TRADEGY, MISFORTUNE, AND SADNESS
A Chapter of
Accidents. Mr. Henry Furr, of Hughesville, Loudoun county,
recently had his leg broken by the kick of a horse. Mr. Furr has certainly had
a remarkable series of misfortunes. A few years ago all three of his children
died of diphtheria. Last winter his residence and his meat house, with most of
his furniture, his wearing apparel, and his meat were consumed by fire. Then
someone raided his poultry house and robbed him of his poultry. Then rheumatism
attacked him and he had to go upon crutches. He was just recovering from this
when he met with this last accident. Mrs. Furr has become entirely blind. As
Mr. Furr is comparatively a young man, his friends hope there are better days
in store for him.
Alexandria Gazette, Alexandria, DC,
October 25, 1895
The little two months infant son of
Mr. and Mrs. C. N. Furr who reside a short distance east of town was scalded to
death Saturday afternoon, the particulars of which are as follows: Mrs. Furr
had gone over to her husband's store which is only a short distance from their
home, leaving her little four year old daughter with the baby. The little girl
picked up the baby and started over to the store and as she was carrying it in
front of her, could not see ahead so stumbled over a kettle of boiling water
which was sitting in the yard over a fire and the infant dropped into the
kettle. The little girl screamed for her mother and reached her hands into the
boiling water and tried to pull the babe out. Mrs. Furr reached the scene in a
moment and lifted the child out and summoned medical aid but it was so terribly
scalded that it died within a short time. The little girl's hands and arms were
fearfully scalded in her attempt to rescue her little baby brother. The funeral
of the little one took place yesterday afternoon at 3 o'clock, Rev. W. A.
Stuckey conducting services at the residence. The interment was made in Wilson's Chapel
Cemetery.
McKinney Daily Courier, McKinney,
Texas, Monday, August 8, 1904
The home of Mr. W. M. M. Furr of Stanly county
is one in which death has often entered. Mr. Furr is only about 40 years old,
yet he has buried his wife and eleven children. He was in town a few days ago
and placed an order with Messrs. Baker and Foard for twelve tombstones.
The Lancaster Ledger, Lancaster, South
Carolina, September 3, 1904
Between 1887 and 1901, William Martin Moses
Furr (1861-1929) and his first wife Malinda Lavinia
Love (1867-1904) lost 12 children, one age 6 and the rest under the age of 1.
Malinda died on May 1, 1904. She and the 12 children are buried in Loves Grove
United Methodist
Church Cemetery.
One child from this marriage, Martha Furr Doby
(1898-1960), lived to be 62. William had three children by his second wife,
Dora Morgan (1885-1944), who lived to be 46, 58, and 83.
E. Furr Killed By Brother.
Row in Prominent
Stanly Family Results in Awful Tragedy.
Albemarle Dispatch, June 18, 1915
An awful tragedy occurred about
three miles west of Big Lick, this county, this
morning about 8 o'clock when W. F. Furr shot and killed his brother, Ephraim
Furr. It seems that there had been some trouble between the brothers for some
time over their father's estate. The stepmother was living on the land of W. M. Furr and proceedings had been
taken by W. M. Furr to get possession of the land. It is said that Ephraim Furr
had been some trouble between the mother. This morning
when W. M. Furr and his son, L. M. Furr, went to the field near the house where
the widow lived, they found that the widow had gone to Albemarle, but that Ephraim was there about
the house. Ephraim Furr ordered W. M.
Furr and his son off the premises, asserting, it is said, that unless they got
off he would kill them. They did not go. Ephraim went to the house and secured
his shotgun and returned and again ordered his brother away. The son
remonstrated with his uncle, and tried to prevent, trouble, but Ephraim fired
on his brother, a number of the shots taking effect in the limbs and other
parts of his body. Ephraim then got down
behind the road bank and took out the empty shell and undertook to reload, but
when he rose W. M. Furr shot him with a pistol, almost
instantly killing him. W. M. Furr then came immediately to Albemarle to give himself up to the officers
and have his wounds dressed. P. J. Huneycutt,
coroner, immediately summoned a jury and the jury has returned a verdict of
justifiable homicide and W. M. Furr has been released, or will be as soon as
the report is signed. W. M. Furr Is about 50 years old
and his brother was perhaps two or three years his senior. Members of a large
and prominent family, both men were well and favorably known throughout the
county. Their brother, R. N. Furr, is county treasurer of Stanly county, and another brother, C. C. Furr, of Oakboro, is one
of the leading merchants of the county. The tragedy has caused a severe shock
to the people of the entire county, as these men had connection and friends
throughout the county. The deceased has a family of eight or ten children, some
of whom are grown.
The Monroe
Dispatch, Monroe, North Carolina, June 22, 1915
The Moore County
home of Jimmy and Sayde Furr was destroyed Saturday
by an early morning fire that claimed the lives of five of their seven
children. The parents tried to rescue the children, who were sleeping in upstairs
bedrooms, but Vass Fire Chief Hugh McLean said they were fortunate to escape
themselves. The Furr children killed were Paul, 8; Jonathan, 11; Jennifer, 12;
Beth, 15; and Jodie, 19. The Furrs` two other children, Penny, 18, and Anthony,
20, were spending the night elsewhere.
The Charlotte Observer, Charlotte, North Carolina,
January 27, 1986
Don and Treon
Smith of Quinlan visit the site of a fire that killed Ms. Smith's aunt and
uncle, Kenneth and Gertrude Furr. The Furrs were found just inside a bedroom
window. 'To be so close and not be able to get out, it's just terrible,' Mrs.
Smith said. It was a good place for Mr. Furr, 78, to raise goats and guinea
fowl while Mrs. Furr, 81, canned preserves and ran a one-room beauty parlor
behind their home. Late Friday, fire swept through their white ranch-style
house, ending the couple's lives the same way they had lived: hand in hand. "They
were found holding hands at the bedroom window," their daughter-in-law and
next-door neighbor, Judy Furr, said Saturday. "They loved each other dearly."The Furrs' home is on the edge of Wylie's fire
district, but it is quite a distance from any fire station. Mr. Furr's son Kenneth M. Furr and a host of neighbors from the
rural, close-knit neighborhood tried to save the couple while fire trucks from
several departments were en route. But the smoke was too thick, Kenneth Furr
said. Another of Mr. Furr's sons, Danny Furr, lives
in Dallas and
said he found out about the fire from television reports. A Collin County
sheriff's deputy and a Lavon police officer attempted to rescue the couple. The
deputy was able to make his way to the bedroom where the bodies were found, but
heavy smoke drove him out of the house, Collin County Fire Marshal Steven Deffibaugh said. "He probably came within a couple of
feet of them," Mr. Deffibaugh said. He said the
fire appears to have started near the home's heating and air conditioning unit
and that the couple likely died from smoke inhalation. Autopsies were pending
Saturday. According to relatives and friends, Mr. and Mrs. Furr met in the
1960s while out dancing in Dallas.
They wed in 1966, a second marriage for both. In the 1950s, Mrs. Furr earned
diplomas from three cosmetology schools in the United
States and in Europe. More
than 20 years ago, she and Mr. Furr, a farmer and trucker, decided that a
slower life in this Collin County hamlet 31 miles from Dallas would ease their health problems.
Family members expanded part of a 100-year-old bois d'arc
home next door to Kenneth and Judy Furr's house for
the elder Furr couple. Gertrude Furr, or "Trudy," thought moving
outside of Garland,
where they had lived, would reduce her clientele. But the older ladies whose
hair she coiffed found her and regularly made the trip to Trudy's Salon to get
their hair done, her daughter-in-law said. "She always said, 'I'll be
doing this until the day I die,' " Judy Furr said. She added that her
mother-in-law saw customers just hours before the fire. Kenneth M. Furr said
his mother enjoyed decorating and cooking. "She cooked green pepper chili,
okra gumbo, coconut pudding," he said. "If you came to her house
hungry, you didn't leave hungry. While surveying the fire damage at the Furr
home Saturday, neighbor Connie Tipado, whose husband
and son also tried to rescue the couple, said they were like the grandparents
of County Road 485. Mrs. Furr picked figs for Ms. Tipado
and gave her canned produce to send to her son while he worked on his doctorate
overseas. She said she enjoyed Mr. Furr's stories
about his days in the Navy. "My husband and I are the only
African-Americans on the street, and they treated us so wonderfully. They
welcomed us with open arms when my husband and I moved out here," she
said. "I love them a lot." Among the ashes Saturday was a scorched
piano that Mr. Tipado sometimes played for Mrs. Furr,
along with figurines and antiques Mrs. Furr liked to collect. Canned and jarred
items mixed with ash spilled from the burned refrigerator. A trucker cap lying
on the ground outside the house with other debris from the fire read
"Furrs Sheep and Goats." The fire also reduced to ruin a console
television, couch and hair-dryer chair in Mrs. Furr's
one-room salon. Attached to a mirror in the salon was a yellowed piece of paper
that read, "Hands that help are holier than lips that pray." "That
sums up the kind of woman she was," said Chris Ballew of Quinlan, Judy Furr's cousin. The couple lived and breathed each other,
relatives and neighbors said. They sat quietly together in white rocking chairs
on their porch. Mr. Furr drove a red and white pickup, but the couple took the
immaculate Lincoln
they kept in the garage when they got dressed up to go into town on the
weekends. Last summer Mr. Furr spent four months in the hospital recovering
from a bypass and pneumonia. His wife, herself frail from a stroke and cornea
transplant, didn't miss one day visiting him. "You never saw one without
the other," Judy Furr said. "If it had to happen like this, I'm glad
they went together."
The Dallas Morning
News, Dallas, Texas, February 6, 2005