Obituary of Dr. Urial S. Lindsley

In volume four of "The Baptist," published in 1838 by W.H. Dunn in Nashville, Tennessee, is a reprint of an obituary for Dr. Urial S. Lindlsey, who died on September 14, 1838. Dr. Lindsley was the father of several children, including W.D. Lindlsey, a prominent Erie County, Ohio farmer who served in the U.S. Congress in the 1850s. Below is a transcription of the obituary for Dr. Urial S. Lindsley:

DR. URIAL S. LINDSLEY. In the La Porte County Whig, of October the 13th, 1838, we find the following notice of a most melancholy dispensation of Divine Providence.

Died in Michigan City, Indiana, on the l4th day of September 1838, Dr. Urial S. Lindsley, aged 61 years. Dr Lindsley was a native of New York. For many years he was a practicing physician in the beautiful and refined little city of New Haven, and for a few of the last years of his life of Michigan city. He has left a widow, [his second wife] three sons, one of whom is our beloved young brother and friend Solon Lindsley, now a resident of Nashville, and three daughters, to mourn the loss of a most affectionate and devoted husband, and father and a large circle of relatives, in different parts of the country, to whom he was endeared by the fondest attachments, with the names of some of whom particularly, the family of Rev. Philip Lindsley, D. D. President of the University of Nashville, many of our readers are familiar.

The Editor of the paper cited above, says: "An acquaintance with the deceased enables us to speak, knowingly, of his many virtues. He was skillful in his profession, warm in his attachments, devoted in his friendship, benevolent and charitable to the poor and needy. It may be said of him that his generosity and charity have always kept him poor. He died in the full triumphs of the Christian faith." This is a true and comprehensive portrait. He lived and labored, not for himself, but for the good of mankind. His soul grasped with the embrace of philanthropy the whole human family. Hence all good men were his friends, and the destitute and suffering mingled itheir tears over his grave.

His father was a Presbyterian Minister who early taught him the principles of religion, and in his tender youth he experienced the conversion of his soul and became a sincere Christian. He united himself with the church of his father, and remained one of its most devoted members until his death. His mind, by nature strong and vigorous, was cultivated by profound study in every department of knowledge. In theology as well as medicine he was deeply versed, on which subject he maintained a regular correspondence, during many years, with several of the most eminent divines in Europe. He united a mildness of disposition, and affability of deportment, with the emotions of a heart richly imbued with the spirit of Christ, from whose altar he daily derived the holy fire that perpetually burned in ardent attachment to his blessed cause, and zeal for the prosperity of Zion.

Thus was he peculiarly qualified for the important sphere in which by his profession he was called to act, and adapted to administer to the spiritual as well as to the bodily diseases of the sick and the afflicted, the dying and the survivors of the dead. He now rests from his labors, and will reap in heaven the full rewards which earth could neither give nor take away.

The name of Dr. Urial S. Lindsley appears on the Lindsley monument in Sandusky's Oakland Cemetery.