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Woodward Cemetery, 88-2 Summary Report, page 4
As can be seen from the dates of the inscriptions, both died in October of 1885. Eugene was an infant, only 7 months old. He was, however, not a son of Susan, who was too old to have been his mother. Susan was probably the grandmother or great grandmother of Eugene. It may well be that they had a common contagious illness of the time that caused the deaths to be in close time order. The Woodward family was present in Madison County in early times. There was a notice in an early Alabama newspaper that Charles C. Woodward was postmaster of “Woodwardville” in Madison County in 1842, and both the 1850 and the 1860 census records for Madison County show Eli and Hannah Woodward in the same household. Eli was shown as age 50, born in Tennessee, in the 1850 record, while Hannah was shown as age 74, born in North Carolina. The 1860 census showed Eli as age 60, born in Tennessee, and Hannah was listed as age 87, born in South Carolina around 1773. They were certainly among the pioneers of the area, with Hannah most likely being the mother of Eli. Moreover, according to their ages, Eli could well have been a brother of the 1842 postmaster Charles C. Woodward and of John S. Woodward. John S. Woodward, born in Tennessee in 1813, appears in the 1850 census as the father of a family that included John W. Woodward (born 1853) by the 1860 census, after John S. Woodward had died. John W. Woodward lived on the pre-arsenal lands and eventually owned the area where the family cemetery is located. Still, the only Madison County government land patents in the Woodward name were taken by Eli and by Wilson Woodward. In May of 1831, Eli Woodward patented 80 acres of the east half of the northeast quarter of Section 12, Township 2 and Range 2E. This land is about 4 miles southeast of the town of New Market, in the Cramer Hollow area near Upper Hurricane Creek. It was in August if 1853 when Wilson Woodward patented 50 acres in the northeast quarter of the southwest quarter of Section 23, Township 2 and Range 2E. This land is about 2 miles north of the Madison County Fishing Lake and about 4 miles northeast of the Bell Factory community. It is just less than 3 miles from the land patented by Eli, some 22 years earlier. The private land transaction deed and mortgage index by G. W. Jones Inc. shows no Woodward land acquisitions in the area where the cemetery is located on Redstone Arsenal until 1905. (View the inserted image at 200% zoom.) 4 - (2920)