The obituaries posted here were donated by our site visitors. Though some obituaries contain date errors, misspellings, and other inaccuracies, they are still valuable source documents.  Many of the older papers have been destroyed and lost forever so your remembrance book may be the only source for this valuable information.  We appreciate your donations to the database as will many  future researchers. 

Goldsboro Dailey Argus  Goldsboro, NC Saturday Evening, December 18, 1926

COL. W. B. FORT PASSES

End of Widely Known and Universally Esteemed County and Confederate Navy Veteran Came at Noon Today at His Colonial Home Near Pikeville.

It is meant that in life purpling twilight, the drowsy twinkling of even tides should lull to sleep, and so becomes our sorrowful province to chronicle that at noon today at his colonial country home near Pikeville, our widely and universally esteemed countyman Col Wylie B. Fort, in the 86th year of his age "fell on sleep" after six months of slow decline, which He was in tender care of devoted daughters, solicitations, physicians and nurses and an army of friends.

Col Fort was born December 11, 1841and had barely entered in his 86th year when summons came to him to "cross over and rest beneath the shade of the trees." He was a student at the N. C. University when the war between the states broke out and he at once volunteered and entered the Confederate Navy, and was in historic engagement between the Merrimac and the Monitor off Hampton Roads, and was perhaps the last surivor of that great battle.

While Col. Fort suffered all the travail of war and reconstruction in common with his people, he was not reduced to the keen physical suffering of want that many others experienced because he was possessed with wide acres of fine farming and timber lands, and these were ever at the use of his needy neighbors during the privations of reconstruction and he generously shared with them whatever he had; so that all through the subsequent years no man has been so loved by his neighbors as Col. Fort, and now that he is gone from them they feel sorrowful indeed; but are comforted by the belief that he has the words of the King: "In as much as you have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Enter thou into the joys of thy Lord."


While attending the commencement last June, and his class reunion he was taken suddenly ill on June 7, during the exercise and was hastily conveyed to the Durham hospital where for weeks his condition was so grave that he could not be moved: later he was conveyed by easy conveyance to the hospital at Morehead City in the hope that the salubrious salt air would prove conductive to his recovery; but at length he was conveyed to his home, where the end came at noon today.

Col. Is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Fred Parker, of this city, and Mrs. R. A. Fetzer of Chapel Hill, four grandsons, Messrs. Talbot, Fred, Jr., Ogden and Wylie Parker of this city.

The funeral will be held from the home, near Pikeville, tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 o'clock, and the interment will be made beside his late wife and two sons in the ancestral Fort burying ground.

The following pall bearers have been selected: Active: Lonnie Smith, Leslie Crawford, Arthur Crawford,
A. S. Vinson, Harrison Yelverton, Jno. K Bridgers, R. Jack Smith, J. B. Hooks. Honorary: T. R. Robinson, Joe Rosenthal, N. O'Berry, Joe A. Parker, W. F. Taylor, D. C Humphrey, Latium Williams, of Wilson, Percy Munson of Wilmington, A. H. Edgerton, F. K. Borden, W. T. Yelverton, B.G. Thompson, Dr. J. Y. Joyner, Ray Wooten, Council Wooten, M. J. Best, Col. A. C. Davis.

Thanks to Alton Parnell of Pikeville, North Carolina for contributing this obituary on 11 September 2007. 

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Wayne County, NC Genealogy Project is solely owned by Diana Holland Faust.  The information contained herein is copyrighted and used only on this website.  It is not sold or re-published anywhere else.  Comments and suggestions to author: thefolks@betterthanmost.com.  All contents copyright © 1996-2012 Diana Holland Faust.  All rights reserved. 
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