I have new information to share on Modeste Hargis, entrepreneur, professional whistler, and Emmett’s pharmacist!
It’s the obituary for Modeste Hargis‘ mother, Modeste Sierra Hargis, from the Pensacola Daily News, Friday, January 22, 1904, page 1:
Obituary for Modeste Sierra Hargis. Source: Pensacola Daily News, Jan 22, 1904.
I love finding these old obituaries; they often include a sentimental (and perhaps charitable!) description of the deceased’s personality, plus clues about their lives and other family relationships.
At the time of Modeste Sierra’s death, she was about 68 years old. Her husband, Dr. Robert Bell Smith Hargis, who was about 15 years older than Modeste Sierra, died eleven years earlier, in 1893.
One other item I’ve discovered is that Modeste the Younger had a half-brother, Dr. Robert Whitmore Hargis. Robert is not mentioned in the above obituary; he was the son of Dr. Robert Bell Smith Hargis and Susan Catherine Horton, who died in 1852. (Modeste Sierra and Dr. Robert Bell Smith Hargis were married in 1854.) He would have been about two or three years old when his father married Modeste Sierra, effectively being the only mother he would have remembered. Perhaps he wasn’t listed in the obituary because Robert Whitmore died in 1899, yet Modeste Sierra’s deceased sister is listed. Perhaps it was an oversight, perhaps not; I’m just curious about it.
Anyway — what’s interesting about the information at the link on Dr. Robert Whitmore Hargis is that it identifies the name of one of his descendants who possesses the family Bible! I’d love to see that precious primary source in person!
Categories: Interesting & Odd
jsmith532
Professor,
Communication, Arts, and the Humanities
The University of Maryland Global Campus
Tell my story. 
Modeste was the granddaughter of Dr Eugenio Antonio Sierra of Spain 1760. He has an interesting history also. Shipping over to Florida, a surgeon who purchased a guillotine to use in his practice. Purchased in New Orleans, said to be the only one used in the USA. He is buried at St Michael’s Cemetery, 1893. You may have this already. I didn’t search all f your interesting history. Time would not permit.
Thanks so much for the interesting history about Modeste’s family. Certainly, I think Modeste and her family deserve their own biography — and a guillotine? Oh my goodness! I can only imagine what it was used for! 😀