Death of Rev. Mason Clore.

I am just in receipt of a letter conveying the sad intelligence of the death of Rev. Mason Clore, which occurred at his home, three miles east of Adairsville, on the 5th day of October, 1889. I am furnished with certain facts relative to the life of this good man, and requested on behalf of his family and friends, to write a brief article for publication in the Courant American.

I am conscious of my utter incapacity to do justice to the memory of such a man as “Uncle Mason” Clore, but I would be untrue to every impulse of my better nature if I did not try to comply with this request which gives me opportunity to bear humble but sincere and earnest testimony to the splendid character of a most remarkable man. Mr. Clore was born in Laurens district, South Carolina, in 1803. At the age of fifteen he joined the Baptist church, and at twenty-five he married Miss Lucy Crawford. He moved to Georgia in 1836, was ordained a deacon in the church in 1837, and began to preach the same year. He continued to preach occasionally until within a few months of his death, and was ever consistent and earnest in Christian church.

I am told that he retained full consciousness up to the very last moment of his life, and looking death calmly in the face, went peacefully to rest in Father’s arms, giving to those around him full assurance of his willingness and preparation to die; his only regret being that his work on earth for the Master must end. What a record this noble old Christian has left behind him! Think of a Christian experience covering seventy-one years, and a ministry reaching from 1837 to 1889. And his was not a halting, half-hearted service, but a tender, earnest, sincere and helpful life that has made the world better and brighter for having been lived.

From my earliest recollection I have known Uncle Mason Clore. He was the friend and associate of my grandfather. He was the friend and adviser of my father, and he was my own friend and helper. What I write of him is not fulsome adulation. He was a good man; a man who was practical and useful; a man whose influence and sympathies were always on the side of sobriety, morality and Christianity. As a believer in the Christian religion, I rejoice in the testimony of such a life as his. It is in the presence of such evidence that he has left on record that infidels and atheists stand dumb. As a young man just starting in life, I love to think that, by following such examples as his, one may finally lie down to sleep, surrounded by his friends, loved by his neighbors, and carrying with him the blessings of a whole community made better by his life. As a citizen and lover of my State I am glad to point the young men who may read this to such an example as Uncle Mason Clore has left us, and to tell them how much better it is to emulate his virtues and his Christian character than to spend the best part of life in a mad rush for those things that often corrupt us in getting and always perish with the using.

Mr. Clore died as one wish to die. In his own home, surrounded by his loved ones; full of years and service; with all his faculties about him, and rejoicing in a Christian trust. He had so lived that when the summons came he approached his grave “with an unfaltering trust in God, and wrapping the drapery of his couch about him, lay down to pleasant dreams.”---W. J. Neel, Rome, Ga., Oct. 14, 1889