PagePedia^™ History
Segments Presented by Lyle Harvey

DORA AND MATIE WOOD AND LOUISE HEISS
(Read at the Page Methodist Church on June 27, 2008)

Dora and Matie Wood came with their parents, Charles and Melissa Wood, to Holt County from Seward, Nebraska in the spring of 1882. These two girls became good friends with Louise Heiss, their neighbor to the north who arrived with her family from Germany in the spring of 1883. Perhaps they even helped Louise learn to speak English.

These three girls were growing up together through the 1880’s and attended school together in the sod schoolhouse south of Page. (Pleasant Valley) They would have been very excited to see the town of Page developing and looked forward to attending school in the new school building that had been built in the southwest part of Page.

On Thursday, July 14, 1892, Dora, Matie, their younger brother Charlie and Louise were playing together on the Elkhorn River. It could have been a family picnic or it could have been that their parents dropped the children off there to play while they went on to Inman to conduct business.

Sometime in the afternoon, Louise waded into the river and got into water over her head. She screamed for help and Dora and Matie went in to save her. According to the Page News account printed the next day, the two girls were able to assist her enough to give her life, but Dora the oldest, drowned and drifted quite a ways down the river. Matie had also drowned and was drifting with the current but Louise by then, had regained her breath and pulled Matie out of the river by her hair.

Louise cried loudly for assistance for about an hour when little Charlie came to see what had happened. It was too late to save Dora and Matie. Later their parents came and took them all home in the back of their wagon. Clara Hunt was called to help with the funeral process.

The funeral was held the next day in the new school building and the two girls were buried in the northeast corner of the Page Cemetery in block one. People say these were the first graves in the cemetery. Dora was age 14 and Matie was 13.

Louise never recovered physically from the ordeal and died in November 1896 at the age of 17 years. Louise Heiss is buried just west of her two friends Dora and Matie Wood. Charlie later died from injuries sustained from falling from a horse and he is buried near the girls.

Charles and Melissa Wood lost four of their first five children. Little Clarence died four months after they arrived in the spring of 1882 and was buried on the Wood Farm. Later, he was moved to the Page Cemetery. Charles and Melissa had a total of 14 children including Faye Wood Neubauer and Edgar Wood, father of Fontelle Harvey.

Lyle Harvey

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