ROSA JANE WETZEL
1864-1883
The year was 1864. The nation was divided and the Civil War was raging. Abraham Lincoln was President of the United States at Washington, D.C., and Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was President of the Confederate States of America at Richmond, Virginia.
Down at Spring Place, Georgia, Martha Wetzel, a young 22-year old wife of a soldier, went into labor and Rosa Jane was born on June 10. She was named after her maternal grandmother, Rosa Bates. Rosa Jane’s father Warren was away at war. He was a soldier in the Confederate army and would not get to see his little daughter until after her first birthday.
Rosa Jane had a sister, Frances Augusta, who was 18 months older than she. After her father was discharged from the army in 1865, he returned home and resumed farming. Soon Rosa and Frances had some more little brothers and sisters as William Pinkney joined the family in January, 1867, followed by George Columbus in September, 1868, and Martha Ann in November, 1869.
In 1870, when Rosa Jane was 6, her family moved from their Georgia farm. They packed all their belongings, loaded them in a wagon, and joined a wagon train that was headed for Texas. Her mother’s family, the Bates, also moved with them. They traveled from Spring Place, Georgia about 800 miles, all the way to Coryell County in Texas, where they settled at a place called the Blue Creek Settlement, a few miles out of Gatesville, near the Leon River. While they were there, another little brother, Charlie Josephus, was born in December, 1871.
In December, 1872, the Wetzels and the Bates moved north a little over 50 miles to the Board Church Community in Comanche County. By this time Rosa Jane was 8 years old. This is where Rosa Jane “grew up”.
When she was 18 ½, she married a neighbor boy, Jefferson D. Hodge, son of Alexander and Malinda Hodge, on December 18, 1882. The Hodges had also migrated from Georgia to Texas.
The following August 27, 1883, Rosa and Jeff had a beautiful little baby girl whom they named Ollie May. Less than four months after Ollie May was born, a typhoid fever epidemic swept through the country, and Rosa Jane became the first of the Wetzel family to fall victim. She took sick and died on December 13, 1883, about six months short of her 20th birthday. Her body was buried at Board Church Cemetery where she waits for the sound of the trumpet at the first resurrection.