"Beyond the River"
The Sad Death of an Aged and Honored Christian Gentleman

   A few days ago, at his home near Pleasant Hill, Colquitt County, Georgia, Nathaniel Croft breathed his last.
   He was one of the pioneer settlers of that portion of the state, and was renowned throughout that section for his uprightness, patriotism, integrity, and Christian rectitude.
   He was born in South Carolina of Scotch descent, just 87 years ago, and married the heiress of one of the finest old Huguenot families in the state.
   Being a man of splendid physique and always of the most regular and temperate habits, he won his way to the front very rapidly.
   After his removal to Georgia, he acquired a comfortable fortune, and when the war came on, he sent his sons to the front and spent his money for the cause, and was ever an unswerving adherent of southern rights.
   He leaves a large family. One son, his eldest born, died in the army while fighting for Dixie. Another, Francis Marion Croft, was in Hampton's Legion and rode with Jeb Stuart in all those wild charges and the celebrated ride around McClellan, which emblazoned the fame of that glorious but ill-fated commander.
   Still another, William Croft, tax collector of the county, had an arm shot off at Cedar Run, where the gallant Col. Robert Folsom lost his life in front of his regiment in a desperate charge.
   He leaves behind to share in his heritage of honor, eight sons and four daughters. Mrs. Montgomery M. Folsom, who lives at 20 Henry Street, this city, is one of his youngest children, and she is inconsolable over the sad news of her father's death.
   The old man is gone to his reward, not unprepared, but ready and waiting for the call of the Father for many a long day.
   He did not, as Judge Blockley's exquisite little poem says:
             "Approach the grave,
             Not as a son, but as a slave."
   Far from that, in the consciousness of a life of uprightness and moral rectitude, he but crossed over the river to accept his own inheritance among those mansions that are ready for the righteous.
   He was every inch a man, in every sense of the word, morally, mentally, physically. There are, alas, too few like him. I can only add this little mite to his memory, as I reverently salute him in that spirit land where he has, for many years, so longed to be.
M.M.F.