In Memoriam – Died, at his residence in Halifax county on the 7th day of October, 1878, in the 71st year of his age, William W. BRICKELL.  Thus one by one they snap in twain those grand old links that bind us to the past.  Mr. BRICKELL was one of those remarkable men who came down to the present generation with all pure faiths and noble traditions of the past.  Self-made, self-reliant, sternly honest, and uncompromising where duty called, in social life genial as summer.  His truest epitaph would be a plain recital of his life. “Paint me scars, wrinkles and all,” once said Cromwell to a famous painter, and to appreciate Mr. BRICKELL, one must have seen his scars, wrinkles and all. Life’s battle had left many such upon him, but no man ever heard him complain, and no one ever knew him to despond because the fight had gone illy with him.  He had outlived all of those who had commenced with him, yet he looked steadily to the front, appreciating his duty to younger man, and by his example teaching them that tomorrow and not yesterday was a matter for human concern.  He was one of the very few old men who assimilated to the new order of things.  The author of this knew Mr. BRICKELL intimately from his boyhood up, and loved and admired him.  That men have occupied larger places,  in the minds of men than he is true.  But no grander character ever lived. Ostentatious true and loyal, he taught others how to live.  And no man ever accomplished a noble destiny than this.  Mr. BRICKELL entered politics since the war, but once and then as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1865.  In that body he steadily voted for the principles of Democracy even after the threats of then reigning owners had reduced his allies to a half dozen.  He never sought office, and he never bent to power when wrongly exercised.  His death was a calamity to his people, and his memory will live long after the place where he sleeps in forgotten.  He died as he had lived a christian, and his reward is assured. — A Friend.

Source: Roanoke News, 9 November 1878. Available online at digitalnc.org.