November 14, 1912
Death of Col. H. C. Alderson.
Colonel H. C. Alderson passed away on Saturday night, at 9:00 o'clock, after a brief illness. On Monday after a short service at the house, conducted by Rev. E. E. Wiley he was laid to rest in the Jeffersonville cemetery, by the side of his son, Wiliam Henry, who proceeded him to the Great Beyond, some years ago. Colonel Alderson is survived by his wife, who was Miss Mary Chapman, one son, Chapman, an attorney in New York City, and one daughter, Mrs. V. L. Sexton, of Graham.
Colonel Alderson was one of the few remaining in this section, of the old fashioned type of Southern gentlemen made immortal by F. Hopkinson Smith, in Colonel Carter, of Cartersville. That he was always courteous, carefully observant of the little social amenities that makes life pleasant, and kindly considerate of the poor and needy, in every station of life, will keep Colonel Alderson's memory green long after his faults which, be it hoped were interred with his bones, have been forgotten.
November 21, 1912
Henry Clay Alderson.
The familiar figure and kindly face of Henry Clay Alderson have dropped from the procession, and his genial spirit, wise with a knowledge of the infinite, is with the majority. What passed at the final moment of dissolution is beyond our ken. We can only hope that the balance was in favor of the parting soul-that a life full of good deeds, of kindly service to his fellows may make the "dream of death" a pleasant one.
All of us know of his generosity, his hospitality, his ministration to the sick and his gifts to God's poor, and few of us have emulated and none have surpassed him in these shining qualities. His charity was not only the vulgar charity of giving-it covered like a mantle the foibles and faults of his fellows.
I never heard his speak ill of a man or woman, and of a dead man whose faults were being discussed, in his presence, he repeated the latin phrase, which means: "Of the dead say nothing but good." As a boy he was a soldier and played his part in the greatest drama of centuries. Later on, and until his death, he was a conscientious and painstaking attorney. He liked the best literature and had a lively sense of the humorous and the pathetic. One of his favorite quotations was the quatrain recessional of Goldsmith:
Teach me to feel another's woe,
And hide the faults I see;
The mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
H. M. S.
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