John Wood

Who was John Wood?

John Wood was the 12th Governor of Illinois, serving from March 18, 1860, to January 14, 1861. Wood was a founder and the first settler of Quincy, Illinois.

Wood was born in Sempronius, New York, in the area now known as Moravia. He was the second child and son of Dr. Daniel and Catherine Crause Wood. His mother became estranged from the family when John Wood was five and moved to Palatine, New York. Wood was sent to live with his aunt and uncle, James and Mary Armstrong Wood, in Florida, New York.

On November 2, 1818, Wood moved west from New York to Atlas, Illinois and became a farmer. Here, Wood met Peter Flinn from whom he bought 160 acres of land in the 3.5-million-acre Illinois Military Tract, which Congress had set aside as bounty for volunteers in the War of 1812. Wood moved to his newly acquired land and with Jeremiah Rose built a small, one-room log cabin on the east bank of the Mississippi River at today's Quincy, Illinois. Rose, his wife and their five-year old daughter lived with Wood in the cabin until 1826, when Wood married.

Intending to speculate in land in the Military Tract, Wood arrived at the federal land office in Edwardsville, Illinois, where he met Willard Keyes. Keyes, who had taught French and Indian children at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, for two years had become disenchanted with his profession and disappointed that he had accumulated nothing. Learning Wood had the same idea about speculating in land, Keyes and Wood formed a partnership. They returned to the site on the Mississippi that Keyes had passed a few months earlier. It was a promontory that rose nearly 100 feet above the river, at which the pair would found Quincy, Illinois.