Agnes Leona Hodge

Agnes Leona Hodge, second child of Jennie Edith Martin and Jacob Sylvester Hodge and the only daughter of the four children, was born 26 February 1872 in Martintown, Green County, WI. The village of Martintown -- still known simply as Martin in that era -- had been founded by her maternal grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader, and the land the Hodges lived on consisted of eighty acres given by Nathaniel and Hannah to their daughter Jennie as a dowry gift upon her marriage to Jacob. Agnes was only the third of the pioneer couple’s grandchildren, junior only to her brother Nathaniel M. Hodge and her first cousin John Martin Warner, and was the very first granddaughter. Given Hannah’s nature, Agnes must have been doted upon tremendously as an infant.

Circumstances in Agnes’s earliest years therefore had every appearance of being secure and meant to last, with her father working as the manager of the local general store in partnership with her uncle Horatio Woodman Martin. But in fact it wasn’t long before the family was uprooted. The Panic of 1873 and the failure of a plan to bring rail service to Martintown must have been a death blow to the general store. Agnes’s father and uncle dissolved the partnership, and the Hodges left Martintown behind for good in late 1873 or in 1874. They went to Delavan, Faribault County, MN, where Jacob and his parents and siblings had settled in the 1860s, during his adolescence.

The family spent several years in Delavan, during which time Agnes’s other two brothers, Adrian Hodge and Arthur Judson Hodge, were born. Sadly, Adrian passed away of scarlet fever in the spring of 1876 at less than three months of age.

Toward the end of the 1870s, Jennie Martin Hodge was institutionalized at Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Dane County, WI -- an insane asylum. She would go on to perish at the facility, apparently of suicide, in 1882, two days after Agnes had turned ten years old. During the period when her father was having to get by essentially as a single parent -- and also studying to become a doctor -- chances are good Agnes was cared for partly by either her grandparents Daniel Freeman Hodge and Eliza Jane Bugh in Delavan, or by her father’s sister Mary Jane and her husband Oscar Clark Hathaway in Beetown, Grant County, WI. The 1880 census shows her father and her youngest brother Arthur in the latter household; however, Agnes and her older brother Nathaniel are not to be found in any home in the 1880 census. Their whereabouts at that point remains a mystery, except that it is unlikely they were in Martintown with their maternal kin, because a surviving 1897 letter written by Nathaniel M. Hodge refers to having visited Martintown only once after the mid-1870s, and that one time must have been for Jennie’s funeral.

Later in 1882, after Jennie’s death, Jacob married second wife Josephine Florence Nye, a classmate of his from Hahnemann Medical School in Chicago. Once he had obtained his degree, the family moved to Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa, where Jacob became the junior partner in a medical practice with James L. Coffin, an elderly doctor on the verge of retirement. In 1887, a large number of Oskaloosa families decided to relocate en masse to Pasadena, Los Angeles County, CA. The Hodges joined in this migration, making the journey in June, 1887. Jacob reestablished his medical practice and became a prominent man of the community. Among other distinctions, he founded Pasadena’s first hospital.

Josephine Nye Hodge passed away in late 1892. By then, Agnes was approaching twenty-one years old. She was, as they say, highly marriageable. She was the only daughter of the town’s most prominent doctor. Pasadena, a place so primitive in 1887 that coyotes still ran through its streets, was rapidly becoming cosmopolitan due to the economic boost brought on by the burgeoning southern California oil industry. Even so, Agnes waited to marry, perhaps feeling that her father and brothers needed her. Only after her father’s 1897 wedding to his third wife, Cora Wilkins, widow of Charles Eldred, formerly of Detroit, MI, did Agnes allow herself the fulfillment of becoming a wife herself. When the wedding finally occurred 27 July 1898, it was regarded as a major social event in Pasadena, prominently covered by the local newspaper. Her groom was Henry Adams Wood, son of the late Colonel William Henry Wood and Corinne E. Howell. He was better known as Harry.

Agnes had picked a whopper of a husband in terms of social status. Harry had a remarkable pedigree. His father had devoted forty years to the U.S. Army and had enjoyed a career of great distinction, among other accomplishments serving as a major in the Battle of Antietam, and was on his mother’s side part of the Adams family of Braintree, MA and Quincy, MA -- the same clan that produced U.S. Presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. Harry had been raised as a “military brat,” born 16 October 1872 at Fort Griffin, Shackelford County, TX shortly after his father had become commanding officer of the Eleventh Infantry. After a sojourn in Lousiana in the mid-1870s, the family had gone on to Dakota Territory, the new headquarters of the 11th, where William H. Wood had finished his career as commanding officer of Fort Bennett. The family had spent the mid-1880s in Pass Christian, Harrison County, MS, where Col. Wood had died at the beginning of 1887. Southern Mississippi was an astonishingly inappropriate place for the survivors of a Yankee Civil War commander to linger. Consequently, Harry and his mother and his five sisters had ended up in Pasadena by the early 1890s.

Their arrival in Pasadena was no instance of chosing a destination by throwing a dart at a map and seeing where it landed. William H. Wood's little sister Amanda and brother-in-law Simeon Gannett Reed had chosen to retire there. Simeon was none other than the “river boat titan” of Portland, OR, a man who had amassed multiple millions of dollars in shipping and steel. (For more details, see his Wikipedia entry.) The Reed ranch in Pasadena was one of the largest and best-stocked such properties in all California. Just being related to Simeon and Amanda was reason for the William H. Wood family to be highly regarded in society. The Civil War fame was just icing on the cake in terms of reputation. To be actually living in the same town as Simeon and Amanda brought The Widow Mrs. Corinne E. Wood and her offspring enormous social advantage.

In late 1895, Simeon Reed died. He and Amanda were childless, so Amanda was the only heir of his estate. This in turn put Harry and his sisters in a remarkable position, as they made up made up half of the next-of-kin heirs of Amanda. During the period of Harry’s courtship of Agnes, he was employed as a chemist and would go on to work at a paying job for most of his life, but it is unquestionably accurate to say that when Agnes accepted his proposal, she was marrying into money. Their union raised the status of the entire Hodge clan to a new level.

About ten months after the wedding Agnes became a mother for the first and only time in her life. The baby was named Agnes Leona like her mother, the honorific name being used perhaps because it was clear the infant was not long for this world. Little Agnes passed away at the age of thirteen days. Her failure to thrive may have been an indication of some sort of lethal genetic trait. This would explain the pattern shown among the entire Wood/Howell clan. Agnes and Harry did not have further offspring. The only one of his sisters to have kids was Emma Brainard, who had two, but she died in 1906 when she was barely into her thirties. Another sister, Louise, had already died by then. The remaining sisters, Corinne, Stella, and Helen, never had children. It could be they knew pregnancies would be risky and/or would result in health-afflicted offspring. Harry’s two Brainard nephews were the only grandchildren Corinne Howell Wood would see grow up and carry on the family line.

Shortly after their baby’s death, Agnes and Harry settled in San Francisco, CA. The 1900 census shows them already ensconced on Franklin Street. They were residing in the city at the time of the earthquake of 1906, losing their dwelling and most of their personal possessions in the great fire. As her mother’s only daughter, Agnes had ended up with the lion’s share of Jennie’s mementoes, including her family Bible with its genealogical information, and these items were among the things that were burned.

The natural disaster was not the only upheaval they contended with in this first decade of their married lives. Harry’s wealthy aunt perished in 1904. Among her last actions was to follow through on one of her late husband’s wishes, which was to arrange for the founding of an institution of higher learning. About two-thirds of her estate was directed not to Harry, his four surviving sisters, and six cousins, but was funnelled by trustees into the endowment that would, by the end of the decade, lead to the creation of Reed College in Portland. (Reed College unsurprisingly was named for Simeon.) The family heirs were aghast to see so much of “their” money -- an amount that in today’s figures would come to over fifty million dollars -- given to strangers. The family found a way to sue to get some of the hoard back. A provision in California law limited endowments to charity to no more than a third of an estate. Unfortunately for them, the main real estate holdings were in Oregon and the company stock was likewise controlled by Oregon law, which did not observe the one-third limit, but they were able to go for a better share of the worth of the Pasadena land and, given that Amanda had died in California (as had Simeon), a bigger portion of the cash left at the time of her death. A larger share of even this fraction of the estate probably struck them all as worth fighting for considering what a ridiculously huge amount of wealth was involved. The case wound its way through the appeal process for quite some time.

After the earthquake, Agnes and Harry established themselves in new quarters at 1940A Hyde Street. They remained at that address for two decades, then moved next door into a unit in a large apartment house at 1930 Hyde Street (either that, or the city changed the address number) and lived there into the early 1940s. Harry worked for a power company as an electrical engineer and later as a consulting engineer, retiring no later than 1940.

Some time in the Forties, probably early in the war years, the couple moved back to southern California. The lure in terms of family presence was obvious. All of Agnes’s surviving close relatives were still based in the southern part of the state, and the same was true in Harry’s case with the exception of his two nephews. His spinster sisters Stella and Corinne shared a house in San Marino (next to Pasadena). His sister Helen was married to prominent portrait artist John Hubbard Rich, and their home/art studio was in the Hollywood Hills. The timing of the move may have been influenced by Harry’s deteriorating health. He would ultimately be admitted to a Pasadena sanitarium, where he died 13 May 1947. Agnes took refuge with her sister-in-law Corinne A. Wood in San Marino for a few years in the late 1940s, in a sense replacing Stella Howell Wood, who died in the summer of 1948. In the early 1950s Agnes probably entered a convalescent care situation. This was in San Diego County -- the locale hinting that arrangements may have been made by her niece Sarah Jeanette Hodge.

Agnes survived her husband by almost six years, finally expiring 20 January 1953 in Chula Vista, San Diego County, CA. The remains of husband and wife share the same grave in the Hodge family plot at Mountain View Cemetery, Altadena, Los Angeles County, CA.

The Hodge and Atwood clan taking a cruise together in approximately 1912. Fortunately, they did not choose to travel on the Titanic. The party consisted of Agnes and Harry, Agnes’s brother Arthur Judson Hodge and his wife Jennie Esther Atwood with their two children, Jennie’s mother, Jennie’s siblings William Atwood and Mary Nellie Atwood Smith and their spouses, along with Mary Nellie’s daughter and her mother-in-law. Aside from the Hodges and Mary Ann Hall Atwood, these individuals were all residents of San Francisco. This photo was undoubtedly taken by Arthur Judson Hodge, who does not appear in it. Feel free to compare this image with the one featured on Arthur Judson Hodge’s biography page, taken during the same voyage of the same group, but which shows Arthur and omits Harry, who was no doubt standing in as cameraman. Back row, left to right: Agnes Leona Hodge, Mary Nellie Atwood Smith, Jennie Esther Atwood Hodge, Ellsworth Clinton Smith at the very back, William Amos Atwood, and Henry Adams Wood. Front row, left to right: Esther Louise Hodge, Mary Ann Hall Atwood, Eleanor E. Smith Griswold, Elizabeth N. Warner Atwood, and Arthur Oscar Atwood Hodge (the little boy).

Child of Agnes Leona Hodge with Henry Adams Wood

Agnes Leona Wood

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