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Josephine (Aunt Jody) Catherine Chatterley Wood
Samuel Wood
Josephine Catherine Chatterley
Born: 10 September 1853 at Cedar City, Iron, Utah, USASamuel Wood
Born: 1 January 1843 at West Bromwich, Staffordshire, EnglandLIFE SKETCH JOSEPHINE CATHERINE CHATTERLEY WOOD
Josephine Catherine (Jody) Chatterley Wood:
Midwife of San Juan
By Frances H. Hoopes
On September 10, 1853, a clear crisp autumn day, Josephine Catherine was born in Cedar City, Utah, to Joseph and Catherine Chatterley. Joseph had actually died three days before, from a gunshot wound received while unloading his wagon. He was only forty-six years while Catherine was not quite forty-one, having been married just eighteen months. Catherine’s children were young that year of 1853—Mary Ann, fifteen years; Thomas, not quite fourteen; James, Just turning twelve; and Margaret (Maggie) Alice, eight years old—and now a new baby to raise. Twice widowed, Catherine lived in a rough, struggling new community far away for the LDS Church headquarters. Life, under these difficult circumstances, seemed to be poised on the edge of disaster.
It is not known exactly how Catherine managed her life after that fatal day when Joseph died. She had brought fine furniture, lovely personal belongings, money, a fine buggy, servants, and a gardener, and because of a desperate shortage of thread, she even unraveled her fine linens for mending and darning.
Catherine had been generous with her money and material possessions, giving to the needy and to the church. She and Joseph bought stock in the ill-fated iron mines, and also the sheep association, which paid rather handsome dividends. Nevertheless, the economics of surviving and raising a family of five children was a daily struggle. Chatterley family descendents report that Joseph had bought a two-story, two-room house in Cedar City, and had removed the partition so as to make a school and assembly room below, and a social room above. It is not known whether he lived in this building at all either with his first wife, Nancy, or with Catherine.
Crickets destroy crops
During the summer of 1855, crickets devastated the nearby fields. Bread became scarce, and no family had enough to eat. Catherine lived just one year longer. She died on November 21, 1856, leaving Jody an orphan at age three, as well as her four older children.
Her oldest half-sister, Mary Ann Corlett Stewart, raised Jody and in time she grew to think of her as a mother. Mary married William Cameron Stewart when she was seventeen years old. She took on the responsibility of Jody, as well as her three younger brothers and sisters at the age of eighteen. Jody’s brother-in-law, William Stewart (whom Jody called step-father), was a strict man. He helped raise Jody with a firm hand. School was not compulsory in those early days, but Mary Ann was one of the first school teachers in Cedar City, and was anxious that her brothers and sisters attend school.
Jody had a talent for drawing and sketching, but that was not allowed in school. The 3-R’s were necessary, but not much else. She often broke the rules, and sketched figures and scenes on slate and paper. As a punishment, she received many slaps with a sharp ruler on her outstretched hand. Sometimes, she had to stand in a corner for hours.
Times were hard and Jody wanted to help support herself, so she worked for other people. She was paid with vegetables, fruit, sugar, cloth, and occasionally a bit of money. All the produce and material items were taken home to share with the family. Jody was allowed to keep the money, the first she earned going towards the purchase of a pair of “store” shoes. She, like other young people, wore rough-looking, homemade shoes, so Jody shopped for her first pair of pretty store shoes. The only pair she could buy was a size 6, and she wore size 3 at the time. They were much too large, but Jody could not wait. The 24th of July parade was coming, and Jody wanted pretty shoes on her feet. She later related that no other shoes ever gave her joy and happiness, as did the oversized pair she bought with her first savings at the exorbitant price of $1.98.
Jody worked in St. George for a while, and stayed with a distant relative, who made her feel that she was disgraced if she showed her ankle or any part of her arm above the wrist. And if she kissed a boy goodnight, that was really disgraceful. Jody said it was nice to be “disgraced” once in a while, showing part of her infectious sense of humor.
Courting Years
Some time in her teens, Jody found work in Salt Lake City. She was courted by a young man, but told him that she had been “keeping company” with Samuel Wood, but that if Sam didn’t come within the week to “claim” her, she would marry him. Serious? Perhaps—perhaps not—but in any event, Sam did visit Jody and asked her to marry him. On Christmas day, 1871, Josephine Catherine Chatterley and Samuel Wood were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. Daniel Hanmer Wells, second counselor to Brigham Young, performed the ceremony. She was eighteen years old, and Sam was twenty-eight.
Sam built a two-story house in Cedar City, across the street form the home of Jens Nielson, a Danish convert who would later, play an important role in Jody’s life. Sam was a freighter, a carpenter, and a farmer, and was making a good living. The future looked rosy. Bur rumors of resettlement were rampant in the fall of 1878. Jody and Sam had been married nearly seven years and now had three little boys. Sam apparently received his mission call to San Juan at the March, 1979 Stake Conference. As the church bells rang out that day, Jody could not bear to go to church. She waited home while people crowded into the meetinghouse to “hear the word.” Soon, her half-sister, Margaret (Maggie) Corlett Parry came running out. When she reached Jody, she cried, “O, Josephine, you are called, but surely you won’t go.” They wept together. Sam joined them and said, ”We are among those called and we will go.”
Mission Call to San Juan
And “go” they did. They began to convert their home and belongings into teams, wagons, and equipment that would get them through a long, hard trip. This took time, and as they proceeded with their preparations, another child was born: John Morton on June 3, 1879. A little over nine months later, a fifth child—and first daughter—was born on March 11, 1880. She lived but a brief sixteen months and was buried alongside her brother, Samuel Franklin. The Woods suffered through the loss of their firstborn son and firstborn daughter. One child died of whooping cough, the other of scarlet fever. On July 3, 1882, their sixth child was born, Sara Hane (Jennie)—a delicate child.
Jody and Sam were unable to go with the first group that left for the San Juan Mission, but by the fall of 1882, they had sold their home, land, and many of their belongings. They realized little for their property, but that was not the most painful part of their leave-taking The hardest part was saying good-bye to the two little graves, to their relatives, and friends, and to a happy, successful, reasonably secure way of life. Jody was twenty-nine years old; Sam was thirty-nine.
The Woods traveled with a very small company—Frederick I Jones, his wife Manie and two little boys from Enoch; Charles Wilden, his wife Emma and two children; David Adams family; and Alvin Smith family. These five families—out of twenty-one called to round out this second group—were the only ones to leave for Bluff on this second trip.
A short distance outside of Cedar City, the little company met Patriarch Henry Lunt, who gave Samuel and Josephine patriarchal blessings. In hers Jody was promised that “Inasmuch as thou art about to start on a mission in connection with thy husband and thy children for the purpose of building up the waste places of Zion and do it cheerfully no feeling to murmur in thy heart at parting with thy relatives and friends for a little season, God shall greatly multiply blessings upon thee of both a spiritual and temporal nature, and thou shall hereafter acknowledge the great wisdom of the Lord.” This proved to be both a blessing and a guide for Jody’s future life.
The trip was long and tiring, taking much of October and November to complete it. The route followed the first part of the original Hole-in-the-Rock trail but after Escalante it branched further north to Hall’s Crossing and then to Bluff. [Their guide was Hyrum Perkins.]
Arrival at Bluff
Upon arriving at their destination Jody wrote, “We are happy to get to Bluff. Our horses are tired out, so are we, but we got her alive; the Lord was surely with us.”
In 1882, when the Wood family arrived, and later in 1883, the settlers were primarily housed in the Old Fort. It must have seemed rather spacious and safe after the tight intimacy of a wagon box, which had been their home for over six weeks. The cramped space had been shared with all the family—what little space there was—aside form their food supply, personal belongings, and other necessities. Sam soon built a rough log room on a little hill a block west of the fort, and soon he added another room about twelve feet long, and later, another one with board walls and floor. This was their home until they moved to Monticello in 1906-07.
Men, women, and children worked together to proved the necessities of life. There was wood to gather, water to haul, and a garden to plant and later harvest. There were cattle and horses to care for, cows to milk, butter to church, clothes to wash, a house and furniture to build and care for, and a living to earn. The pioneer lifestyle left little time to rest. Every season brought its own special workload, but there was sociability along with the work—square dances, corn huskings, and Sunday meetings. There was not a home where more parties, candy pulls, quiltings, and children’s gatherings were held than at Jody’s and Sam’s. She often told her children: “I would be ashamed of a son or daughter who would turn anyone away who was hungry.” She also said: “A crust of bread and a welcome is more appreciated than a banquet given grudgingly.” People loved to visit the Woods and share their warmth and hospitality.
After some time, the log home was quite livable. The walls were whitened with lime and the wooden floors scrubbed with homemade soap. If a rug or carpet covered some of the floor, it was a homemade one made of worn out clothing. Beds were constructed of slats and great ticks filled with clean straw each fall. The good warm quilts were thick and homemade, and each bed had two or three. The pillows were stuffed with straw also.
In the late fall of 1884, the Wood family set out for Cedar, crowded again into a covered wagon with their four children. Winter was upon them, and Jody was at least five or six months pregnant—depending on the exact date of their leave-taking. The reason for the trip was two fold: Jody wished to have her baby with relatives present and Sam desired to take a second wife. Again, they traveled with a small group—four other families: Frederick I. Jones, Nephi Bailey, Hanson Bayles, and Tom Rowley. They did not go by way of Hall’s Crossing, because the ferry crossing had been closed. They traveled north to Moab, where it took three days to cross the Colorado. The wagons had to be unloaded and taken apart and rowed over the wide river in a little skiff. The horses had to swim. Later, the group crossed the Green River, traveled west, and then down into Cedar City. If Jody kept a journal of this trip back to Cedar, no remnants have ever been found.
The seventh child of Sam and Jody was born on February 23, 1885, under the care of Jody’s half-sister, Mary Ann Corlett Stewart. The family stayed in Cedar City until after the marriage of Emma Louise Elliker and Samuel Wood on November 5, 1885, and then it was full speed ahead to prepare for their return trip to Bluff again, in the heart of the cold, winter months. They arrived at their destination in late December or early January 1886.
Sam Marries Second Wife
Emma was nine years younger than Jody—only twenty-three at the time of her marriage to Sam—and was nineteen years younger than Sam. Jody and Emma made it their business to love each other. They were like devoted sisters and companions, sharing each other’s joys and sorrows.
The family settled into the community life of Bluff again, well aware that just a year and a half ago in 1884, the San Juan River flooded, nearly ending the missionary effort in Bluff. Disaster came unexpectedly and swiftly in such a primitive area. But, in spite of all the burdens of the past, the Woods settled in and looked to the future. Jody was now thirty-three years old, with five living children, a “sister-wife” in Emma, a remarkable husband, and plenty of hard work ahead.
Jody had a special way with the sick, the hurt, or the ailing, but now this “gift” was put to the test. Jens Nielson, their old neighbor from Cedar City, who had come to Bluff with the first group, was now bishop of the LDS Ward. He was a wise and gentle man. Margaret Haskell, the nurse/midwife, had left Bluff, and someone was needed to take her place. Bluff was miles away from any other community and from what was generally considered essential to comfort and life. It was a little world of its own—a place of birth and life, of sickness and death, and in between, there was croup, cuts, burns, pneumonia, broken bones, and all kinds of injuries. None of the settlers had any training in nursing or any knowledge of medicine or surgery.
Bishop Nielson called Jody to be the doctor. As the mother of five children, including a new baby, and with numerous problems of her own, she shuddered at the thought, contemplating her lack of experience, her young family, husband, Emma, and how hard she had to work to keep body and soul together. M She said, “I am as green as a cucumber, and I don’t even know how babies are born!” but, with the encouragement of her husband, and with the knowledge that Emma would be near to help with her understanding and cooperation, and with the children’s willingness to “pitch in,” Jody accepted this call with a firm belief that she must do whatever was required of her. Without the cooperation and understanding of Sam and Emma, Jody’s good works would not have been possible.
Bishop Nielson sets apart Jody
Bishop Nielson placed his hands on Jody’s head and gave her a special blessing. In his prayer, he said that Jody would be guided by the Lord, and that great wisdom would be hers. She was “set apart and sustained” as with any other calling in the church. Knowing, however, that “faith without works is dead,” Jody bought books on the subject of medicine. She prayed and studied about obstetrics, first aid, nursing, internal discomforts, and injuries. She relied on the Lord at every turn. Her grasp of the fundamentals of “doctoring” was excellent, as was her increased power through prayer. Over the years, she gave a long and rich life of service to her fellow beings. As she worked hard at her nursing duties, Jody began to make her dresses with a sleeve just above the elbow to maker her arms a bit more comfortable. One day, President Platte Lyman said to her, “Jody, I thought that I would never live to see the day when I would see your elbow.” From then on, Jody performed her various tasks with sleeves that were longer!
Even though at first Jody was afraid of the Indians, she learned to love them as she tended to their needs. In return, she learned which herbs, roots, and leaves had medicinal properties. Herbs were gathered, dried, and steeped for everybody from grandpa down to the baby. Hops, catnip, pennyroyal, lobelia flower, and cactus poultices were made. Brigham Tea was a daily drink in the spring. It was believed that it would purify the blood and provide curative powers. Smelly old “assifidity” (asafetida) bags were used in the winter to ward off diseases, milkweed was used for dropsy, and peppermint and sage steeped into tea were used for particular ailments. Molasses and sulphur was a spring tonic; white mustard plasters and hot footbaths were common remedies. White clean cloths were used for bandages—there was no sterile gauze, no pain pills, no anesthetic, and no antibiotics..
Sources:Right-click [Mac Control-click] to open full-size image:
Josephine (Aunt Jody) Catherine Chatterley Wood
Samuel Wood