Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County

Governor John Wood

Quincy founder John Wood was the first settler at “The Bluffs,” a limestone promontory on the Mississippi River in 1822. He was one of the state’s prominent 18th century politicians, becoming governor in 1860.

A Timeline of the Life of  Gov. John Wood

1798: Birth

John Wood was born December 20, 1798, in Sempronius (a portion later became Moravia), Cayuga County, New York, the second child of Daniel and Katherine Krause Wood.

Wood’s father was a surgeon in the Revolutionary War, assigned to George Washington’s headquarters.

Wood had two sisters. One of them, Clarissa, was a frequent visitor to Wood’s Quincy homes.

Wood’s mother became estranged from the family when John was five. The boy was sent to live with his uncle and aunt, James  and Mary Armstrong Wood, in Florida, New York.

1818: The West

When 20 years old, Wood on November 2, 1818, departs for the west  and farms unsuccessfully in the Ohio Valley. Disappointed with the results, Wood decides to migrate farther west.

After journeying on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, Wood reaches Edwardsville, Illinois. At the federal land office he meets Willard Keyes, who had taught French and Indian children in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Like Wood, Keyes had been disappointed that he had accumulated so little in two years. Wood and Keyes form a partnership to explore and invest in land in the 3.5-million-acre Illinois Military Tract between the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers.

1820: Squatter

Wood and Keyes squat on land in Pike County, Illinois, in 1820, build a rustic cabin and plant and harvest three crops. (Squatters occupied land they did not own, one reason Wood and Keyes built only a primitive cabin.)

1822: ‘The Bluffs’

With Keyes, Wood arrives in 1822 at “the Bluffs,” a limestone formation which rose nearly 100 feet above the Mississippi River that Keyes had seen while rafting south in 1821.

Wood and Jeremiah Rose, a third Quincy founder, build a log cabin at foot of today’s Delaware Street. Rose, his wife and their five-year-old daughter live with Wood in the cabin until 1826.

Wood’s cabin served as the first post office in the area. It also was the site of the first Christmas party in 1822. About a dozen guests ate venison, bear, wild turkey and honey. Wood provided whiskey—and the guests stayed all night.

In November 1822 Wood buys 160 acres in the Military Tract  from Peter Flinn. Wood was a hard-bargaining, patient businessman. Flinn, who had asked $120, refused Wood’s offer in 1821 but with no other takers settled for Wood’s offer of $60 the next year.

1823: Anti-Slavery

Wood joins Governor Edward Coles in fighting the Illinois legislature’s attempt in 1823-24 to rewrite the state constitution to make Illinois a slave state. Wood was an effective anti-slavery campaigner. Voters in the area of the Military Tract in which he campaigned against a slave-state Illinois defeated the proposal by a 9-to-1 ratio. The ratio was 6 to 4 statewide. Wood considered his part in the fight against slavery his life’s greatest accomplishment.

1826: Marriage, Family

Wood marries Ann M. Streeter in Quincy on January 25, 1826. His wedding gift to her was a pair of white calfskin slippers, which he bought in Canton, Missouri.

The couple has eight children: Ann (1827-1905), Daniel (1829-1922), John Jr. (1830-1889), Emily (1833-1835), Adah (1835-1844), Joshua (1837-1910), Henry (1839-1842), James (1842-1850).

Wood and his wife move to Galena, Illinois, to seek their fortune during the rush to the lead mines in the northwest corner of the state in 1827.

1832: Militia

Wood volunteers for service in the state militia in the Black Hawk War in 1832. He served in the same regiment as Abraham Lincoln of New Salem, Orville Hickman Browning of Quincy, and Robert Anderson, commanding officer at Ft. Sumter at the beginning of the Civil War.

1835: The Mansion

The Wood family outgrows their second log cabin, a two-story structure near the northwest corner of Burton and Wood Roads (today’s State and 12th Streets). Wood in 1835 begins construction of a two-story Greek Revival mansion at 12th and State Streets. He  moves his family into the 14-room home in 1837 and completes it in 1838.

1836: Anti-Slavery

Opposed to slavery, Wood places himself and 30 armed men between a mob and abolitionist minister David Nelson, who had been chased out of Missouri and took refuge in Rufus Brown’s Log Cabin Hotel on the southeast corner of 4th and Maine Streets in Quincy in May 1836.

1838: Humanitarian

In the winter of 1838-39 Wood helps organize a countywide effort to shelter 5,700 members of the Prophet Joseph Smith’s Mormon Church after Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs orders them out of the state under a threat of death.

1844: Eight-Term Mayor

Wood is elected to eight one-year terms as mayor of Quincy. He serves in years 1844, ‘45, ‘46, ‘47, ‘48, ’52, ‘53 and ’56.

1846: Woodland

In 1846, Wood donates to the City of Quincy 40 acres of land overlooking  the Mississippi River to create Woodland Cemetery. He serves as the cemetery’s sexton (caretaker) for the remainder of his life.

1848: Gold Rush

With sons Daniel and John Jr., Wood joins the gold rush to California in 1848. Unsuccessful in the venture, the Wood men return  to Quincy the next year.

In 1848 Wood donates a lot at Ninth and State for construction of a small brick church, 36 x 48 feet, which when dedicated was named “Salem.”

1850: State Senator

In politics a Whig, Wood is elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1850. He did not run for re-election.

1856: Lt. Governor

In 1856 the newly created Illinois Republican Party makes Wood its candidate for lieutenant governor. Wood was actually the party’s second choice. Alton’s Francis Hoffman, whom the party had slated to appeal to the state’s German voters, was removed from the ticket when it was learned he did not meet the residency requirement. Wood, also well known as a friend of German immigrants, replaced Hoffman and is elected lieutenant governor on the state’s first Republican ticket in 1856.

1857: Octagonal Mansion

When the new Republican Governor William H. Bissell begins building the first governor’s mansion in Springfield, Wood starts building a bigger home in Quincy, his stone octagonal mansion on the north side of State Street, between 11th and 12th.

 

To build the octagonal house, Wood moves his Greek Revival mansion to his apple orchard one block east.  He splits the Greek Revival home at its midpoint and moves it a half at a time to its location today. A naturalist, Wood preserves a stand of Osage orange trees by having a ramp built over them. Twenty teams of horses pulled each half of the house up the ramp and over the row of Osage oranges. Wood has the axis of the house shifted 90 degrees clockwise so that the pedimented, columned front faces the country’s emerging west.

1860: Governor

Wood becomes Illinois’ 12th governor when William Harrison Bissell dies in office on  March 18, 1860.  Wood serves until January 14, 1861.

Wood’s Greek Revival Mansion at 12th and State becomes the official governor’s mansion after the Illinois legislature, acting on Wood’s request, permits him to remain in Quincy during his tenure as governor. Closing in a porch, he conducts state business from an office on the south side of the house.

Wood allows Abraham Lincoln to conduct his 1860 presidential campaign from the governor’s office Wood left vacant in the Illinois state house in Springfield. Wood also permits Governor Bissell’s widow to remain in the new governor’s mansion there.

On August 8, 1860, in Springfield Wood was elected president of a huge rally for Abraham Lincoln, dark horse Republican candidate for the presidency.

1860: The State Militia

The near-victory of first Republican presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, in 1856 was clear evidence that the South could no longer control the national government. It  convinces Governor Wood that rumors the South would secede from the union were reasonable. Consequently, Governor Wood reorganizes the state militia, which had been neglected by governors since the Mexican War’s end two decades earlier. As a result, Illinois was among states best prepared to send volunteers when President Lincoln called for 500,000 men in July 1861.

1861: Business

Business interests in Quincy lead Wood to decline requests  that he seek reelection as governor.

Wood in 1861 establishes John Wood & Co., Bankers and Exchange Dealers, at southeast corner of Fifth and Maine Streets. He sold the bank in 1864 to employee Henry  F. J. Ricker.

Governor Richard Yates, a Jacksonville friend and fellow Republican,  appoints Wood one of five Illinois delegates to the “Peace Congress.” Meeting in Washington, D.C.,  the effort failed to avert secession of southern states.

By another appointment of Governor Yates, Wood serves as Illinois Quartermaster General during the Civil War. Yates knew that Wood’s earlier reorganization of the state militia made him best prepared for the post.

1863: Widower

Ann Streeter Wood, Wood’s wife of 37 years,  died in 1863.

1864: Colonel Wood

On June 4, 1864, Col. John Wood as commanding officer musters 100 men into the 137th Illinois Infantry Volunteers. Wood and his unit are sent to Memphis, assigned to picket duty and released on September 4, 1864.

1865: Second Mrs. Wood

Widower Wood marries Mary Ann Brown Holmes, widow of the Rev. Joseph Holmes of Quincy, in 1865.

The Octagonal House is completed at a cost of $200,000.

Wood’s eldest son Daniel acquires the governor’s Greek Revival house.

1870: ’Save the Young’

A passenger on a  steamboat that sank along Southern California coast during a trip in 1870 , Wood declines an order to board a lifeboat. “Send the young folks first,” he is said to have responded. “I am 70 years old. Save the young.”

1872: ‘Brother’s Keeper’

A humanitarian, Wood is among the founders on April 18, 1872, of “The Charitable Aid and Hospital Association of Quincy” and elected president in 1877. The institution provides “relief and support to sick, destitute and dependent persons,” as well as hospital and  infirmary care.

1876: Financial Reverses

Financial reverses, which were the continuing effect of the “Panic of 1873,” force Wood in 1876 to sell his octagonal stone mansion for $40,000, an 80 percent loss. Broke, Wood and his wife move into the Greek Revival mansion with son Daniel and his family.

1880: Death

John Wood died in the mansion on June 4, 1880. He was 82. The Quincy community memorialized him with great honors and tributes. The governor’s body, 16 pallbearers alongside, was borne past thousands of mourners who lined the streets of the city he had founded more than a half century earlier.

Governor John Wood was buried in  plot he had reserved for his  family at the center of his Woodland Cemetery.  Wood left it to others to judge his life’s achievements. He asked that his gravestone be small. A man who had accumulated great wealth and saw it dissipate during a national financial panic, Citizen Wood asked for a simple engraving on his tombstone: an etching of his life’s first possession, the one-room log cabin he and Jeremiah Rose built in 1822.

The Canopy of Heaven

The gravestone was stolen long ago. But his community forever honors him for his contributions—benevolent and humanitarian—to his city, state and nation. 

As he wished, Wood was buried beneath a white oak tree at the cemetery’s highest point among the swells and swales on the limestone bluff above the Mississippi. He rests under the canopy of heaven.

John Wood