DEATH OF JUDGE PALFREY
This week we have a painful duty to perform in the announcement of the death of the Hon. Wm. T. Palfrey. He departed this
life last Sabbath evening, at his residence, ten miles below this place. He was buried by the Masons, in the Franklin Cemetery,
last Tuesday evening. Upon its arrival in Franklin, the Masons took the corpse to the Episcopal Church, where the Rev. Mr.
Hilton performed the funeral rites of his church, of which the deceased was a worthy member.
No death has occurred in St. Mary for many years that has created more profound and sincere regret than the death of Judge
Palfrey.
Judge Palfrey was a native of Massachusetts. He came to Attakapas when he was a boy. he resided here for more than fifty years.
He was sixty-eight years old when he died. He filled positions of honor and trust in the parishes of St. Martin and St. Mary,
and his integrity as a public officer was always above suspicion. He was Sheriff of St. Martin, cashier of a branch bank at
Franklin, Parish Judge, member of the State Senate (1855), besides filling many offices of minor importance.
Williams heart was with the people of Attakapas in adversity as well as in brighter days. Here he made a handsome fortune,
and here he enjoyed it. And it was an honest fortune, honestly made.
While slavery existed he was a just master, and eminently humane. Since the war, most of his servants remained with him, and
his justice and humanity to his freedmen were as marked as in former years to his slaves.
For several years Judge Palfrey had lingered as among the last of those men of mark that gave character to this country twenty-five
or thirty years ago, such men as Judge Porter, Dr. Brasher, Col. Dancy, Sparks, Oliver, Murphy, Garrett, Berwick, S. Smith,
and many others who are still fresh in the memory of most of our people. Many links had been broken that bound him to earth,
still, he felt that if it could have been the will of his Heavenly father, he would have been glad to remain still a few years
longer. But he was prepared to die, and said that death had no terrors for him. He breathed his last quietly and departed
without a struggle, to the land of spirits, no more to be harassed by the cares and vexations of earth. He has "fought a good
fight, " he has "finished his course," and has gone to receive the crown of righteousness that was laid up for him in Heaven.
A few of his contemporaries still linger on the shores of time, and in a few years they, too, must in like manner be consigned
to the silent tomb by their surviving friends. May they all be able to meet death as quietly as he met it, and like him to
be able to enter the land of spirits with the noble hope of a glorious immortality beyond the grave.
William Taylor along with his brother George, settled in Louisiana in 1815.
