Doctor Daniel Wood was a man of unusual attainments as a scholar and linguist. He was proficient in several languages; his medical books in French and German, with his own marginal notes, indicate the high standard of his professional acquirements.
At the close of the revolution, he settled in Cayuga County, on a large tract of land which he received as a bounty from the government, where he died at the ripe age of ninety-two years. His body was exhumed by his son and brought to Quincy and buried in Woodland Cemetery on a high natural knoll overlooking the waters of the Mississippi, in view of George Rogers Clark’s monument, designed by a son of General Mulligan and erected by the State of Illinois during the past year. Irish patriotism and valor are here well represented by the names of Clark, Wood and Mulligan.
The mother of Governor Wood, who died while he was under five years of age, was a woman of unusual beauty and was several years younger than her husband. She was of old “Mohawk Dutch” stock, and while well informed could only speak the “Dutch” language.
In 1818, John Wood came West in quest of home and fortune. He spent two years exploring the advantages offered to young men in the valleys of Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama, also in southern Ohio and Indiana. In 1820, while at Cincinnati, he met a young man by the name of Willard Keyes, a native of Vermont and two years older than himself. Keyes had spent a year at Prairie du Chien, on the Upper Mississippi, teaching French and Indian half-breeds. They entered into a partnership to go on the frontier and commence farming. They secured between them some young steers, a heifer and a few swine, a plow and a limited supply of provisions, then treked across the country into the wilderness of the great Northwest to find a suitable location, finally stopping at a place about thirty miles southeast of Quincy, where they established a rude bachelors’ hall and raised three crops.
In the spring of 1821, Wood, while hunting for game, met two Irishmen named Peter Flynn and James Moffatt, soldiers of 1812, who had located government warrants on the banks of the Mississippi, west of the Wood and Keyes locations. John Wood visited the Flynn and Moffatt locations and, being a keen observer and a natural lover of beauty, admiring their high advantages and beautiful surroundings, immediately resolved to make his home with them.
In the fall of that year, Jeremiah Rose, wife and five-year-old daughter came to the Wood and Keyes settlement. He was of Irish descent, born in Rensselear County, New York. In the fall of 1822, Wood and Rose arranged to locate at the Flynn and Moffatt settlements, but Rose took sick and remained with his family, while Wood went on, and with the assistance of Flynn and Moffatt built a log cabin eighteen by twenty feet, the first white man’s home in this section of Illinois, as Flynn and Moffatt had built no cabins on their locations but camped with the Indians who lined the river banks north and south for several miles. John Wood being unmarried, the Rose family occupied his cabin and remained with him until 1826, when Rose located a mile back from the river and about a mile north, on what is now known as Twelfth Street.
In the spring of 1824, Williard Keyes came and built a cabin sixteen by sixteen feet at the foot of what is now Vermont Street. In the same fall, John Drulard, a Frenchman, built a cabin a short distance south of Wood, making a white man’s village of three cabins where Indians had held dominion and war dances for ages. Between the cabins of Wood and Keyes, on the high bluffs where Main Street has been cut through to the river, there was a “Sauk” village of friendly Indians. They lingered in the vicinity for several years, coming back annually until after the Black Hawk war to decorate and worship at the graves of their fathers.
In the fall of 1824, John Wood caused to be inserted in the Edwardsville Spectator a notice that application would be made at the next session of the legislature, for the organization of a new county, defining its boundaries. In 1825 the Legislature authorized its establishment, fixing the boundaries described in Wood’s notice and as they now exist. Three commissioners were appointed to locate the county seat. After going over the boundaries, they selected the place suggested by John Wood as the most suitable. They christened the new town Quincy and the county Adams, in honor of the president. Thenceforth the little village of three log cabins rejoiced in a name. A space four hundred feet square was reserved in the center of the town for a public square, now known as Washington Park, the home of the friendly squirrels and birds that sport in safety amid its elms, shrubs and fountains. The first election for officers of the county was held July 2, 1825, when forty votes were polled.
From 1825 to 1830, the growth of Quincy was very slow, caused by the privations incident to a pioneer’s life. The little settlement was many miles distant from mills or places where necessary family supplies could be obtained. Instead of coffee the settlers used okra seeds, which they cultivated for that purpose and sweetened with wild honey found in great abundance in the neighboring woods. Their nearest blacksmith was at Atlas, forty miles distant, where they carried their plows to be sharpened, swung upon horses’ backs.
Among the voters who took part in the election for county officers in July, 1825, appear the Celtic names of George Frazier, Michael Dodd, Thomas McCreary, Louis Kinney, Daniel Moore, H. Hawley and Ben McNitt, besides the others above mentioned. Below appear the names of the Irish pioneers who came after the county and the town were organized.