Cora Avis Jones Woods
Born: December 10, 1866, in Jackson County,Alabama,
Died: August 12, 1959 in Roger Mills County, Oklahoma
Cora went with her family to Texas in 1869, leaving Alabama after
the Civil War.
She had a very alert mind, and often recalled many things that
happened to her in Alabama and on the trip to Texas. She was a
fun-loving girl who liked to go to parties and dances, especially
when her Caperton cousins came from Alabama to visit.
Her future husband, Arthur Woods, upbraided her in his letters about
her fun-loving
ways, and urged her to join the Epworth League for Bible
study. When Cora was eighteen, her parents sent her to a finishing
school for young ladies in Galveston, Texas.
In 1876 she married Arthur Woods from a socially prominent family of
Dallas. Cora’s married life was somewhat turbulent.
She wanted to own land and to farm. Arthur wanted to work on the
railroads.
Cora always worked to tide them over when he would be laid off from
the railroad job. She was a talented hat maker, a corset maker, and
in later years, she ran a boarding house.
When Arthur retired in 1927, they came to Oklahoma
and started farming again. He died about a year later. Cora
finished the farming year, then stayed with her brother, R.
Bruce Jone's family for a period of time.
When her sister, Addie Jones Guthrie, could no longer stay alone,
Cora moved in with her and stayed until she died.
Addie’s granddaughter, Helen Harris Scheberle, and her
baby daughter, Patricia, were living there too. Cora helped
raise the baby while Helen's husband, Martin, was in the war and
Helen was working.
Cora and Arthur had no children, but she had a strong influence on
all her nieces and nephews. She spent her last years in the rest
home in Cheyenne, Oklahoma.
Cora was a science-fiction buff, and was very interested in the
space program that was developing in the 1960's.
