John Claude Woodward

J. C. Woodward had a long career as a newspaperman before he was elected Justice of the Peace in Denison. The oldest clipping, from 1888, tells us that he began working that year for a The Farmers' Review, Bonham newspaper, with the retirement of Frank Brazzelton.  Bonham may have been where he first alit in Texas after leaving Illinois. His older brother also lived in Bonham. Perhaps they came to Texas together. J. C. married Carrie Blair in Bonham in 1884 when he was about 21 and she was 16. He was working for the Farmers' Review in Bonham less than five years later, which indicates he was in the news business by the time he was 26.

A 1902 The Guthrie Daily Leader new clipping tells us he started a newspaper in Bennington, Oklahoma, which is between Durant and Hugo. A  spring 1906 clipping of The Democrat puts him at another newspaper in McKinney. He actually started working there near the end of 1905. Another clipping, places him at a 1905 Christmas dinner hosted by the McKinney mayor. Woodward was a recent arrival in town by the fact that he did not move his family to McKinney from Paris until the following spring. He must have moved to Paris after he left Bennington.

He stayed in McKinney for no more than a couple of years.  A fall 1907 clipping from The Daily Ardmoreite places him in Ardmore. A summer 1909  notice in The Daily Ardmoreite announces that the Woodwards were being visited by their son, Horace, from Bonham. The next day a correction in the paper stating that the gentleman from Bonham was actually J. C.'s older brother, instead of his son. J. C. Woodward was editor of the Morning Democrat in Ardmore at that time. He remained with that paper for six more months, until it folded around the beginning of 1910.

An August 1911 clipping reports that the Woodwards moved back to Paris after leaving Ardmore. They first turn up in Denison in the 1917 City Directory, in which J. C. is listed as a reporter for the Herald. They lived at 700 W. Owings. I don't find him and Carrie in any of the Paris city directories between 1911 and 1917, although their son Claude Sylvester Woodward did live there during those years. Claude, by the way, followed his parents to Denison and was working as a clerk at Waples-Platter in 1921. He and his wife lived at 1311 W. Woodard.

By 1920 J. C. had become Justice of the Peace at age 52. That's where he enters the picture, so to speak, in the photograph of the Western Union office. The period with the Herald just prior to that was his last newspaper job.

Western Union Telegraph and Cable
July 31, 1920
L - R:  L. J. Manning, operator
Pauline Shields, bookkeper
J. D. Henry, operator
Claude Moore, msgr #1
Edward Hanke, msgr #3
Everett Widders, msgr #4
Wilburn Hale, msgr #2  
Paul Krattiger and Morris Schwartz, managers
 

The sign at the upper right says "J. C. Woodward, Notary Public, and Justice of the Peace." His office was up the stairs and to the right at 214 W. Main. There were also two deputy sheriffs and a constable up there.

Born in Illinois, John Claude Woodward (1862-1947) married Martha Caroline "Carrie" Blair (1868-1942) from Fannin County. One of their five children, a daughter born in 1895, died at age 23 in October 1918. The date suggests she may have been a victim of the Spanish influenza pandemic. She left a two-year old daughter, Elizabeth "Libby" Burchard, whom J. C. and Carrie raised. They, or she, later changed Libby's last name back to her mother's maiden name of Woodward. The Woodwards left Denison for Kerrville before 1930. He took a job there as an inspector for the "Sanitary Department." When Libby died in 1936 at age 20, they transported her back to Denison to be buried beside her mother in Fairview Cemetery. After Carrie died in Kerrville six years later, her body was also returned to Fairview. Five years later J. C. died in Corpus Christi. He, too, is buried in Fairview next to his wife, daughter, and granddaughter.

Source: The Daily Ardmoreite

Biography Index
Susan Hawkins
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