mama

Catherine Virginia Wood Johnson

Left to right: G.B., Catherine, Harris, Sissy, Robert, and Edna. Taken June 7, 1970 at my wedding, Perry, Ga.

born during the winter of 1920, the youngest of nine children to a farmer-schoolteacher and his wife in Twiggs County, Georgia,
orphaned --both parents died by the time she was two years old,
loved and cared for by her maternal grandmother Ella Day, the greatest influence in her life, until the family farm was lost due to the Great Depression,
reared at the Methodist Orphans’ Home in Macon, Georgia, from age nine through high school graduation
married Joseph Van Johnson in the fall of 1940,
gave birth to two daughters, Nan and Kay, and lost three other premature babies,
employed (unpaid) as bookkeeper and cashier in the family store in Perry, Georgia, in addition to being a homemaker and mother,
enthusiastic amateur genealogist.

Catherine Wood Johnson's parents were Green Berry Wood and Ida Eugenia Day. She is kin to just about everybody in Middle Georgia who is surnamed Wood, Waters, Day, Durden, or Yearty. Her grandfather Henry Day was cousin to both Sidney Lanier and to Sidney Lanier's wife (and cousin) Mary Day. (Sidney Lanier was Poet Laureate of Georgia.) Henry’s wife Ella Durden Day had wealthy grandparents, the Yearty family, whose once prosperous farm is now East Macon (near Fort Benjamin Hawkins). The Yeartys were Jewish and had relatives in the area near Hamburg, Germany close to the Polish border. My sister Nan became a sociologist and was in Germany to make a speech. She traveled to Hamburg in a futile effort to locate any of our Yearty relatives. The name used there seems to be some variation of “Jertsky”. She could find no one. We hope at least some survived World War II and relocated.

Left to right: Sidney, G.B., Edna, Ida (mother), Harris (in front of Ida), Robert, Edith (in front of Robert), Green Berry (father), Catherine (in father's arms), Sissy, and Winnie. This was taken in the summer of 1920.

Green Berry Wood & Ida Eugenia Day Wood's children in birth order:
(Rationale for importance of these biographies)

Virdilene Minerva Wood Kitchens

Edna Florence Wood Compton Johns Graves

Winnie Belle Wood, RN

Albert Sidney Wood

Green Berry Wood III

Robert Lee Wood

Harris Waters Wood

Edith Eugenia Wood

Catherine Virginia Wood Johnson

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