My Genealogy Hound

WOOD, JOHN, was born in Moravia, Cayuga county, N. Y., Dec. 20, 1798. He was the second child and only son of Dr. Daniel Wood and Catherine (Crouse) Wood. His mother died when he was but five years of age. His father, a Surgeon and Captain during the Revolutionary war, was a man of unusual attainments as a scholar and linguist. He died at the ripe age of ninety-two, and is buried in Woodland Cemetery at Quincy, — probably being the only Revolutionary Soldier whose remains rest in Illinois soil.

John Wood left his home for the West, Nov. 2, 1818, with the half-formed intention of settling in the Tennessee valley of Northern Alabama. He passed the following winter in Cincinnati, came to Shawneetown, Illinois, in the summer of 1819, and spent the succeeding winter in Calhoun (then part of Madison) county. In March, 1820, in company with Willard Keyes, he located in Pike county, thirty miles southeast of Quincy, and “farmed it” for over two years.

In 1821 he visited the present site of Quincy — then uninhabited—and pleased with its prospects, soon after purchased a quarter section of land nearby, and in the following fall (1822) erected near the river a small cabin, 18 by 20 feet—the first building in Quincy — of which he then became the first and for some months the only occupant.

In 1824 he gave a newspaper notice, as the law then prescribed, of his intention to apply to the General Assembly for the formation of a new county. This was done the following winter, resulting in the establishment of the present Adams county. During the next summer Quincy was selected as the County Seat — it then containing but four adult male residents, and half that number of females.

Since that period Mr. Wood has continuously resided in the home of his early adoption, where he has been necessarily and prominently identified with every measure of its progress and history and almost constantly kept in public positions.

He was one of the early Town Trustees; has been often a member of the City Council; many times elected Mayor; in 1850 was elected to the State Senate; in 1856 was chosen Lieutenant Governor, and on the death of Governor Bissell in 1859, succeeded to the Chief Executive chair; was one of the five delegates from Illinois in Feb., 1861, to the Peace Convention at Washington; and on the breaking out of the Rebellion was appointed Quarter-Master General of the State, — which position he held throughout the war. In 1864 he took command, as Colonel, of the 137th Regt. Ill. Inf., with which he served until the period of enlistment expired.

Gov. Wood has been twice married; first in January, 1826, to Miss Ann M. Streeter, daughter of Joshua Streeter, formerly of Salem, Washington Co., N. Y. They had eight children, four of whom are now living: Ann E., wife of John Tillson; Daniel C., married to Mary J. Abernethy; John Jr. married to Josephine Skinner, and Joshua S., married to Annie Bradley.

Mrs. Wood died on the 8th of October, 1863, and in June, 1865, Gov. Wood married Mrs. Mary A. Holmes, widow of Rev. Joseph T. Holmes.

Gov. Wood still lives, at the age of 78, on the site of his old wilderness home — the pioneer settler of his city and county, and the only now living man who was resident when the city and county were formed. Politically, he has always been actively identified with the Whig, and since its disbandment with the Republican party.

Few men have, in personal experience, comprehended so many surprising and advancing local changes as vest in the more than half-century recollections of Governor Wood. Fifty-four years ago a solitary settler, having no neighbor within a score of miles, the world of civilization away behind him, and the strolling Indian almost his only visitant, he has lived to see growing around him, and under his auspices and aid, overspreading the vanished wild grass and forest, a teeming city, second in size to but one in the State, and surpassed nowhere in beauty, prosperity, and promise; whose people recognize, as with a single voice, the proverbial honor and liberality that attach to the name and lengthened life of their Pioneer Settler — “The Old Governor.”