History of Early Pioneer Families of Hood River, Oregon. Compiled by Mrs. D.M. Coon

GILFORD D. WOODWORTH AND FAMLLY 1896

     G.D. Woodworth was born in Berwick, Nova Scotia, on December 25, 1853, the son of Gilford and Salina (Corbett) Woodworth. Two brothers, by the name of Woodworth came to America on the Mayflower and from one of them came the family of Gilford Woodworth. In the Revolutionary War the family was divided, some being loyal to England and some were on the side of the Colonies.
     Gilford attended school until eleven, then went to sea and gathered infor-mation from all parts of the world. When sixteen years of age he shipped from San Francisco on the bark, Helen Snow, for the Arctic regions.
     They were compelled to abandon their boat in the ice, and were twenty one days in open boats. They finally reached Point Barrow, where they were all taken in by the ship Josephine. Two weeks later the Helen Snow drifted loose from the ice. Six men from the boat that picked her up, with the crews from three other boats, and Mr. Woodworth, brought her to San Francisco, where she was sold to the Russian Government.
     Mr. Woodworth shipped again for the Arctic region, this time on the bark Alaska and was gone seven months. Their vessel was crushed in the ice and he came back in the bark, Minerva. Two years more he traveled on coasting vessels, then settled in Contra Costa County.
     On December 18, 1878, he married Miss Rose Benton at Martinez, California. Her parents are of Scotch descent. In 1880 the family moved to Sherman County, Oregon and became owners of Locust Grove Farm, a wheat farm containing thirteen hundred and fifty acres.
     They were pioneers in that section as there were only twenty five or thirty families in the entire county. In 1894 Mr. Woodworth raised forty thousand bushels of wheat, the largest crop ever produced by one individual in that section.
     In 1899 this wheat farm was sold to William Barzee. In 1896 the family moved to Hood River where Mr. Woodworth invested in several different tracts of land, raising strawberries, Spitzenberg apples and Newton apples, and also carried on diversified farming.
     There were four children in the family: Ethel, Roy, Idell and Guy. Mr. and Mrs. Woodworth were members of the United Brethern Church in Hood River. Guy died in early manhood. A United Brethern Church in Vancouver, Washington is named the Guy Woodworth Memorial Church in his memory. Idell died while still young. Ethel and her husband were drowned while on their honeymoon trip to Alaska. Roy is a farmer in Hood River.
     G.D. Woodworth died in 1937. Mrs. Rose Woodworth died in 1943.

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