OBITUARY: Ellen Sawyer Woodard, 1843-1915, Mitchell County, Iowa


                         Ellen Sawyer Woodard
                          
    [Source: Mitchell County Press-News or Mason City Globe Gazette]
                      
Ellen Sawyer was born at Vernon Center, Oneida Co., New York, August 20,
1843, and died at Monroe, Iowa, Dec. 29, 1915.  When six years of age she
came by way of the great lakes to Milwaukee, Wis., and thence by team 
to a farm near Columbus Wis.  Here she lived about ten years.  Then she
moved to Columbus and attended school there.  January 31, 1867, she took
in marriage, Otis P. Woodard, and they began life together in the city
of Milwaukee.  Afterwards they were located on a farm near Manchester,
Iowa, and came to Osage, Iowa, about thirty-six years ago.

Four children were born to bless their home, all of whom are living: Mrs.
F. May Tuttle, of Osage; Harriett V. and Mrs. Olive Ogg, of Monroe, Iowa;
and Mrs. Alice Jenkins, of Swaledale, Iowa.  Nine grandchildren and one
great grandchild, also will rise up to call her memory blessed.

When she was about sixteen year of age, she was baptized into membership
with the Baptist church of Columbus, Wis.  After coming to Osage, she,
with her husband, united with the Baptist church here, being received
on the 29th day of June, 1878.

On this last day of the year, as we gather in her memory, it will occur
to many, members of this church that two great women have gone from us
to glory land during the year 1915--Mother Kingsbury and Mother Woodard.

There was one verse of the scriptures which had come home to Mother Woodard
with special preciousness and which she had expressed her wish should be
used on this occasion.  It may be that some great deliverance also in
Mother Woodard's experience had made this verse to have profound meaning.

To her was granted at time great exultation of spirit; indeed, she may
have had visions of things eternal, quite as truly as did the prophets
of old.  She was a great believer in prayer and the sweetness of her
trust and the gratitude of her soul for God's answers to her seem to have
turned to rapture and ecstacy.

Though she had reached her 72nd birthday, which her family celebrated last
August, yet her passing from us makes us realize more the shortness and
the incompleteness of our stay on earth.  For we fell that Mother Woodard
must live on and that she is living now even more than ever.

"How a rare a thing it is to find a soul still enough to hear God speak"
Mother Woodard had learned that art.  And she, like the Scotch lad who
had returned from the trenches of the awful conflict in Europe, saying,
"Nothing matters but God:, felt that the incomparably important thing
in human life is the attitude of soul voicing in the text, "Be still
and know that I am God."



Copyright (c) 2002 by Marilyn O'Connor
(Note: I am not necessarily related to the subject of the obituary.)

This copy contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives.

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