Mr. and Mrs. Wilbur Phelps mourn the death of their ten month old son. The funeral services were held from the M. E. church Sunday afternoon and were largely attended. The services were conducted by Rev. Emerson, of Fairview and Rev. Carlton of Toledo, presiding elder of this district of the U.B. church, the latter gentleman preaching an excellent sermon. Misses Julia Landis, Claxle Knee and Nora Foster acted as pallbearers.
Family History:
On July 16, 1897, a baby boy was born to Wilbur and Stella Phelps, on the family farm in Clayton county. This child, their sixth, was Christened John, Undoubtedly in honor of Stella's Uncle John Fishel, whom it was often been said she thought a great deal of.
Wilbur and Stella both apparently were fond of the practice of naming their children after someone else, especially close relatives, so most of the names given to their fourteen children were indeed, arrived at in that manner.
Baby John must have been christened at the time of his birth with a middle name, but no birth or baptismal records hare been uncovered at either the Clayton County Court House or the Colesburg Methodist Church to verify this. The family bible, which, if he was given a middle name, quite probably would have contained this bit of information, was unfortunately burned up in the 1922 fire.
Like Stella's two y9unger brothers two decades earlier, John Phelps died almost before he had really even lived. He came down with pneumonia in the spring of 1898, and was unable to survive this respiratory infection, succumbing to its ravages on May, 21, 1898, in the same home blessed by his arrival just a little over ten months earlier. He was laid to rest in Oak Hill Cemetery near the town of Colesburg,