Jo Wood was a real estate and insurance agent in Hondo, Texas. After graduating from St. John’s High School, Wood began working for O. H. Miller. In 1907, Miller had started the insurance agency that Wood acquired in the late 1930s or early 1940s, and called Wood & Wood. All types of insurance were managed in this agency, including automobile, home, crops, boat, and life insurance. Wood sold the business in 1983 but continued to sell real estate until shortly before her death in January 1996.
Along with being known for being one of the first
The Jo Wood Papers, 1907-1996, contain correspondence, business records, memorabilia, and printed material pertaining to her insurance and real estate career in Hondo, Texas. The papers include account books, ledgers, receipt books, cash books, insurance rate books, real estate correspondence and transactions, insurance correspondence and policies, and materials related to the Retail Merchants Association, Hondo, in the 1930s and 1940s. Furthermore, the papers contain maps, plots, and building plans of Hondo, Medina County, Texas, and the world around the time of World War II. The materials document periods of prosperity and hardship that the community of Hondo experienced during the Wood’s forty-year career, as well as how the values of property and the use of land changed over time.
The collection is open for research.
Jo Wood Papers, 1907-1996, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Some material has been separated to tthe Artifact and the Money Collections.
Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s "History Revealed: Bringing Collections to Light" project, 2009-2011.