100 - Matilda Upchurch - Buffalo Springs, TX
N 33° 30.245 W 098° 08.098
14S E 580346 N 3707506
Matilda Upchurch was born in 1840, the year that William Henry Harrison was elected President of the United States.
Waymark Code: WMDZZF
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 03/15/2012
Views: 2
Buried beneath a rock cairn in the Pleasant Valley Cemetery, near Buffalo Springs, TX. The inscription is very weathered, but appears to say "MRS UPCURCH [sic] AGE 100 YR 1 MO 6 DA." A metal plate in front of the cairn -- details of placement unknown -- gives birth and death years of 1840 to 1941.
Mrs. Upchurch lived to see Texas Statehood in 1845. She lived through the Mexican War, and later saw her husband, Michael (buried just feet away), go off to fight in the US Civil War. The Spanish-American War, the Great War, and the beginning of World War II all happened while she was alive, and for all we know, she may have lived to hear about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Mrs. Upchurch lived through the deaths of six US Presidents -- Harrison, Taylor, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Harding -- in office, and saw the presidencies of the eighth (Van Buren) through the thirty-second (FDR).
Mrs. Upchurch was born the year that Queen Victoria married her beloved, Prince Albert. The Province of Canada was established that year, and Napoleon's remains were returned to France. Also born in 1840 were Emile Zola, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Thomas Hardy, Auguste Rodin, and Claude Monet.
Mrs. Upchurch may have used a horse or other domesticated animal as the only means of transportation when she was a child, but may have also ridden in an automobile by the time she died.
Location of Headstone: Pleasant Valley Cemetery, near Buffalo Springs, TX - Stone is atop a cairn
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