For our next interesting headstone in Rowlett Creek Cemetery, I bring you Bettie, wife of A.J. Ogle. Bettie was chosen because she has a beautiful headstone and because she was a member of the Woodmen Circle, as you can see by the top of her headstone. I know nothing about Bettie Ogle other than she was born in 1868 and died in 1909. 1909 falling in to the years in which the Woodmen sold riders for headstones along with their insurance policies. However, unlike our previous headstones, Bettie’s does not have a log on it. It does have a low relief carving at the top that states “in memoriam, Woodmen Circle”.
There is a Woodmen Circle orphanage and women’s dormitory in Sherman, TX. Sherman is roughly 50 miles due north from the Rowlett Creek Cemetery, Plano, in which Bettie is laid to rest. The orphanage and dormitory functioned between 1920 and 1970. In those years, 100 children and 165 women called the Sherman location home. The Woodmen Circle was one of the first to sell life insurance to women. When a woman died, her husband would get the pay-out. If she died at the same time as her husband, the children would be taken care of at the orphanage. Additionally, if she needed a place to stay at the end of her life, and was financially solvent, she could take refuge in the Woodmen Circle dormitories also. (1920 being 11 years after our Bettie died, she wouldn’t have seen this structure. However, her insurance premiums probably helped start it.)
The Woodmen Circle home is decrepit now, but if you would like to virtually tour it, you can! A band named Night Rides made a video called “Past Lives” filmed entirely on the grounds of the Woodmen Circle dormitory and orphanage in Sherman. You can find it on YouTube.
