R551
Husband: Millard Kenny (Mill) Wood
Father: Lewis Edward Wood [R005]
Mother: Emma (Burger) Wood [R005]
Born: 7/20/1880, at “old home, Stewart Creek” (i.e., his mother’s
home) [S003]
Died: 2/8/1957 in St. Petersburg Fla., buried in Belpre Ohio [S003]
First wife: Bettie G. (?) (Van Lear) Wood [S003]
Married: 12/1902 [S003] (Fig. R551a)
Children (Fig. R551b):
Gertrude Wood
Emma Wood
Second wife: Bess Crozen (Fig. R551c)
Died: 7/20/1955, buried in Belpre Ohio
Married: 3/9/1909 [S003]
Children:
Lewis K. Wood, 1910-1913
Joe D. Wood, 1912-1934, died of tuberculosis
Ruth M. Wood, 1912-1918. All buried at Belpre Ohio
(1996) Mill went to work for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1896, and by age 25 was a locomotive engineer. His first wife, Bettie Van Lear, died young. Mill’s second wife, Bess, was the sister of Grace Crozen, the first wife of his brother Cecil [R557]. Mill worked in Parkersburg W.Va., and he and Bess lived across the Ohio Rivier in Belpre Ohio. He was a member of the First Baptist Church, Masonic Lodge 609, OES 541 [?], and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen. Parkersburg was something of an outpost for Nimrod sons; at one time four of them (Manning [R553], Russell [R556], Mill, and Cecil [R557]) lived there.
Mill was injured in a train wreck, 12/1917: “I had a letter from Bessie, she said that Millard had his foot right badly hurt, but Dr didnt think there was any bones broken he was in the hospital in Huntington then out would come home by the first of this week he could not sit up on the account of his foot bleading two of the firemen were killed & two so badly burned they did not think they would live, & they were all on Millard train. They were stopped in a hard snow storm, & the other train ran in to them” (letter from Emma Katherine Wood to Kemp Wood, [S089]).
Besse’s three children died young. This may have made it hard for her to accept the girls from Mill’s first marriage, who survived. The girls accused her of abusive treatment, and in the summer of 1922 they ran away from home and got married, Gertrude to Horace Dugan (8/7/1922) and Emma to Ivan Queen (8/3/1922). Emma and Ivan soon (before 1926) moved to St. Petersburg Fla., where she became a buyer for a department store. There she was married a second time, to Leslie Allan Davis (Fig. R551d).
In 1942 Mill and Bess began spending winter vacations in St. Petersburg, presumably in part to visit Emma. In 1946, at age 65, Mill retired. Bess died in 1955. Mill died two years later, while wintering in St. Petersburg.
Horace and Gertrude Dugan had one daughter, Emma Louise, who married William Coiner from Waynesboro Va. When Horace retired, he and Gertrude also moved to Waynesboro. After Horace died there, Gertrude married a Mr. Keller. About 1963 Gertrude, Mr. Keller, and Emma Lou were all killed in a car accident driving up the east side of Afton Mountain toward Staunton in bad weather. Emma Lou had no children.
Emma Davis died in St. Petersburg in 1988. Her husband had died earlier; they were childless.
Sources: [S089, S133, S142, S143]
