Eleanor Smith Wilson
Linked with the past and deservedly ranked with the pioneer life of Madison county is the subject of this sketch. She, the daughter of John and Sophia Bond Smith, was born in Licking county, June 20, 1818. In 1832, she came to Madison and resided here continually till her death February 15, 1904, at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Lucy E. Beach, with whom she lived after the death of her husband.
In 1836, she was married to James Wilson, and became the mother of four children, John S., Valentine H., Thomas B. and Lucy E., widow of the late Doctor Morrow Beach, sketches of whom appear in this number.
Mrs. Wilson possessed to a marked degree those homely, but enduring traits of character that make ideal womanhood. As wife, as mother, as helpmeet, as neighbor, as friend, as a model of industry, as a worker in the church and as companion, indeed in every walk, on all occasions, she excelled. Her intellectual gifts and accomplishments were many as well as entertaining. Her love of reading was great, her memory was remarkable, her knowledge of the Bible, and her familiarity with its grand truths and great characters made her personality at all times instructive as well as charming. The recollection of her broad charity, her sympathetic quality and her tender impulses toward the needy or distressed, still survive, and will outlast the marble monuments erected to mark her last resting place.
From Madison Democrat 50th Anniversary - Published by the Madison Democrat, 1908