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Title
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Victoria Elizabeth Cunningham Bailey Obituary
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Accession Number
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2026.23.22.28
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Accession Date
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30 March 2026
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Accession Creator
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Emma Lilyea
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Description
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Obituary printed in the Greenville Newspaper in March 1896. Draft of obituary.
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Format
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Paper
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Storage Location
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Box 76, Folder 6
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Text
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(Obituary printed in the Greenville Newspaper in March 1896).
Obituary
Mrs. Victoria Elizabeth Cunningham Bailey was born March 28th 1842, in the western part of Spartanburg county near where the town of Greers now stands. She was married to W.C. Bailey Sept. 19th 1865. She was the mother of five children. Etta – now Mrs. W.W. Burgiss, Edgar W. and Edwin C. (twin brothers) Fannie G. -- now Mrs. T.E. Smith and Bettie. Her husband, an elder in Mount Tabor Church, preceded her to the grave fourteen years and left her to raise and train her young family. And well did she perform her duty. She took up the burden in the spirit of a true Christion heroine, and assumed the sole management of the estate. And such was her ability and business tact that she supported her family in comfort and affluence and added material value to the estate year after year. She was devoted to her family and her church. She ever relied upon the promise of a convenent keeping God, that He would be a husband to the widow and a Father to the fatherless.
“She laid her hand to the spindle and her hands held the distaff. She stretched out her hands to the poor, yea she reached forth her hands to the needy. She opened her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue was the law of kindness. She looked well to the ways of her household and ate not the bread of idleness. Her children rise up and call her blessed.” One of her chief traits of character was kindness and hospitality. Her house was the home for ministers of all denominations, and never did she seem happier than when entertaining them and ministering to their comfort.
In “The Presbyterian Women of South Carolina” Miss Gist, we find this statement concerning the women of early days: “If ever there are pillars in a church or mothers in Israel, surely Victoria Bailey was all of that in Mount Tabor Church.”
She died as she lived in the triumph of a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and often during the last protracted illness would she gather the family around the bed, and ask for the reading of God’s Word and would exhort her children and all in the room to walk in the way of wisdom and commit their ways unto the Lord and keep his commandments. To all who knew her, her memory is precious.
Mother! “Rest from thy labor rest,
Soul of the just set free,
Blest be thy memory, and blest,
They bright example be.”
Bailey Family Collection