Mrs. Lucy Rodgers Deatherage was born May 19, 1825, in Barren county, Kentucky, and fell asleep in Jesus Friday evening, March 28, 1902, in the old village of Appalonia, adjoining Waverly on the west.
May 20, 1851, she became the wife of the late Mr. William (familiarly known as �Uncle Billy�) Deatherage, he being at that time a bachelor of 61 years of age and she a young woman of 26. The wedding ceremony occurred in the house now occupied by Mr. and Mrs. G. B. Turner, just west of Waverly, and the newly wedded couple soon took up their residence in the house a short distance further west (now occupied by Mrs. Anna Scott), and here they spent nearly all of the thirty-eight years of their wedded life. Here was born to them six daughters, of whom four are deceased - Clara L., Panora E. (Jasper), Ella (Armstrong), and Fanny (Jolly); two are living - Mrs. Anna Scott, now occupying the paternal home and Mrs. Elvira Bostwick, the youngest daughter, at whose home the death of the aged mother occurred.
Some six years after her marriage Mother Deatherage professed religion and joined the Methodist Episcopal church during the ministry of Rev. W. J. Newman, and from that time to the death of her husband, and much of the thirteen years since, her home was a home of rest to every itinerant minister of the Gospel known to this old center of Methodism for more than a half a hundred years. Time and space fails me to tell of those who planted Methodism in this land from the days of Cartwright, Peter Akers, Kimber, the Rutledges, McElfreshes, prentice, Corringtons, and a host of others mostly now sainted, who at times rested at this hospitable house as they marched and countermarched in the early Gospel campaigns of this old center of Methodism in the west.
Some weeks ago Mother Deatherage got a fall, breaking a limb, while stopping with her youngest daughter, and though laid up with it for some weeks she was encouraged to hope for a speedy recovery. But the hope of herself and her children and friends was doomed to disappointment, for pneumonia seemed to complicate itself with her other afflictions, and they became more than her feeble strength could endure and she rapidly sank under them, her death occurring as above states. Of course she was ready to meet her Lord, and was quickly ushered into His glorious presence.