Capt. Horatio W. Heath, who died at his home on Pennsylvania Avenue in this city last Friday morning at the age of 85 lacking a few days, was one of the most interesting characters in all this collection of diverse humans in the census of Elizabeth City. There wasn’t another just like him. He was the oldest member of the First Baptist Church in this city, and even after his wife died he continued to pay her church dues as well as his own up to the time of his death, but he seldom set foot inside a church. He didn’t have to go to church to keep his religion; he was sure of his own faith and his own salvation and the time he might have spent in church looking after his own soul, he devoted to visiting the sick and the afflicted and carrying the hopeful message of the bible to those in prison and in the County Home. The old man walked many miles in his day to carry dainties or food to the sick and the gospel to those upon whom the world had turned its back.
Much could be written of the ministries of this venerable citizen and of his personal peculiarities. One little incident well illustrates his character. He was scrupulous to the point of fanaticism. He would owe no man a penny. One day he entered the store of McCabe & Grice to purchase a five-cent spool of thread. It was a hot summer’s day and the old man, then nearly 80 years old, had trudged many blocks in a hot sun to purchase that spool of thread. And when the clerk wrapped up the spool of thread the old man discovered that he had left his purse at home and had not a nickel in his clothes.
“You’ll have to wait, sonny, till I can go home and get a nickel,” said the man to the clerk.
“Don’t bother about that,” said the clerk. “Take the thread and bring the nickel the next time you are down town.”
“I won’t do that, sonny,” declared the old man, and he walked all the way back home to fetch that nickel before he would take the thread.
The clerk said to him: “I’m sorry you put yourself to all that trouble. You are an old man, it is a hot and sultry day. We would have trusted you. In fact, your credit is good for anything in this store.”
“Never mind about the trouble, sonny,” said the old man with his beautific smile. “Never mind about the trouble, the old man is going to have a good long rest pretty soon.”
Old man Heath looked forward to death as a relief from the cares of this world and certain reward for those who feared and served God. He died in his faith. When the lid was finally placed upon his coffin it closed upon a face radiant even in death.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, May 19, 1922
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