It was a sad message that the "Courier" carried to the public last Friday-that Grandma Spooner was no more.

During the past few weeks this venerable lady had been growing weaker.

It was a peaceful sleeping away. The supposition is that she died about three o'clock.

For years Mrs. Spooner was one of the most noted persons in Northern Ohio. Her birthday was always the object of much interest. That one could live to such an age and still retain all their faculties seemed miraculous.

She passed her one-hundredth-birthday anniversary and started on her second century, bright, cheerful and happy. This event was celebrated in the Universalist church, of which the deceased was a member, with due éclat. Hundreds came to grasp the hand of the centenarian and wish her many more years of life. For each one she had a kind word of greeting or advice.

She was an honest Christian woman whose life was full of kind acts to all with whom she was connected. She had passed through joys and sorrows, triumphs and failures. She lived twenty-six years before Queen Victoria was born. During her lifetime great inventors, famous statesmen and noted writers have came and gone.

The place where we now live was at the time of her birth beyond the borders of civilization. She lived before the steamboat, the telegraph or the telephone were known.

Born while Washington was President, she has lived under the administration of every President of the United States.

Priscilla Delano Sanford Spooner was born in Plymouth, Mass., daughter of Captain Judah Delano. When she was a small child her father moved to Portland, Maine. He owned and was captain of a passenger packet plying between Portland and Boston.

Captain Delano often took one of his children with him on these trips. During one of them Priscilla took a deep interest in some object in the water and while gazing intently upon it she fell overboard. There was excitement on the boat and it was supposed that Priscilla's life was lost. While looking for his child the father saw her long hair floating on the water. He caught the hair with his hands and pulled the nigh-drowned child from the water. It was some time before she fully recovered from her startling experience.

At the time of Washington's death in 1799, there was a parade in Portland. Priscilla's older brother and sister were in the parade and Priscilla, then only six years of age, stood in the window of her home with crape on her arm.

The deceased's brother, Judah Delano, Jr., was for a number of years publisher of the" Sentinel," at Albemarle, N. C. Previous to that he was for fifteen years a proof reader on the "National Intelligencer," at Washington, D. C.

Priscilla's father died in Boston when she was only seven years of age. After that she went to live with her uncle, James Sampson, of Topsham, Maine. Later she returned to school to Portland. Here she was a schoolmate of N. P. Willis, the poet. Priscilla first went to school when she was only four years of age, that being the custom in those days and often received pennies for her good work.

After leaving school, Priscilla was married, 1811, to John Sanford. A few years later they moved to New Portland, making the perilous journey overland.

Her husband died in 1840. He was an inventor of some renown, but while many of his inventions were a benefit to the world, they were not to him. He invented the "shoulder to the grindstone," a journal running between two wheels, now in general use. He also invented an improved winnowing machine, a curved plowshare and the hydraulic pulley.

One of Mr. Sanford's most noted accomplishments was the erection of the famous old tide-mill which still stands at Bowdenham, Maine, the only one of its kind in the world. The wheel is twenty-seven feet in diameter with part of the rim out of the water at high tide. The spokes are wide and set diagonally, like the vanes of a wind-mill. It turns eighteen hours of the day by tide power, running one way with the flow and the other with the ebb. With one foot fall of the tide the wheel gives fifty-horse power.

Mr. Sanford's last invention was straw board, or straw paper, as he called it, which he had made at the paper mill at Bowdenham. His brother, Hezekiah Sanford, was with Commodore Perry on Lake Erie. His father was a sea captain and navigator.

In 1847, she married Dr. Spooner, a popular and skilled physician. In the fall of 1872 she came to Kent. Of late years she had made her home with her daughter, Mrs. E. T. Sawyer, on Lake Street. She was a member of the Universalist Church and attended there for many years until she became too feeble. Newspapers were welcome visitors to her and she enjoyed them greatly.

The funeral was held at Universalist Church, Sunday, at 2 P.M. Rev. H. K. Riegel, assisted by Rev. T. S. Smedley, conducted the services. The remains were interred at Standing Rock Cemetery, being borne to the grave by four aged neighbors.