Ezra and Amanda Maris Woodward Family
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| Ezra Hinshaw Woodward born 1/29/1854 Hendricks Co, In died 12/26/1922 Newberg, Yamill Co, Oregon | Amanda M. Maris born December 23, 1854 Parke Co, In died 1/18/1946 Yamill Co, Or |
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Married: December 27, 1877 Quaker Community of North Branch, near Mooresville, Hendricks County, Indiana
Children: Walter C. Woodward born 11/28/1878, Morgan County, Indiana; married Catherine Hartman Bennie Woodward born and died 1880, Morgan Co, Indiana; burial North Branch Sybil Woodward born May 1882 Oregon; died 1920, Yamhill Co, Oregon (unmarried) Bernice Woodward born April 1886 Oregon; married William A. King Herman Woodward born September 1891 Oregon; died summer 1908, Yamhill Co, Oregon Family photo taken before 1908 Oregon |
History of Ezra and Amanda Maris WoodwardThe parents of both Ezra and Amanda believed strongly in education. Amanda attended school in Bloomingdale Academy in Indiana and there met her husband-to-be, also a student.Ezra and Amanda Maris Woodward had their first home in a small cabin a few miles out of the town of Mooresville, Indiana. Ezra's father and first wife had come to the community in 1832, and there Benjamin met and married Ezra's mother, widow Lydia Cook Dixon, his second wife. Ezra and Amanda's first son Walter was born here 11/28/1878. They are found in the 1880 census records in Morgan County, Indiana: Ezra H. Woodward, 26, born In; Amanda, 25, born In; Walter C. Woodward, 1, In; Benjamin, 5 months, In; Mary C. Ward, 28, born In (domestic). A traveling Quaker minister came to North Branch in 1880 with tales of a fine Quaker settlement in Yamhill County, Oregon. Amanda was pregnant with son Benny and suggested that Ezra go visit the Oregon community. The baby was born, sickened and died, and was buried at North Branch so Amanda and Ezra decided to go together to Oregon. Ezra & Amanda Maris Woodward traveled by train from Indianapolis to San Francisco in the summer of 1880 with two year old Walter in tow. The trip took eight days in the summer heat. The family had to prepare and carry all the food for the journey as well as all the personal belongings and bedding that they needed when they arrived. In San Francisco they transferred all their belongings to the steamship, California. Son Walter wrote some 40 years later, "Poor mother was too ill to care particularly whether or not her first-born son was to be nurtured for the blessings of posterity. She put me on my back, gave me a cold baked potato, committed me to Providence. One or the other, or both perhaps, brought me through." After the seasick journey on the California, the family spent the night in Portland, Oregon, and then boarded another steamer, the Orient, to travel up the Willamette River to the town of Dayton. The family had traveled with a Jesse Edwards family, and Jesse here bought a hack and team of horses to finish the journey. Ezra and Amanda purchased a farm one-half mile northwest of Newberg, Oregon. Son Walter Woodward wrote of the farm many years later: "The farm house which became our youthful home had been built by one of the old settlers and was of baronial proportions. It was of the southern plantation type, with a broad, covered porch running the full length of the house. The roof was already covered with the moss of many Oregon winters, as if trying to present a front of antiquity and sedateness in a country still young." Walter also wrote of a story told to him by his parents: "Shortly after our arrival, Mother and Father joined with other families in a wagon party trip to the ocean beach, which lay across the Coast Range Mountains more than one hundred miles distant. Not having yet stocked up with equipment of his own, Father hired a yoke of oxen as our motive power. One of the oxen went lame in the mountains, and fifteen or more years later when Father and I were going by train over the same route, he was able to point out to me the exact spot where they had thrown the beast on its side and shod the lame foot. Even at that, our going was not always slow, for perhaps my earliest recollection has to do with the occasion when the thirsty oxen, smelling water, started on a lumbering run for a river. Mother and her infant son (Walter) were alone in the wagon. Of all runaways, that of runaway oxen leaves one with the most utter sense of helplessness and futility. With no lines to pull upon, there is nothing to do but just sit and yell, or just sit. Happily, before too much momentum had been gained, one of the men in the party was near enough to run and jump into the wagon from behind, and climbing over the seat, make his way over the wagon tongue between the big steers, and beating them over the head, managed to stop them in their mad career." More History of Walter C. WoodwardWalter C. Woodward received his PhD from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, and was on the faculty for several years. He apparently was visiting his parents at the time of the 1910 census, Newberg Yamhill, Oregon: 207A Ezra H. Woodward, In, Tn, In Newspaper publisher; Amanda, In, In, NC, 5 children born, 3 living Walter C. Woodward, In, In, In, college professor; Sibyl Woodward, 27, Ore, In, In.Walter C. Woodward married Catharine Hartman September 10, 1912 in Indiana. Catharine had been a senior at Earlham College in Professor Woodward's history classes. Catharine's parents are living with them in the 1920 census in Richmond, Wayne County, Indiana: #223 Walter C. Woodward, own home, 41, born In, parents born In, editor, church paper; Catharine H., 33, In, Oh, Oh; Bernice L, 5, In; Mary E., 1 1/12, In; Harvey A. Hartman, Oh Pa NY; 69; Mary E., 57, Oh, Vt, Vt. In 1930 at 223 College Avenue, Richmond, Wayne Co: Walter C. Woodward, own, $6000, radio no, 51, married age 33, In, In, In, editor magazine; Catharine, 43, married age 26 In Oh Oh; Bernice L, 16, In; Mary E, 11, In; Elizabeth, 5, In. Walter was editor of the American Friend magazine for many years. Walter Woodward died April 14, 1942. Walter C. Woodward was the author of a pageant presented as part of the Indiana Centennial. An outline of the pageant is included in The Indiana Centennial, Indiana Historical Commission, 1919. The book remarks "The outstanding Centennial event in Wayne County was the Earlham-Quaker pageant, "In Quest of Freedom," which ranked as one of the distinctive pageants of the year. It was given during Commencement week under the auspices of the Senior Class of Earlham College, the entire college body participating. The pageant portrayed the Quaker emigration from the Carolinas to the free soil of the North and the settlement in the Whitewater Valley, together with the activities of Friends, emphasizing their educational interests centering in Earlham College. It presented a happy harmonization of the symbolic and the real, upon the motif of the quest of freedom, intellectual and spiritual as well as physical. This is suggested in the following lines from the Prologue, addressed to Freedom: We come today a little band of Friends - E'en loyal friends of Freedom, Justice, Peace, And if so friends of God. Midst clashing arms, Midst shaking thrones, our fathers learned what Thou Wouldst speak. Espoused they, thy sister Peace. Unmoved by war's alarums, true to Her They thought them true to Justice and to thee. Far be it that we vaunt their fame and ours. All eager in thy cause have even we Against thee often sinned. Full long has been The learning of the lesson deep that bond Removed from human flesh is token mere Of Freedom of the Soul. And that can ne'er Exist, where mind and heart are stultified. Bernice Woodward KingEzra and Amanda's daughter Bernice Woodward married William A. King about 1906 in Yamhill County, Oregon. They had two children: Edward H. King, born about 1910 and Sybil Lou King born about 1911. William A. King was a banker in Portland for many years. |
