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Chase County Kansas Obituaries
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Wood, Emma Bailey
Mrs. C. D. Wood, of Elmdale, died at her home southwest of Elmdale last Wednesday afternoon, following a long illness which she had suffered severely and which had in fact made her an invalid for the past year or two.
The funeral is set for 2:00 oclock this (Friday), afternoon at the Wood home. Interment, following the funeral service will be made at Elmdale.
Mrs. Wood who was one of the most widely known and respected of women has lived in the county for many years and besides her husband, leaves one son and three daughters who are Paul Wood, Miss Carrie and Miss Rachel and Mrs. Clyde Holmes. Another son, Howard Wood, was one of the first Chase county boys to lose his life in action while fighting on the Western front last year.
Chase County Leader News, Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, Oct 3, 1919.
Emma Bailey Wood, was born February 8th, 1860, near Marietta, Ohio.
When 14 years old she came with her parents to Chase county, where she grew up attending the schools at Elmdale for three years then went two years to Kansas University, after which she taught at Elmdale and the Blackshere school. She then went to Ohio for a year and attended school at Glendale college. Returning to Kansas in the fall of '83 she taught school for two terms near Elk in what was known as the Balch school house. In the winter of '83 and '85 she suffered an attack of nervous prostration which lasted six months.
Having partially regained her health she was married in the spring of 1886 on April 7th to C.D. Wood of Elmdale.
They lived four years on a farm near Elmdale where the two older children, Rhuy and Howard were born. In October, 1890, she with her husband moved to Abilene in Dickinson county, where he took up work as a County Sunday School worker and they lived there four years, two children were born during this time, Paul and Rachel. In 1894 they took up work under the Presbyterian Sabbath School worker for their field the Larned Presbytery comprising thirty-four counties in southwestern Kansas. For thirteen years lived in Hutchinson and it was here that perhaps the best and most fruitful part of her life was spent. One child, Carrie, was born in Hutchinson.
Mrs. Wood was deeply religious and always took a great interest in the Church and Sunday School work. Soon after moving to Hutchinson she took charge of the primary work in the Presbyterian Sunday School and continued in that work till they left there, besides she was sought as a public speaker in many of the Sunday School conventions throughout the southwest and she traveled many hundreds of miles during those years by train and across the prairies of the southwest. She had the happy faculty of adapting herself to the one-room sod house or to the best home in the city and in either case was always a welcome guest.
She said to her husband in the early part of their married life that she hoped she could make her home of some use in the world and it certainly was no less than eight different girls who stayed in her home at different times in order to be able to attend the better schools of the town. Her home was always open to her friends and to the needy and distressed. There was hardly a day during the years that they lived in Hutchinson when there was not a guest in the home many of whom were ministers and Sunday school workers of local and national reputation and she always said that she felt repaid for the extra work by the privilege of their society.
She was always deeply interested in the welfare of her neighbors and being a sucessful mother her advice was constantly sought especially by young mothers and especially in cases of sickness the neighbors who used to laughingly say it was first Mrs. Wood and then the doctor. And many a time the doctor said that it was only by her prompt first aid that a life was saved.
She organized and maintained in one of the poorer parts of Hutchinson far...a Sunday School and did a great deal of visiting among the working people. At one time she found a poor woman with three little children whose worthless husband had abandoned her sick with the measles and no one to care for her and two little girls of five and seven not being able to get any one to look after them and the surroundings being decidedly unsanitary, she hired a drayman and loading the woman bed and beding on the dray took them to her own home and kept them till they had recovered.
In 1907 she with her husband returned to the farm at Elmdale.
In 1917 her oldest son, Howard, enlisted in the Marine service and on the day following his enlistment she fell and broke her hip and was never able to walk afterward. Her health had been failing previous to this and although doctors had been consulted at various places nothing seemed to relieve her. June 23rd, 1918, her son, Howard, was reported missing in action and although she accepted the serious with true christian fortitude, it, no doubt, added to her physical breakdown and she gradually lost her power of action until the last few months of her life, she was practically helpless being unable to move limbs or body herself.
Her mind was bright and keen to the last and she was very much...to get in the last weeks of her sickness this report from the Red Cross at Washington under date of August 23rd their final report on the of her son. This is given in the exact words of the witness Phill McDermott:
"Howard was killed in Belleau Woods near Chateau Thierry, June 23rd, about 7:30 in the evening. The attack took place a few minutes after 7:00 o'clock. He was struck in the mouth by machine gun fire and was killed instantly. He was within less than twenty yards of the German lines. He was facing the lines and was going forward. There is nothing too good I could say about Corporal Wood, I never yet saw a man with better nerve or cooler in the fight. He was very popular among the men. He was a good christian and used to read his testament frequently and carried it with him always. He was reading it shortly before we went over the top that evening. We used to show each other letters from home. I attended the burial which took place two days later on the battle field where he fell. The grave was marked in the usual way."
Howard belonged to the 16th Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment, U. S. Marines. It was during the fighting on this evening that the Marines finished driving the Germans from Belleau Woods.
Mrs. Wood fell asleep Wednesday evening, October 1st, at 6:00 o'clock with her family around her bedside.
She leaves to mourn her loss her husband, C.D. Wood; three daughters, Mrs. Clyde Holmes, of Washington, D.C.; Miss Rachel and Carrie Wood, and one son, Paul, who live at home.
Interment was made in the Elmdale cemetery, Friday, October 3rd. Services were conducted at the house by Rev. D. Y. Donaldson, of Emporia, a former Hutchinson pastor and a friend of the family. Realizing some months before that she could not recover she had one of her daughters write out a list of hymns she wanted used also the persons she wanted for pall-bearers; the scripture she wished read and that the singing should be congegational and that as little of spirit of mournfulness be exhibited as could be on such an occasion.
Chase County Leader News, Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, Oct 17, 1919.
by Lorna Marvin
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