- OLDEST WOMAN IN PIKE PASSES
Mrs. Sarah Hickerson Howland Dies at Ninety Three -
Funeral and Burial Tuesday, Christian Church
Mrs. Sarah Hickerson Howland aged ninety three and the oldest resident of Pike at present, passed peacefully away at the home of her granddaughter, Mrs. Lela Foreman Sneeden in this city Sunday morning, death following a general weakening of all the body functions due to extreme age, but her mental faculties were strong to the last. Funeral services were held at the First Christian Church in this city yesterday at two thirty o'clock with her old friend Rev. Homer Brown, officiating assisted by the pastor of the church, Rev. Russell E. Booker. Burial was made in the Hickerson lot in the West Cemetery, her husband being buried by his first wife in a small family burying ground in the Albert Fenton, and the relatives desiring that her body be buried with her near relatives. Mrs. Howland had been failing for six weeks or more but not bedfast. Mrs. Howland had lost her teeth twenty five years ago and would never have them replaced by others, had never been in a dentist's chair and was never ill in any way except for slight attacks of illness and then she never allowed herself to lie abed. She was a most remarkable woman, both mentally and physically. She is survived by one sister, Mrs. John McQuitty, of this city, who is well up in the eighties and is just now recovering nicely from an operation for appendicitis. Hard work and simple lives made this family a race of strong bodied and strong minded men and women, of which the county has perhaps no other family with quite such a record for longevity and health. Pall bearers were the following old friends: Lewis Sneeden, Emmett Sneeden, Jake Eagle, Cameron Binns, Leslie Carlton and Floyd Ward.

The last fourteen years of Mrs. Howland's life have been passed in the home of her granddaughter, Mrs. Lela Foreman Sneeden, who gave to her grandmother the tenderest care known by mother and daughter and in all those years Mrs. Howland enjoyed life to the utmost and her life was one of peace and happy relationships. Mrs. Howland was born in a log cabin just back of where the Pittsfield house now stands, April 21, 1835. Pittsfield was a new town less than two years from the raw prairies. Mrs. Howland remembered to this day that she and the other children played hide and seek in the hazel thickets along East Washington Street, which is now the city's finest and most beautiful residential district. She recalls just how desolate the town was in the early days when the beautiful park in which the courthouse stands was a pasture partly covered with brush. Old time merchants who kept stores around the square when Mrs. Howland was a girl were William Watson, Austin Barber, Robert Green, Thomas Dickson, John U. Grimshaw, Jacob Hodgen, Jonas Clark and the Talcotts all of whom are long since dead. Mrs. Howland remembered distinctly the old printing house on the east side of the square where John George Nicolay, later private secretary to President Lincoln, edited and published the early day Whig Free Press, and where John Hay, afterward secretary of state under McKinley, wrote some of his Pike County Ballads. The old building was torn down several years ago to make room for the Zimmerman Bros. Garage. She recalls that the courthouse in those early days was a frame building where the Heck store now is on the north side of the square. She remembers also that where the Pittsfield House now stands was a vacant lot low and marshy. There were but a few store buildings and dwellings on the square, most of the business section being still prarie grass and hazel brush. There were no trees in the park.

Mrs. Howland's parent were Elisha and Electa (Crane) Hickerson who were among the earliest comers to this region and who were married here in 1833, theirs being the first marriage in the new town. Mrs. Howland's father, known in the community as Squire Hickerson was in his later years out in Newburg a veritable walking encyclopedia of the early history of Pittsfield and Pike County. When he settled in the new county seat it consisted of a blacksmith shop and three houses. He was a carpenter and was one of the builders of the first courthouse, a frame structure of oak and walnut, costing $1095, was in later years used as a bakery by Joseph Heck and before the old building was torn down in 1881 was a frequent resort for Hickerson and other old timers. About five years after the birth of the daughter, Sarah, the Hickersons moved to what is now East Washington Street which was then but a rough trail flanked by underbrush and thickets. They lived on what is now the home of the Glandons. Later they moved closer to town to what is known as the Patterson property. Their next move was out into Newburg to what is known as the Claiborne Williams place on Detroit Road. Here, in the house now occupied by Clarence Williams, the girl, Sarah Eunice, was married in 1857 to S. C. (Shep) Howland. Mrs. Howland recalls that after her marriage she would ride to town with her husband atop a load of wood drawn by an ox team. She says that when they drove up to the old Sam Crane hotel on the north side of the square they attracted no attention as most of his work animals were oxen. He had an ox which he drove to a breaking plow. Mrs. Howland's parents died in the old Hickerson home east of the Newburg corners where Thomas Crisp lives. Her mother helped found the Congregational Church in Pittsfield, the first church in town. Mrs. Howland remembered well Pittsfield's first physicians, Drs. Worthington and Campbell. She remembered hearing and seeing Lincoln in Pittsfield in 1858. The records show conclusively that Mrs. Howland was the first white child that was born in Pittsfield. There were three other babies in the settlement at the time of her birth, but they were not born here.
Contributed by Kathy Robinson