By Polly Wilbert and Pat Donahue

An excerpt from the last poem written by Kate Tannatt Woods in the days before she died and published in National Magazine, Vol. 43 after her death:

​The Temple of My Soul
 
I give thee thanks,
O Temple of my Soul
That thou hast bravely held
God-given power to share
With others on my way
To do and dare,
To feel the bliss of life
The sacred depths of joy
With earth’s alloy.
 
I give Thee thanks, dear God.
For power to work
From night to morn;
For love of children
Near my heart once borne;
For love of faithful friends
Grand, noble, ever dear
Whose courage gave me strength
From year to year.
 
And now, O Temple,
If the hour has come
And my once earnest voice
Must now be dumb,
If this once busy pen
Must tire and rust,
I still will thank thee
And my Maker trust.

​Kate Tannatt was born in Peekskill, New York, where her father, James, was an editor. Her mother was descended from an old Scottish family named Gilmour that in the 19th century still owned a castle near Edinburgh. Kate briefly attended the Peekskill Seminary and then, because of ill health, had private instruction. Following her father’s death when she was 10, the family moved to Salem, drawn in part by the excellence of New England public schools and to be closer to other family members. 
 
When not much older than the students she was teaching, Kate briefly taught public school in Salem, and was still in her teens when she met and then married a lawyer George Henry Woods on July 22, 1857. From a Salem family, he was a graduate of Brown and Harvard Law, and had a successful practice in Minneapolis, where they went to live. 
 
When the Civil War began, George Woods raised a company of Minnesota soldiers for the Union Army and became a lieutenant colonel. While serving on General Sumner’s staff, he was severely wounded near Richmond, Virginia, during the Seven Days battle of the Peninsula campaign in late June 1862. Kate was then living with their two young children in Washington, D.C. and volunteering as a nurse at the front, and was able to care for her husband there. After Lincoln’s assassination, Woods was one of the honored bodyguard during the funeral. He was mustered out in July 1865, and the family returned to Salem to live at 166 North St., which Kate called Maple Rest. Maple Rest was a house on a triangle-shaped plot of land in North Salem, which was owned by George’s father, the highly successful nursery owner Ephraim Woods. The property held several houses built in 18th and 19th centuries.
 
George never fully recovered from his wounds, but often had to travel for work, including for several years to Decatur, Illinois, where he did grain trades by commission from a shared office. He died on September 30, 1884, and Kay was buried by his side in Greenlawn Cemetery after her death in the summer of 1910.
 
Kate was a founder of the Woman’s Friend Society (1876), which provided “an employment bureau, a reading room, and a home for young woman”. Emmerton House on Hawthorne Boulevard continues as the Friend Society residence for 20 single working women. About 1899, Kate opened a tea room, the Ladies Lunch and Tea Club and Woman’s Exchange, at 36 Lynde Street, where the Thought and Work Club (1891-1974) met twice a month. The club, with Kate as founding president, had been formed to encourage women “in all departments of literary work, to promote home study, and to secure literary and social advantages for its members”. It grew to 300 members, organized civics classes, which were addressed by city officials and state senators, and held foreign-language classes.  The club also worked to improve local schoolrooms, clean the streetcars, and elect women to the school board.   . 
 
Over the years, Kate wrote articles for newspapers such as the St. Paul Pioneer (Minnesota), the Omaha and New England newspapers and popular stories for juveniles for periodicals like St. Nicholas, Wide Awake and others. Historian Sidney Perley described her editorial work for the Boston Globe and American Home Magazine as “clear, terse, and vigorous”. She was also an editor of Harper’s and The Ladies Home Journal. She was a poet whose poems were widely quoted, and she painted in oils and watercolor and was respected for her needlework.  For many years, she often wrote a book a year, with such titles as:  That Dreadful Boy, The Minister’s Secret, Hidden for Years, Hester Hepworth, Toots and What He Did, and A Fair Maid of Marblehead. In later years she gave up her house and lived at 8 Federal St. She died at the home of her son, Dr. Prince Tannatt Woods, in Buffalo, New York.

Sources:
Wikipedia:  Kate Tannatt Woods
The Poets of Essex County, Massachusetts, Sidney Perley, 1889
Genealogical and Personal Memoirs Relating to the Families of Boston and Eastern Massachusetts, Vol. 1, edited by William Richard Cutter, Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1908
National Magazine, Vol. 43
The Thought and Work Club was active in Salem 1891-1974
 
This information was gathered during research for a past Friends of Greenlawn tour at Greenlawn Cemetery.