Emma Pearl Sweet

An earlier posting—Thursday, November 12, 2015—mentions the 8 Jul 1922 death of Wabash Valley Tapscott Emma Pearl (Sweet) Waymire, owing to the collision of an automobile with Emma’s horse-drawn buggy.

Emma Pearl Sweet was one of Richard Morgan Sweet and Cora Isabelle Tapscott’s fourteen childen (posting, Monday, November 21, 2016). Born 12 Oct 1892, Emma married Benjamin Harrison (“Ben”) Waymire, a Chrisman, Illinois, farmer on 5 Mar 1912. At this point someone is going to point out that the Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths index states that Emma was born 12 Oct 1890 and that Ben Waymire’s obituary states that he and Emma were married in 1916. Indeed they do, and they are both wrong.

Photo courtesy of Robert L. Maxwell.

Emma led a short and sometimes tragic life. Before she died at age 29 in that violent automobile/buggy accident, Emma had seen the loss of two of her three children. Her first-born (28 Nov 1913) child, Harold Benjamin Waymire, died at age 2. Her other son, John Morgan Waymire, died 26 Feb 1922, after living only three days and dying the same year his mother met her tragic end.

A marker in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Martinsville Township, is inscribed with the names of Emma, her husband Ben Waymire, and children Harold and John. Despite the marker, however, Benjamin is not buried with Emma. He is interred with his second wife, Mary (Combs) in the Marshall, Illinois, City Cemetery. The others on the Waymire marker—Emma, Harold, and John—do, however, rest in Mount Pleasant.

Emma and Ben’s third child, Sarah Helen, lived much longer than her siblings. Born 8 Dec 1919, and raised after her mother's death by her grandparents, Sarah reached age 78, passing away 23 Feb 1998. But she almost didn’t make it. She had been in the buggy with her mother when it was struck by the automobile.