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I have this obituary clipping for Mariah Ross, a former slave who is buried in Salem Cemetery at Beaman, MO. As far as I know she is the only African-American buried at Salem. She was brought as a slave from Virginia to Missouri with the family of Bellfield and Louisa Porter in 1832; after emancipation she remained with the family and died at the age of 91, probably in 1894 or 1895. There are no dates on the gravestone at Salem, only her name and the word "Mammy." Louisa Porter, who wrote the obituary, died herself in September 1895 at the age of 91. There is no date on the obituary clipping that is pasted inside the flyleaf of a family Bible:
Old Grand Mamma
At a Ripe Old Age She Was called Away.
To the Editor of the Democrat:
The following obituary notice is sent you by the “old mistress” of the “Grand Mamma” whose death she so touchingly chronicles.
And thus with old “Grand Mamma” is rapidly passing away a generation whose like we shall not see again. How many of us reared in the south remember with tears our dear old black “mammas!” What an important, what an indispensable personage she was, and withal what an autocrat. From her deliverances, to the children there was no appeal, and very little indeed to the heads of the household. The writer of the notice below is herself 90 years of age, and in all respects truly a mother in Israel is she.
Signed A.H.C. (Allen Howard Conkwright)
Died.
In Sedalia, at the home of her son, John Ross, Maria ross, at the ripe old age of ninety-one years. She was a colored woman, and until eight years ago the willing and faithful servant of Bellfield and Laura R. Porter. They were much attached to her and she was tenderly loved by all their children and grand children, who always called her “Grand Mamma.”
The neighbors all knew her and respected her and very few of them there are but will cherish her memory and recall some act of kindness or some little service cheerfully done them by Grand Mamma. For many years, indeed, very few children in the neighborhood made their advent into the world that Grand Mamma was not the first, or among the first, to salute them and make them welcome.
It would be a pleasure and I could easily write much about the dear, kind old creature were I not myself so feeble that writing has come to be a labor. She was laid to rest in Salem church yard last Sunday among many members of the family with whom she lived so long and now with whom she sleeps so gently. Peace to her ashes.
Signed L.R.P. (Louisa Rebecca Porter)
Beaman, March 3.
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