Jennie Wood

Jennie was born May 9, 1895 in Grafton although the death certificate says May 30, 1896. She was the youngest daughter of John and Emily Wood and must have had health problems most of her life.

Bertha talks about Jennie in her life story. " My little sister, Jennie, was a cute little girl. Everybody loved that little girl. Even when she got big, she never had an enemy in the world. You never saw such a wonderful disposition as she had. And she’d try to help everybody. But she was sick, awfully sick when she was a little girl. Once my Dad was down to St George. Uncle George Gibson had his leg broken and one of the family would go down to stay with him for a week, and then come back and another would go down to stay with him. Well, my Dad was down there staying and Jennie got sick, just terribly sick. So they got word to him that she was real sick, and he got on his horse and rode up over the Hurricane Valley --- wasn’t anyone that lived here at that time, that was before the canal was ever thought of --- and he got to Grafton way late in the night. We were afraid that she was going to die. Dad went up and touched her and she looked up and said, “Papa.” That was about all she said and then went right off again to sleep. He tended her the rest of the night and the next morning she seemed better. She got over that spell, but she kept having spells, and I guess it was because she had heart trouble.

We used to have a cat that Jennie just loved. She loved animals and to be around them. After she was sick, and got a little better, Orrin went and got that cat for her. When it died we had a funeral for it. Edgar, Ether, Ivy, and me and the rest of our group took it up to Maygog to bury it. Maygog was where we used to play all the time. It’s just kind of a big pinnacle standing up there on the side of the hill with a hard-pan on top that the dirt had been worn away from. We used to go up there with our sleds and slide down there in the snow. So we took that cat up there to bury it. We had a funeral. Then they put the cat in its casket, a box, where they were going to bury it. Then Edgar said, “Now all of you cry right hard.” And we all started to cry. We used to do the darndest things you’ve ever heard of."

George said in his story: Jenny was always a likeable girl -- everybody really loved her, and she wasn't very old when her health began to fail and we didn't realize what was going on until she went to St. George to high school and then we found out that she had a bad heart condition. I really believe that she must have had rheumatic fever and we didn't realize it, and I think it was the cause of her heart condition. She was grown at the time of her death, but never married. She was the first corpse taken to the Hurricane Cemetery in a motor vehicle."

She died Jan 22, 1918 at the age of 23.

Jennie Wood

Jennie, Nennial, Elmer Wood

Jennie and Bertha Wood

Jennie Wood

Jennie's Death Certificate