Cody met his future bride when he started to teach Sunday School at St. Paul's. She was a young girl with a tiny figure, copper-colored hair, and a round pretty face. Her name was Jessie and she was the second of the three daughter of Albert and Elizabeth Flewelling, both parents being of Loyalist descent, her mother having been an Inch. The Flewelling farmstead was about a mile above James N. Inch's store, the rest of the family consisting of Jessie's two brothers, Fred and Frank (Fred and his father were vestrymen at St. Paul's), and her two sisters, Hazel and Lillian. All three girls were in the same Sunday School class when Cody first began teaching, but it was Jessie who was most interested in religious study, excelling to the point where she was capable of becoming a teacher herself in the Fall of 1900, when she was only sixteen years old, she consented to take the Infant Class. [1] That winter Jessie and another teacher, Miss Jessie Belyea, began to prepare themselves for a divinity examination which might give them the first certificate of a three-year course. They were examined on June 28th, 1901, in their own parish and on August 1st they travelled with Cody and several other teachers to Apohaqui, in the parish of Sussex, where they attended the Kingston Deanery Sunday School Teachers' Union in the Church of the Ascension. The special feature of the meeting was the presentation of certificates to the twelve teachers, who had passed the first year of the course of three years in the Union. Miss Jessie Flewelling and Miss Jessie Belyea both received certificates. [2] On Monday, July 7th, 1902, Jessie Flewelling received her second certificate having successfully passed the K.D.S.S. teachers' examination. [3] But it was really the Sunday School that brought Jessie Flewelling and H. A. Cody closer together. On July 15th, 1903, the Kingston Deanery held it annual meeting of the Sunday School Teachers' Union in Bloomfield in the parish of Norton, and Jessie Flewelling, "having completed her three years' course in the K.D.S.S. Teachers' Examination, received a fine Diploma." [4] Jessie gave birth to their five children - four sons and one daughter: Douglas Flewelling Cody (1907-1982) ; Kenneth White Cody (1911-1942); Norman Redman Cody ( 1914-2000); George Albert Cody (1920-2007); Frances Margaret Lillian Cody (1924-2010).
Jessie Cody passed away on September 2, 1967, at the age of 83, and was buried beside her husband in Fernhill Cemetery, Saint John, New Brunswick, the grave of their son Kenneth nearby. Comments are closed.
|