Lebanon News
Obituary of Hugh Easterly Porter

October 9, 1908 OUR DEAD. About ten o'clock on the evening of June 19 the ransomed spirit of Hugh L. Porter winged its flight out of the night he dreaded so much into endless day. He was born at Brewster, Va., October 22, 1844; and died at his home in Castlewood, Va., June 19, 1908. He was a son of Samuel Porter, one of the pioneer Methodists of the country, and the youngest of a large family of children, of whom only one sister and two brothers survive. The whole community was saddened by this dispensation of Providence which deprived it of one of its most highly esteemed and successful merchants; but the blow falls heaviest on his beloved wife, who is left alone. He was a gallant Confederate soldier. Enlisting under Cappt. Henry Bowen, he served throughout the war, serving most of the time in Company E, Twenty-Second Virginia Cavalry. He was captured at Moorfield, W. Va., and carried to Camp Chase, Ohio, where he languished in prison for a little over nine months before he was exchanged. When he reached home he called to know if he could spend the night. His old father did not recognize in the worn, emaciated man before him his stalwart boy, who had marched so proudly away nearly four years before. He was married April 11, 1866, to Miss Sarah Lawson, with whom he lived happily until his death. He was afflicted with rheumatism for nearly five years, and the last five weeks of his life a complication of diseases caused him to suffer untold agony; but through it all, when for a little while he would get relief, he would be so bright and cheerful we would think he would recover. Often during his long sickness he would get happy and praise God and talk about how sweet it would be to be out of pain and be with Jesus. All he seemed to mind about dying was leaving his loved ones, especially his wife, who had shared his joys and sorrows while in health and who had ministered to his every want during the five long years he had been an invalid. "But," he woud say, "Sarah you will soon come too." A day or so before he died, when we thought the pain so [...] was not noticing [...] face toward a [...] beside him [...] "Laura, if [...] be for the best; [...] it will be for the best. I have put it all into the hands of the Lord." O if we could all just put our troubles and trials into the hands of the Lord and trust him as "Uncle Hugh" did, we need not fear, even though we be called to pass through the valley of the shadow of death. He loved flowers very dearly, and said in the winter he would like to live till the flowers bloomed, so he could be buried in them. His wish was granted, and loving hands covered the beautiful casket with them. On Sunday afternoon, June 21, surrounded by a large crowd of relatives and friends, the Masons with their impressive burial ceremony laid his body away in the Dickenson cemetery, just across the river from his home. There sweet will be his rest 'neath the trees, the birds singing over him, the river murmuring by, till the trump of God shall sound and the dead in Christ shall arise. ELIZABETH D. PORTER.