John Jackson Woodward Epitaph and Book

JJW is buried in Longwood Cemetery, Chester County, Pennsylvania. His epitaph is so unusual that the Chester County Tourist Bureau offers his grave site as a stop on its self-guided walking tour of Longwood Cemetery. Time had eroded the 1875 poem, but we were fortunate to find the exact text in a 1912 West Chester, PA newspaper account about Longwood Cemetery and thus the epitaph was recarved in 1982:

"Restored to the old Mother Earth in transitory trust

Awhile to slumber dormant in the silent dust

The lifeless form of him that has no soul to save

No hope of eternal life beyond the grave

Of groundless faith in spirit worlds of bliss

But content alone with what the good enjoy in this.

Here in peace will his ashes rest from pang of pain

Til the roll of nature's sun wakes them to life again."

John Jackson Woodward wrote his own epitaph, which reflects his strong feelings about religion. He exhibited his philosophical ideas early on. In 1838, he penned the following poem in the autograph book of his sister-in-law, Rebecca Mattson:

"Hail gentle Reason, the noblest power of the human mind,
Attribute of Nature that Time and Study alone mature.
Unlike thy Master's meanest Powers to Earth confined,
Mayest Thou be the Guide of Man long as Life and Time endure."

This poem was a presage to his later work in 1875, Spice for Spiritualists or The Dogma of an Immortal Life Examined and Considered. In it, he quotes Cuvier, Thomas Huxley, William Humboldt and even the Book of Solomon in the Old Testament: "All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again." The question of man's origins, what today we call the Creationist Theory v.s. the Evolutionist Theory, was a cause celebre in the mid 1800's after the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859.

John Jackson Woodward was not afraid to stand up for his belief in Darwin's theory even among his religious brethren, the Quakers. We know of at least one instance in 1872 in which he spoke publicly on the subject at Taylor's Hall in Kennett Square, PA. "Spiritualism," or the belief that the dead can communicate with the living, especially through mediums, had become rampant in the mid-1800s. JJW's book addresses such quackery. Copies of his book are quite rare, but a copy has been donated to the Chester County Historical Society Library, West Chester, PA.

Here are some photos of the grandiose JJW house in Kennett Square, PA courtesy of its current resident, Dr. Steinberger

JJW bought a corner lot in 1858 and built the house with two floors. I have found no written record to tell us why he built it while he had a large farmhouse and property about 3 miles outside of town, but the railroad reached KS in 1859 and was just 1 block away. You can imagine the growth of Kennett Square as a result of the RR coming from Philadelphia. He sold the property in 1862 and I conjecture it was to pay for substitutes in the Civil War for any of his three sons who wanted them. He also bought an adjoining farm in Kennett Township for his second son, Darwin, about this time.

The Gothic features were added to the house by subsequent owners about 1880-1890. Today the Woodward House is invariably on the tours of houses and is one of the most spectacular in the borough.

	Click Images for larger view

The JJW Farmhouse was built between 1838-42. He was married in 1838 to Hannah Mattson. The deed is dated 1842 from his father William Woodward to JJW, leading one to speculate the degree to which William contributed to getting his son established. A farm of 90 acres was part of this purchase. The original structure was a log cabin and was purchased from the estate of Obadiah Hannum in 1835.

JJW set about to make the farm prosper. He had an elegant gate and fence erected roadside. The gate has been pillaged, but we found the top of the gate embossed with his name under the front porch at the time of repairs in 1980. The house had two sides with two bedrooms on each side on both the second and third floors. This house was lived in by 4 Woodward generations from 1842-1986, when the property was sold out of the family to settle an estate. The house ultimately was destroyed by an arsonist in 1992, with only the stone walls left standing. The walls have since been bulldozed and buried by a subsequent owner.


John Jackson Woodward (1812-1875) Photo taken 1863		Hannah Mattson Woodward (1816-1894) Photo taken 1863