Mrs. Jane Kirkwood 1821-1921

KIRKWOOD, STONE, WRIGHT, GRIMES, HARLAN

Posted By: cheryl Locher moonen (email)
Date: 9/18/2019 at 07:32:34

Ottumwa Semi-Weekly Courier, Thursday, Sep 03, 1914, Ottumwa, IA, and Page: 3

MRS. KIRKWOOD IS 93 YEARS OLD

Iowa City, Sept. 1 – Mrs. Jane Kirkwood, widow of Iowa’s famous war governor, is spending the evening if her days at the old homestead in Iowa City, and it is a serene and tranquil twilight.

Today is Mrs. Kirkwood’s ninety-third birthday. She is still active in body and mind; with eyesight as good as it was in her youth and a retentive memory that would be remarkable for a woman of 75.

Mrs. Kirkwood is little known to the mass of people of Iowa, or even of her own city, for she courts no publicity, and prefers to live quietly at home, spending the days in doing fancy work, at which she is adept, and in reading. She is a tireless reader, and eagerly keeps abreast of the day on all matters of public note. She also enjoys work in the garden or poultry yard, and gives her home duties as a reason for less active participation in matters outside of her household.

Few Iowans know of the close relationship that existed between Governor Kirkwood and his wife. They were inseparable. Governor Kirkwood went nowhere without her. She was his companion in speaking throughout the state, in various campaigns in which he took part. As a consequence, she has an acquaintance with the public men of Iowa perhaps unequalled by any other woman in the state in the days of Grimes, Harlan, Wright, Stone and other Republican leaders of the days following the Civil War.

Governor and Mrs. Kirkwood had no children, yet their home in Iowa City was never empty of the voices of young people. Few could tell, perhaps not Mrs. Kirkwood herself, how many she and her husband helped with an education. She was a woman, it has been said, who never had any money or jewelry, but much for those who needed it.