Jack Woodcox life story
By Carol Minson
Carl Sandburg described my grandfather:
"Who was that early sodbuster in Nebraksa? He leaned at the gatepost and
studied the horizon and figured what corn might do next year and tried to
calculate why God ever made the grasshopper and why two days of hot winds
smother the life out of a stand of wheat and why there was such a spread between
what he got for grain and the price quoted in Chicago and New York."
Elgin L. “Jack” Woodcox was born August 20, 1887 at St. Joe, Indiana. His parents were Martha Ann Callender and Geroge Washington Woodcox. He lived six blocks from school and walked to and from school two times a day, a total distance of two miles.
When he was ten years old, he made a contract with his father. It is written on a piece of paper thus: “Papa said that he would git me a watch when I was fifteen if I would keep from using tobacco in any way.” “Witness, M. Woodcox and G.W. Woodcox.” Signed by Elgin Woodcox.
He “worked for an Irishman” where he learned to be a mason bricklayer, lathe and plasterer. He did this from the time he was thirteen and form then on bought all his own clothes. When he graduated from high school in 1906, he gave the valedictorian talk for the seven graduating seniors of St. Joe High School.
When eighteen years of age, he went to Peru, Indiana and
worked. Then he said he “bummed” his way with a friend to LaMar, Colorado and
worked on a ranch for the summer raising stock. From there he
gradually worked down to Willow Island, Nebraska with the stock man. There he
met Macie Belle Hays at a roller rink. She was twenty years old and “old enough
to know how to skate!”
Jack and Macie were married June 1, 1910 at Cozad, Nebraska
Their first home was at Willow Island were Jack worked at the grain elevator as a partner to Martin F. Lyons. Jack and Macie’s first child Helen Mary Woodcox was born at Willow Island August 4, 1911.
See Helen's life story click here
In 1915, they moved to Lewellen, Nebraska. They lived one mile west of town just south of Highway 26. When Helen was old enough to go to school, she walked that one mile with the Podkonyak kids and the Marshalls and the Rohlfing kids and sometime the Brown kids. Her first grade teacher was Mrs. Gainsforth whose husband was a dentist in Lewellen.
In January, 1917, Jack wrote a letter to his parents which describes his family, life and farm.