Monday, October 5, 2015

John Newton Yarberry's Obituary

© Kathy Duncan, 2015

This obituary for John Newton Yarberry finally turned up in Chronicling America. Well over a decade ago, I traveled through Tucumcari, NM and stopped to do a little research. I had two families on my list--my mother-in-law's parents and John Newton Yarberry. I found in an index in the library there that J.N. Yarbery had an obituary, but it was only available at the courthouse. The librarian called the courthouse, where a clerk loaded the film into a microfilm reader, found the obituary, and had it waiting for me when I got there. The courthouse did not have a microfilm copier, so I frantically copied it by hand while my two children fidgeted nearby. I think I had to scrawl it out on a piece of scrap paper.

From there we went to the cemetery. I found J.N. Yarberry's grave on the cemetery map, but when we located it, there was not a tombstone.

Now, many years later, that same obituary is accessible on the internet, making the original available. Much, much better than my hand scrawled copied.

John Newton Yarberry was the son of Thomas N. Yarberry and his wife Elizabeth Renfro/Rentfro, who removed from Gibson County, Tennessee to Hempstead County, Arkansas. John N. Yarberry was born in Gibson Co, TN on 18 Dec 1844, and married Sarah M. Blevins on 13 January 1870. He died in Tucumcari, Quay Co., NM on 30 March 1908 and is buried in the Tucumcari Memorial Park cemetery.




No comments:

Post a Comment

I will always try to respond to your comments. If you are anonymous and cannot be reached by email and if you do not choose to follow responses to your comments, then please check back here for a response.