my now sainted mother. She did not live
unto herself. Her family—the Church, the poor, the orphan
—absorbed her sympathies, and appopriated her toils. Kind-
ness which never calculated, save for the purpose of judi-
cious distribution ; self-denial which never faltered at cost or
trouble, or sought relief and exemption by pleading the sacri-
fices of the past—forgetfulness of self amid the checkered
scenes of a history familiar with disappointments ; and some
times made yet more sad by afflictions—these, with all the kin-
dred virtues of a noble heart and a holy life, formed the staple
of her experience, and the manifestations of her character.
With a mind singularly quick in its perceptions, originating,
inventive, and practical, she was a counsellor in embarrass-
ments whose judgment demanded respect—fertile in ex-
pedient, she triumphed over difficulty—buoyant with hope
and indomitable in energy, though sometimes cast down, yet
when all others gave up in despair, she rallied, and planned,
and succeeded. Restricted in her resources, her prolific econ-
omy multiplied a scanty income to sufficiency, and made
her home a retreat where plenty smiled and comfort dwelt.
Now, how dark that home without the light of her counte-
nance ! How lonely he who, himself old and decaying,
mourns the wife of his youth, the joy of his life, the solace of
his age ! How bereaved are we, the children of such a
mother? But we will hope and rejoice, even while we suffer.
Thy dead shall live again.
As a travelling preacher's wife, my mother was a pat-
tern without spot or blemish. Though my father had never
moved his family, yet the Methodists and people of Georgia
will bear him witness that no member of the Conference has
been less restricted in his work, or more prompt to his ap-
pointments. I have heard him say, that in the last thirty
years he had been absent from home on ministerial duty full
twenty. Nor is this conjecture an exaggeration. Her motto
was, a full amount of disappointments—and fill them by all
means. Neither business, nor affection, nor inconvenience
was ever allowed to interfere with the gospel call and the
preacher's duty. No real indisposition or anticipated sick-
ness shook her steady purpose never to be in the way of the
work of God. No capricious fears, no selfish demands, no
womanly weeping delayed the time of departure. The early
breakfast, the packed trunk, the preparation of all needful
things, told of her presiding care, and her cheerful submission
to sacrifice for Christ's sake. She gave her husband and three
sons to the work of the ministry, and often exhorted us in her
brief, but impressive way, to fidelity. The memory of her ad-
vice was precious while she lived, and, more consecrated by
her death, it recurs, mingled with tender recollections and
sanctified by the hope of reunion in heaven.
The deceased had been a member of the Church forty-
three years. Always consistently pious and devoted, since
her children came to years and she had more leisure for read-
ing and less anxiety to provide, she became more and more
filled with God. There was a heavenly ripening in her faith
and feelings, the world dwindled to a speck and heaven filled
the field of vision. This calm, steady confidence—the mel-
lowness of Christian affection—-was manifest to all in her love-
feast and class-meeting conversation. In the class on the
Saturday before her death it is said there was an unearthly
glow upon her face as she talked of God and grace—herself
and her prospects. In the moment of dissolution it rekindled,
and rested upon the coffined sleeper when she was borne to
the tomb. Blessed light of Christian joy—calm sunshine of
gospel peace—a stricken household hails the symbol—type
of a purified soul, and a world without sorrow, tear, or
change. G. F. PIERCE.