Armantha McClure Thibaudeau.

Click to enlarge.

Death, quietly and gently, came to Mrs. Armantha Thibaudeau Monday evening in the Newhall Community Hospital where she had been an invalid for the past year. Mrs. Thibaudeau was 91 years of age at the time of her death and had been in failing health for the past three years.

She was born July 26, 1870, in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, the daughter of John and Marcella McClure. She came to this valley about 1895 and settled with her family in the thriving Pico oil camp. Shortly after the turn of the century she moved to Newhall, was married and set up housekeeping in the family home at the corner of Newhall avenue and Market street. It was there that she lived and raised her family.

Mrs. Thibaudeau was an active woman, an organizer with unlimited energy. She was one of the organizers and a charter member of the Newhall Elementary P.T.A. She was a charter member and a life member of the Newhall Woman's Club. She was a stalwart in the Presbyterian Church and served for a time as an elder. From 1918 until the beginning of World War II she was head of the local branch of the American Red Cross. At the same time, she was an active worker in the Community Chest. Mrs. Thibaudeau helped organize the Newhall Improvement Club which later evolved into the Chamber of Commerce. All these things were the outward manifestation of her life.

There was a quieter side that touched the heart of this community through the active years of her life. In the early days when there were no doctors, no nurses and no undertakers, she delivered the babies, nursed the sick and laid out the dead. There was no end to her charity, no limit to her endurance.

Armantha Thibaudeau in 1936. Click to enlarge | Download original scan.

During the great Depression she collected food and other necessities for those families who were distressed at the time. She was a militant patriot, proud of her Republic, her State and her community, and through the years of her life, a great streamer of red, white and blue bunting adorned the Thibaudeau house from one end to the other on the Fourth of July.

Armantha Thibaudeau in 1901. Click for full image.

She is survived by two daughters, Mrs. Agnes Klippel of Santa Monica, and Mrs. Gladys Laney of Newhall; and a sister, Mrs. Minnie Mullins of Washington. There are also five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren surviving.

Services will be held Thursday (today) at 11 p.m. at the Hilburn Chapel, and interment will be in Eternal Valley Memorial Park where she will be laid to rest among the pioneers of this valley.

Mrs. Thibaudeau is mourned by hundreds of her old friends who loved her and recognized her as the matriarch she was and the woman who matched the mountains of the great State she loved so dearly.