J. L. Gault Answers Final Summons

Jeff Gault is dead. This was the sad news that found its way over Dardanelle on Saturday evening, April 24, 1915, to the people among whom he had lived for over half a century. Each heart was saddened, for all knew that a good man had fallen, and that a loss irreparable to the church, county and state had been sustained. These recitals are few and simple, but they chronicle the passing of one who had bee true in every relation of life, and who will be missed by all who appreciated and revere noble manhood in one whose life had been a benediction and who without ostentations had lived the sincere life of the Christian and how had made smooth many rough places for others. In his nature grew the rich, red royal roses of love for his fellow man, and which were intertwined with the beautiful white flowers of charity. He was a man of decided convictions that were based upon rugged immovable innate sense of merciful justice. It seemed to be one of the manifold objects of his creation to gather arms full of sunshine and scatter them broadcast into the lives of others. He rejoiced in the success and pleasures of his fellow-men and mourned with them in their sorrows.

Of pioneer stock, the family has stood high in the annals of the county history since first founders of the Arkansas branch. Judge Joseph D. Gault came from the old Palmetto State some three-quarters of a century ago. There he married and at Bluffton, in 1855, Jeff Gault was born, born in that tragic epoch when a bloody vintage was trampled from the grapes of wrath; when the wild fowl marveled that the waters were stained with a crimson that was not of the rising nor the setting sun; when the deer crouched in the covert and the song bird hushed his woodland aria before the roll and the rattle of the invading armies; and the forest flowers blent their fragrance with the acid stench of battle. It may be that the horrors of the period wrought upon his heart so that he could not in later life do violence to one of Gods living creatures. But however that may be, he had the holy trinity of virtues, faith, hope and charity. They formed his daily ritual, his code and constitution.

Of those who mourn him through the love of relationship are his sisters, Miss Jane Gault of Dardanelle, Mrs. Sallie Farr of Uvalde, Texas; his brother, Bose Gault of Danville, Lawson, Boles Johnston, Gault. Of those who mourn him through the love of friendship are all who knew his utter manhood, his high courage and his stainless honor. Among them the Post-Dispatch offers its condolences to the stricken family. As all must sometime do, he has fulfilled Natures final decree in equity; he has consummated the last immutable decree of Natures court; but he went to his reward in the consciousness of a life well lived, and trust preserved inviolate to his God, his country, his family and himself.

His sun has set, but in the years yet unborn like shadows stretching toward the East his influence for good moves on and on. Of him we will have a wealth of beautiful memories. Peace to his ashes.

(www.YellCountyObits.org, Published in Post-Dispatch, Dardanelle, Arkansas: 4-29-1915)