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Title
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Woods, Mehitable E. (1813-1891)
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birthday
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1813-09-28
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Birthplace
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Georgia, VT
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Death Date
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1891-09
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Occupation
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War worker
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Biographical Text
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Mehitable E. Woods was an American Civil War worker and hero. Woods was born the youngest of seven children in Georgia, VT. Her mother passed when she was young, and her father remarried. Because of this, she received a limited education, and moved in with a Deacon of the Congregational church, Mr. Mears, at the age of twelve. There she would learn how to make her own living. At the start of the Civil War, Woods joined the Ladies' Aid Society of Fairfield. Through this, she worked to deliver and administer aid to wounded and sick Iowa soldiers. On multiple occasions she would travel with large, heavy quantities of supplies, stopping at nothing to ensure their delivery to the front lines. Though she had no children, many soldiers viewed her as a mother figure for her incomparable care. Woods led a relatively quiet life following the end of the war. She became a State delegate to the National Encampment at San Francisco in 1886.
Woods had four marriages during her life. She married her first husband, Howard Cooper, in the early 1830s. The two divorced, and in 1835 Woods met and married her second husband, Gilbert M. Fox. Fox died in 1844, and three years later she married Parish Ellis. Ellis passed in 1851. Six years later, in 1857, she married her final husband, Joel Woods. In 1891, Woods passed in Fairfield, IA. She is buried in the Old Fairfield City Cemetery, alongside two of her husbands.
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Contributor
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O'Neill, Iris
Mehitable Woods, Grave