1910 Description of Adelaide Critchfield

From History of Wayne County, Ohio Vol. 1. Indianapolis Ind: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1910. 560^12.

The beautiful subject of this sketch, the wife of Hon. L. R. Critchfield, departed this life October 6, 1895. As of all beautiful women, the elegance of her personality is indescribable,--a composite glow of vital forces. All her sacred vitality, so beautifully manifested, so lovely to contemplate, flashed its last electric grace, beamed its last auroral flushes, and one more of the reproachless, innocent martyrs of earth, an adornment of her race, returned to the God who gave her, in a last and crowning act of sacrifice. Around such a life, so terminated, there were exceptional menifestations of public regard; eulogies, both public and private, were spoken of her, as a lady of rare attainments and attraction in society; as a leader in benevolences, and in religious influences, and as an advanced advocate of the high perogatives of women. The Wooster Daily Republican, the Wayne County Democrat, the Wayne County Herald, the Century Club, the Women's Foreign Missionary Society; her personal friends among the professors of Wooster University and the State Agricultural Station; teachers in the public schools, physicians and citizens of Wooster, and many ladies of Wooster, and her friends in other places, gave her many commendatory eulogies.

The funeral services took place took place at two o'clock of Tuesday, October 8th, at the family reseidence on North Market street, Wooster. The courts adjourned in honor of her memory, and the judges and members of the bar and the officers of the county and of the city attended the funeral in a body. The tribute of flowers, by the Century Club, was large and beautiful, in memory of her who was so pleasant a friend, and whose sad and untimely death brought profound sorrow to the hearts of numerous friends in the city of Wooster and elsewhere. She died as a martyr. Possessed of remarkable courage, seeing the home on fire, and attempting to extinguish it, she received her fatal injuries.

Mrs. Critchfield was a daughter of Dr. Moses Shaffer, and his wife Margaret McClure, daughter of Matthew McClure, Sr. She was born in Wooster, May 12, 1834, making her age, at her death, sixty-one years, four months and twenty-four days. On October 2, 1854, she married Hon. L. R. Critchfield, by which union were the following sons and daughters: Edith, Grace, Mary, Blanche, Henry, Nellie, and Lyman R., Jr.

The character of the deceased was, in many respects, a public one. She was born and reared in the city of Wooster and was intimately associated with the old families whose descendants constituted the society of the city. Her vivacity, her beauty and genial disposition, and the high standing of her family, made for her a ready welcome. Her grandfather, Jacob Shaffer, was a soldier of the war of 1812; her uncle, Hiram Shaffer, was an eloquent Methodist preacher; her father, Dr. Moses Shaffer, practiced medicine in Wooster for fifty years; he was a remarkable man for energy and courage, and this oldest daughter, Adelaide, became his companion in his professional visits, and her acquaintance became general in every section of this county; her brother, Dr. Hiram M. Shaffer, was celebrated for his genius and skill as a physician and surgeon; her brothers, Hiram, James and Horace, were soldiers in the Civil War; her mother, Margaret McClure, was one of a large and noble family of the early settlers; her grandparents, the McClures, were a saintly couple of high and spotless character. The deceased had all the splendid virtues and splendid courage of her family so widely known and she enjoyed in an eminent degree the popularity of the family descent and standing. She knew many of the distinguished men in public life, and was familiar with public thought and public matters. She was a practical woman of great attractions in manners and geniality; well educated and thoughtful, she had a fine faculty of sociability in a public way; she was winning with her smiles and genuine womanly greetings; she loved and attended public meetings, religious, literary, musical, dramatic and political. With a number of the leading ladies of Wooster, she attended the school of parliamentary teaching and became a parlimentarian. She was not a woman of no politics, but had views on the rights of women, and of the people; she had inherited anti-slavery principles; she was wholly on the side of temperance and temperance organizations; she had more than ordinary public spirit. In the University of Wooster, in the State Agricultural Experiment Station, in the Baltimore & Ohio railroad, in the acquisition of manufactures, in the beautifying of the city, she manifested the greatest pleasure.

In her life with her neighbors, she was winning in her address, and in her last repose there lingered upon her countenance the expression of the lovely nature that was at peace with all the world.

In person she was esteemed as the most beautiful of women. Being five feet seven inches in height, and her development large and symmetrical, of beautiful face, dark, hazel eyes and dark hair; swift and agile in motion, tasteful in dress, she reminded one of the Miltonian Eve,

"Grace was in all her steps,

Heaven in her eyes,

In every gesture dignity

And love."

She was the offspring of magnificent parentage. The fine muscular perfection of her father, the healthy grace and elegant form of her mother, and the cultivated moral sensibilities of both, invested this first child of their love with the warmth and brilliancy of a beauty, and a purity of heart, that gave her a rivalry of charms over her generation; she was radiant without exertion, and the electric bloom of her exuberant health was in beaming and beautiful repose. There was royalty in the pulsations of her blood, and in the radiations of her graces, in the nobility of her delicacy and perfections of form, and in the persistent magnimity of her nature. She was loftier and more queenly endowed than common life, classed with the now hundreds of American women who are subverting the depreciated lines of the aristocracy, and that transcend the Greek female of the magnificent reign of Pericles, or the dignity and beauty of the Roman matron whose splendor was deemed necessary to be suppressed by a decree of the Roman Senate.

How beautiful she was!

Look at her picture and see that admirable expression, that symmetry of head and neck and shoulders. She speaks her words of love with carmine lips, the bust significant of a form of beauty, graceful, open faced, beaming and reflective. The bespeak for her the admiration spontaneously given to superior personality; the splendid evidences of the American woman.

Mrs. Critchfield's home was one of plenty an fashion. Her father was gentlemanly, refined, eminent as a physician, easy in his finances, and noted for his fine carriages and blooded horses; her mother was distinguished for her beauty, and both were in the social current of Wooster, then the most fashionable of towns, and noted for its expensively equipped and fashionable of towns, and noted for its expensively equipped and fashionable ladies and gentlemen. Of all was Adelaide the most admired, and the most loved for her gracious and gentle disposition and manners.

For all the members of her family circle she was endowed with personal regard. Love of her native place of Wooster and the nearby country life of her friends was characteristic, and she often expatiated on the beauties of nature, and revisited the scenes  of her childhood, and often related her pedestrian and equestrian exploits that developed her wealth of muscle and limb. She was a lover of ancient trees and country landscapes. Her public spirit, the consiousness of her own graces; her spirit of family love, and love of all sublime things of nature, mingled in poetic enthusiasm in her domestic labors and pleasures.

In the conditions of life she was a creative artist. To have singing birds and flowers and gold fish, to hear the twitter of a canary, and feel the flutter of the flowers as she lifted their heads with dewey fingers; to see her gold fish rush, with burnished scales, to meet her approach, were her daily enjoyment.

The family life was constantly adorned with the versatility of her domestic genius, and sanctified by her elegant goodness and kindness that in a long life was never known to denegrate into anger. Taste in dress and beauty of conduct reigned supreme in her household. Upon the harp of domestic life, she played soft melodies by her majestic presence. With her children she was like the deer with her young in the covert. The noises of the night met her springing with athletic solicitude to their rescue. Her social graces were an inspiration. She was hospitable and gracious, disarming all doubt of welcome, and winning the love of every creature. Her benevolence not only was extended to prominent visitors, which was very frequent, but to every ragged and hungry wanderer that reached her door. There was genius in her management of home; in the art of preparing food she was a master; in the science of housekeeping she was a magician; ever hanging beautiful wreaths upon dingy places.

She was divine in her home. Her patience, her industry, her faithfulness, her wise teaching and influence, were the incarnated spirit of domestic life. The inspiration of heaven was upon her to make a happy home, a place that her family would love, and her love gave her the sublimest energy. Her children and family rise up and call her blessed. Her daughters loved her, and reposed their heads upon her bosom, encircled her with their arms, wooed her by endearing terms, and kissed away the lines of care; and her sons, with no less enthusiasm of love, attended her and worshipped her as a goddess.

Some special virtues of her life assumed peculiar prominence. A more than ordinary education illuminated the life and family of this exceptional woman; she was a couselor, comforter, and inspirer. Her earlier years were taught in the Wooster schools of Mrs. Pope and Miss Kate Rex (Mrs. McSweeny). She attended the female college at Granville, Ohio, and the female college at Delaware, Ohio. Accompanying the Wooster schools were institutions that taught and developed the graces of motion and manners which she, with other young ladies of Wooster, attended. During all her life her step was light and her motions graceful and polished. In her domestic life this grace and polish adorned her. Her soft footstep going and coming in daily duties, the rustle of her dress, the gentle voice of household government, her noiseless coming through the rooms, her swift touch, and graceful poise, and agile motion, and elastic manners, were the perfection of versatility, and in the days of trailing skirts, when in full dress, gave her a queenly stateliness equaled by few; and this fine taste and educated gracefulness distinguished her family; and her personal labors in clothing her children had the touch of rare and finished skillfulness.

There was a dramatic beauty in her love of children; she crooned sweet cadences over their cradles, and showered soft whistling bird-toned endearment, and the echoes of angelic sighs, and sweet-lipped wreaths of smiles, upon their tender lives; the benevolence of her life was a fixed habit and always makred the family epochs with generous presents.

Her peculiar habit of associating with the aged adorned her with a mild and gentle temperament; the old mothers of Millersburg and Wooster loved her. Her tender vigils at the bed of the sick; her beautiful composure and skilll the enthralling advances of her greeting; the electricity of her touch seem now a lovely presence.

She was an heroic woman, without fear and without reproach; she had the inflexible persistence of hereditary blood; she breasted the wintry roads, and rode down the storm, and lifted her family on, with the irresistibility of her royal nature; her brown eyes opened with inflexible pleasantness at precautionary suggestions; she lived in profundity of nerve repose; she was not marred by disease, and rejoiced through all her years in the healthy functions of constitutional perfection; she met each day with noble and fearless purpose, and in the threatening moments made her way directly to the point of danger; she had no drop of coward's blood, and to the demands for courage was a Joan of Arc; and to the demands of suffering, a Florence Nightingale.

She was a Christian. The family books marked by her in her moments of leisure were not the classical curiousities of mythology, but the story of a real Redeemer, and in this great trust she taught her household. She was a habitual reader of the Divine Word. From early life she attended the services of the church; she was a lover of music and sang with great sweetness, and as her children grew, they were trained by her in the same religious impressions. Her religion was more than sectarian life; her education fitted her for larger associations; of the beauties of her life, none were more lovely than the generosity of her religious sentiments; she freely mingled with Christians of all denominations; she exemplified the character of her Savior in all the duties of life. In the album of her daughter Addie she wrote the story of her life:

"May 12, 1884

Dear Addie:

A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold.

Your affectionate          

Mother."

Thus on her fiftieth birthday she found no philosophy so great as the jewel of the Divine Word.

The daily life of this mother and her children, in their maturing years, was a benediction. As soon the angry flash of ill-nature would be met in the soft petals of the rose, or in the blossom wafted upon a zephyr, as from the dimples that nestled in the mother's smiles, or from the eyes that wooed with her beckonings of melting azure. It was the management of angelic genius! In her daily motive there was progress. One by one she turned her children's footsteps along the grooves of knowledge; she led them by the hand, encouraged and instructed them in useful ways, and watched their slow ascent along the slopes of thought; she taught them the divine mystery of the stars. Her love, like the electric flash over many zones, illumined her children's homes; as the eagle uplifts its young ones upon level plumes, and assays to wing them in her own ethereal heights, this noble mother, in her holy vigilance, guarded the tearful departure of her sons and daughters.

Along these fleeting years she lived a happy life; her home was charmingly decorated in artistic taste; cool and clean as a temple, renovated with hygenic care; picturesque, musical with laughter and song; sanctified by the recognition of omnipresence.

The family nurture was an important part of her philosophy, in the practical performance of which her whole life was distinguished, and the phenomenal family health attested the wisdom of her early training as a physician's daughter. And all these beautiful habits of life were but the concomitants of elegant physical and mental power. Her hand was steady; her writing small, exact and uniform, the characteristics of the refinement and polish of controlling nerve, and the beauty of her correspondence is but another phase of that same exceptional skill manifested in family nurture, in the preservation of leaves and blossoms in her books, and in her delight in the beauty of her family; just as her heroic impulses caused death. And in all her noble qualities she seems now to stand like a statue--something like Phidias made of Minerva, plated with gold, seventy feet high, before which the Athenians bowed as they approached the colonnades of the Parthenon.

This noble woman lived like a heroine and died like a martyr. Twenty-four grandchildren and one great-grandchild and the future innumerable descendants, will revere her memory.

When we last saw this noble woman, her beautiful soul had left the sunshine of its ascension upon every lineament, and the benevolence of her life sat upon her lips.