Almira Jane Bainbridge

Almira Jane Bainbridge died April 8, 1906 in Richmond, just two months after Marriner Wood Merrill. She was buried in the Richmond Cemetery. Her children write the following:

"We were called to mourn last week the loss of our dear mother in our estimation the dearest, sweetest, best woman that ever graced the earth. For 56 years and more mother fought the strenuous battle of life, coming out victorious in every contest. But she has now succumbed to the grim reaper and has gone to the land where the sun never sets, where the rainbow never fades, and where she shall be forever free from sorrow, pain, and ache which racked her body here.

"We accept the opinion of all who knew her that she was, indeed, one of earth’s NOBLE women. She was the embodiment of goodness itself, and will forever remain our ideal of true and beautiful womanhood. When very young she entered that order of marriage which is so despised by the world, but to which she was so sincerely, devotedly converted, and which did for her what nothing else could do—crushed every selfish, sensuous, worldly tendency—and which developed to highest excellence every virtue that belongs to wife and motherhood.

"She bore and practically reared twelve strong, robust children, the youngest at her demise being 18 years of age. She loved her children tenderly and her love has to some extent been requited, for she has always enjoyed the supreme confidence and almost reverential devotion of her sons and daughters. She cared little for the things of this earth, save as they contributed to things eternal. She was highly intellectual and always took a lively interest in things that tend to soul development. She was a faithful and loving wife, un¬ selfishly devoted to her husband’s interest and welfare. For her husband, her children, her friends and acquaintances, indeed for all of God’s children, she lived, and in the Lord she has died. To Him we reluctantly, sorrowfully, commend her spirit, and may He grant that she shall still have her loving, protecting guardianship over us."

Merrill, Melvin Clarence, (1937). Utah Pioneer and Apostle: Marriner Wood Merrill and His Family, pgs. 423-425. Digital copy Internet Archive, Contributed by the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/utahpioneerapost00merr/page/422/mode/2up