Ella Frances Skyhawk Hamlin

Maternal Grandmother of Charles Hamlin Walker
Mother of Nana- Margaret Hamlin Walker

Tribute to Ella Skyhawk Hamlin delivered November 19, 1911, at Third Presbyterian Church, Salt Lake City, Utah and published on 50th Anniversary of her death.

Honorable Ministers and Dear Friends of Our Mother:
I will endeavor to make a few remarks, if you will allow me, as a verbal tribute from the immediate family of the deceased.
Having journey so far to be present among you on this day, I accept the duty as a signal honor to assist, in my humble capacity, with the services.

It is not within my youthful scope to add to the worthy remarks of Revered McClain or Dr. McNeice. Both have so ably review our Mother's life and her activities in this church. But, I somehow feel that she should not go to her grave unheralded by those who loved her most dearly, and for whom she consecrated her cares in life Folk are assembled here today to perform the last sad honors for a Christian friend, faithful wife, and loving Mother.

We feel sure it is the opinion of all who knew her that the character she possessed was of the highest and noblest degree. The kind that the world is, and always has been, in need of. Through her long days of toil she attained quite a distinction among numerous acquaintances and friends. Nevertheless she was a plain and modest woman living a well rounded and simple life. Like most pioneers she was forced to work at an early age. As an orphan, with meager schooling, she struggled for self-education, liked literature, good books, and wrote poetry though never published. Her unfailing principle was the "Golden Rule," to love her neighbor as herself and always stand forth with a helping hand for those in distress.

As I look back upon her life, so far as memory will allow me, it reminds one of the picture drawn by the great English novelist in Vanity Fair, that: "The world is but a huge mirror and reflects back upon each person for their own image. If he smiles upon it, it will smile upon him; if her frowns upon it, it will frown upon him. If he loves it, it will love him." And how true it is I know, dear friends, that the good accomplishment throughout the days of our Mother's life afforded her the greatest of pleasure in looking upon such a reflection.

Her early life was humble. She began it as an orphan. It was started without family or fortune and confronted with many difficulties. Her inheritance on the western prairies of Minnesota and Dakota was poverty and obscurity. But the treasures she achieved through life, in the face of such adversities, are rich as ever adorned with brow of motherhood. She was kind, generous and sympathetic, brave, faithful and true and has left in the hearts and minds of friends and loved ones tenderest and proudest recollections.

As for the immediate loss her death has brought us, I can scarcely venture to speak, for all that we, her children are, or ever hope to be, was wrapped up in her bosom. Our hearts' warmest blood flows on, through channels that God has created, for Nature's noblest gift-our Mother. Her teachings we shall receive no more. She always shared with pride in our achievements, no matter how small, and I am reluctant to admit that her departure has left our ambition crushed. We can now only trust that hopes, though wounded and temporarily destroyed, shall continue onward toward the finer things in life that she adored. And where in youth she helped our childish lips to form their first Christian words, so in womanhood and manhood her memory shall help to keep us firm in faith. May we, her children, hereby resolve-to aspire to no higher glory than the fulfillment of her cherished wish.

Ella Skyhawk Hamlin is dead, but her memory lives. The humbleness of her unselfish life now illuminates itself beyond the heights of human expression and the recollection of those days, now gone, will forever be a cherished thought and sweetest memory. Her worldly house, encompassing a great and precious soul, has fallen. She now lies within that embrace that knows no early waking. Her terrestrial form returns to the soil from whence it came. Who knows but some giant oak, in some future geologic age, may take life from her sacred dust.

In due course of time there is to be a tombstone erected, in honor and to the memory of the deceased We care not how white the marble may be, it can never be as pure as the soul it represents. We care not what art is spent in its design, it can never be as beautiful as the character for which it is to commemorate; and we care not what elements may be the constituents of such a mass, it will crumble to dust before the name of Ella Frances Skyhawk Hamlin shall have been forgotten, or the influence of her character upon this earth shall cease to live.

We are comforted in knowing that on Monday last, when she received from the Maker her recent summons, she did not "go forth as the quarry slave at night scourged to his dungeon, but sustained and soothed by that unfaltering trust, approaching her grave like one who takes the draperies of his couch about him and lies down to pleasant dreams."