Windham County Transcript, June 3, 1909
Seventeen years ago this month the Mellish family came to Dayville, where the Rev. John H. Mellish bought a house and where he died May 26th, after many years of helplessness and uncomplaining confinement and suffering. A self-sacrificing servant of God, trusting in God’s mercy to the end, throughout adversity and sorrow, too much cannot be said of his upright, just character and charitable nature.
On Jan. 1, 1856, he married Miss Sarah Adeline Lane, who survives him. Two children blessed this union, Florence and Bertha Lane Mellish. In 1897 a great bereavement fell upon the family, when the younger daughter, who was a gifted and exceptionally bright student, disappeared from Mt. Holyoke College and no trace of her was ever found. The elder daughter, Florence, has been the mainstay of her parent’s declining years.
Windham County Transcript, September 19, 1912
Mrs. Sarah Lane Mellish, widow of the Rev. John Mellish, died at her home here on Friday, September 13th . Mrs. Mellish had many friends in and about Dayville. In the first years of her life among us she was an active worker in the Sabbath school. She was a woman of great culture, well read in all subjects, a deep thinker, but ready always to lend a sympathetic ear.
In January, 1856, she was united in marriage to Rev. Mellish and proved a helpmate to him in his life calling. Two children were born to them, Florence, who survives them and who has devoted her life to her parents, anticipating their wants and caring for them through all adversities, and Bertha Lane, who mysteriously disappeared from Mt. Holyoke College in 1897. After this bereavement, Mrs. Mellish never regained her accustomed health.