RELEASE DATE: JULY 17, 2016
KINSEARCHING
by
Marleta Childs
P. O. Box 6825
LUBBOCK, TX 79493-6825
[email protected]
Again we provide information from another fragile clipping found in the Opal and Lester Saffell family papers, currently held in a private collection in Lubbock, Texas. Although the newspaper title is not on the obituary, the article probably appeared in a paper printed in Warren County, Illinois. Handwritten on the side of the obituary is the date 12 January 1926. However, that apparently refers to the day she died because the “Illinois Deaths and Stillbirths, 1916-1947” database at ( https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:NQR8-KZ9;27%20December%202014 , accessed on 16 July 2016) gives the death date for N. Elizabeth Woods as 12 January 1926. Since the obituary mentions “yesterday,” the date of publication in the newspaper would have been 13 January 1926.
(Genealogists should be aware that some punctuation and capital letters in proper names have been added or changed for clarity of meaning and readability. All-caps for surnames are used for emphasis.)
“Kirkwood Lady Died Yesterday
Miss Elizabeth Woods Passed Away After Brief Illness
The Kirkwood neighborhood was shocked yesterday evening when Miss Elizabeth WOODS died suddenly at 5:30 o’clock last evening at her home in Kirkwood, her death being caused from cardiac dropsy. Her last illness had been of short duration as she had been confined to her bed only since last Friday. She had enjoyed her usual health until two months ago. When a child eight years old, Miss Woods had met with an accident which left her crippled in body and she had not enjoyed the usual good health of the average person.
Elizabeth Woods was a daughter of James and Katherine (MARTIN) WOODS and was born near Ponemah on Oct. 30, 1871. She united with the United Presbyterian Church when a young girl during Rev. W. T. McCONNELL’s pastorate. She had always been faithful in her church relationship as long as her health permitted.
She is survived by her mother;
an uncle, L. H. MARTIN, now in Long Beach, Calif.;
several aunts;
and other relatives.
Two brothers died in infancy and her father passed away Sept. 24, 1907.
Funeral services will be held Friday afternoon at 2 o’clock from the United Presbyterian Church at Kirkwood, with Rev. W. H. DAVIS in charge. Burial will be in Kirkwood Cemetery.”
(End)
(Editor’s note: “Dropsy” was an old term that referred to the retention of water in the tissues and cavities of the body.)
Locating the place of origin of English immigrants to the American colonies in the 1600s can be difficult. Although narrowing the location down to a specific place may still require diligent research, having an idea of the general area of a country from which pioneers came can be helpful. For example, on page 52 of the article, “Jamestown: The Real Story” by Charles C. Mann in the May 2007 issue of National Geographic (Vol. 211, No. 5), the author states that up to a third of the immigrants to Virginia before 1640 came from the marshes of eastern and southern England. A large number of people left those areas in the seventeenth century due to wide-spread malaria. In the marshes, the disease often caused the deaths of ten to 20 percent of the population annually. As a result, sailing away to the New World seemed like a good idea.