A Grandmother I Never Met

Previously published on the Woodiel Family Group page of Facebook, February 21, 2014

After examining closely these images, I'm astonished by my youthful grandfather's awesome gaze and my grandmother's apparently innocent youthfulness. After applying our cousin Alice (Woodiel) Craft's records to their histories, I will never again neglect to remember and honor my grandmother on Mother's Day or any other day when I'm reminded of just how harsh life can be and how it must surely have been to Alice and Fate in those hills around Lonoke County AR during those first decades or so of the twentieth century.

Alice Catherine Almond Woodiel

My grandparents: Alice (1876-1926) and Lafayette (1871-1956) Woodiel.  She (Alice Catherine Almond) and he (William Lafayette) were married 9 July 1891 at Lonoke AR. At the time, if the records are accurate and my math correct, he was about 20 and she about 15. Their first child, born in 1892 was an unnamed son that died apparently shortly after his birth. Their second child, Viola (perhaps the child pictured with her father) was born the following year, 6 July 1893.

In her 35 years of marriage Alice would give birth to 13 children. The first, a son born in 1892 would die during his first year and would be unnamed. A daughter Elizabeth, born in 1900, would die before her second year. Another son (1910) and a daughter (1911) would be unnamed as well as her last (1914) listed as "Child" Woodiel.

Grazing over the length of their life spans I can't avoid contemplating our present fuss and preoccupation with health care and longevity. Of Alice and Lafayette's eight children that survived to adulthood, Viola would die at 17 and Fred at 25. Winnie would be killed in a

William Lafayette Woodiel

storm at 31. Mertie at 43 from cancer. Paul would die primarily from alcoholism at 58. Only three would survive to what today we call retirement age, Victor only barely at 67. My uncle John would live to be 74 and only my father Allie would live into his 80s, dying at Crockett's Bluff AR at the age of 87.

I'm compelled to wonder just how different the families of those of their direct line might be today had there been even a make-shift system of preventive health care available to poor folks during those year.