WOODARD, Ellen Sawyer 1843-1915

WOODARD, SAWYER

Posted By: Volunteer
Date: 9/30/2009 at 22:00:55

Ellen Sawyer was born at Vernon Center, Oneida Co., New York, August 20, 1843, and died at Monroe, Iowa, Dec. 29, 1915. When six years of age she came by way of the great lakes to Milwaukee, Wis., and thence by team to a farm near Columbus Wis. Here she lived about ten years. Then she moved to Columbus and attended school there. January 31, 1867, she took in marriage, Otis P. Woodard, and they began life together in the city of Milwaukee. Afterwards they were located on a farm near Manchester, Iowa, and came to Osage, Iowa, about thirty-six years ago.

Four children were born to bless their home, all of whom are living: Mrs. F. May Tuttle, of Osage; Harriett V. and Mrs. Olive Ogg, of Monroe, Iowa; and Mrs. Alice Jenkins, of Swaledale, Iowa. Nine grandchildren and one great grandchild, also will rise up to call her memory blessed.

When she was about sixteen year of age, she was baptized into membership with the Baptist church of Columbus, Wis. After coming to Osage, she, with her husband, united with the Baptist church here, being received on the 29th day of June, 1878.

On this last day of the year, as we gather in her memory, it will occur to many, members of this church that two great women have gone from us to glory land during the year 1915--Mother Kingsbury and Mother Woodard.

There was one verse of the scriptures which had come home to Mother Woodard with special preciousness and which she had expressed her wish should be used on this occasion. It may be that some great deliverance also in Mother Woodard's experience had made this verse to have profound meaning.

To her was granted at time great exultation of spirit; indeed, she may have had visions of things eternal, quite as truly as did the prophets of old. She was a great believer in prayer and the sweetness of her trust and the gratitude of her soul for God's answers to her seem to have turned to rapture and ecstacy.

Though she had reached her 72nd birthday, which her family celebrated last August, yet her passing from us makes us realize more the shortness and the incompleteness of our stay on earth. For we fell that Mother Woodard must live on and that she is living now even more than ever.

"How a rare a thing it is to find a soul still enough to hear God speak" Mother Woodard had learned that art. And she, like the Scotch lad who had returned from the trenches of the awful conflict in Europe, saying, "Nothing matters but God:, felt that the incomparably important thing in human life is the attitude of soul voicing in the text, "Be still and know that I am God."

[Source: Mitchell County Press-News or Mason City Globe Gazette]
Submitted by Marilyn O'Connor 2002