From the beginning, John Wood was the moving spirit of the young settlement. Its subsequent growth and prosperity were due to his untiring zeal which he maintained to the end of his long and useful life.
In 1827, John Wood visited the lead mines at Galena, but maintained his home at Quincy and was constantly identified with its progress, serving as its mayor four times and a number of years as one of its councilmen. His influence was not confined to Quincy alone. He was early recognized throughout the State as a rising man of mark. The manner in which he organized Adams County and defeated a movement of men from Kentucky, who, in 1824, desired a convention for a new constitution to allow them to bring their slaves to Illinois, gave him prominence among the politicians of the State.
At the time John Wood built his Quincy cabin, St. Louis and Missouri were the attractive places of the opening West, but the black gangrene of human slavery repelled John Wood and caused him to prefer the free soil of Illinois. When the question was submitted to the people, John Wood made a canvass of the Bounty Land or Military Tract as it was called, and out of one hundred and three votes cast secured all but four against a change. He regarded with equal disfavor the political organization known as the abolitionists, considering them civic disturbers.
THOMAS F. RYAN, ESQ.,
Of New York City.
Life Member of the Society.
In 1832 John Wood served as a volunteer in the Blackhawk War. In 1848, with two sons, he went to California, but remained there only a year. In 1850 he was elected to the State Senate and in 1856 was elected Lieutenant Governor of Illinois, and became governor of the State in 1859 on the death of Governor Bissell. He was one of the five delegates who, in February, 1861, represented Illinois at the peace convention in Washington. On the breaking out of the rebellion he was appointed Quartermaster General of Illinois, and served with great efficiency until June, 1864, when, at the age of sixty-six years, he went to the field of war as Colonel of the One Hundredth and Thirty-Seventh Illinois. At Memphis, Tennessee, he was assigned to the command of a brigade and discharged his duties gallantly while under fire.
The value of Governor Wood’s services to State and Nation were handsomely acknowledged in 1868 by Illinois’ great war governor, Richard Yates, then United States Senator, in a letter to Governor Wood. Senator Yates wrote: “I have never expressed to you, though I have many times spoken of it to others, my grateful remembrance of your great assistance during those trying times. Often when discouraged, as we all were, I believe, except you, I have been cheered and sustained by your confidence and what many persons told me of your kindly mention of my acts as governor. This, I assure you, my dear Governor, is one of the pleasant memories connected with those eventful and trying times, and it is not too late, I hope, for me to express my unfeigned gratitude. It has always afforded me pleasure, when friends have given me the credit, to tell them the truth, how vastly the State was indebted to Governor Wood for the great energy he displayed in his office, which was the most trying office of us all, and for his warm and enthusiastic words for his country in those days of doubt and trial. I hope you will not consider these words flattering, but as a grateful expression of your true friend, Richard Yates.”
Governor Wood “was a superb specimen of the highest human type; six feet in height; hair and beard flowing and as white as snow; ruddy face; strong cut features; muscular frame and a pleasing dignity gave him the appearance of a Roman Senator, causing Governor Yates and others to refer to him frequently as the “Old Roman from Adams.” His nature was bold, frank and generous. He was a stranger to moral or physical fear. A few years before his death, with his wife, and a party of Quincy friends, he visited California. While on a steamer visiting places in Southern California, he was wrecked by the boat running on a rock. The Captain, after placing women and children safely on boats, said: “Now, Governor Wood, you take your place.” His answer was that of a hero. “Send the young folks first. I am seventy years old. Save the young.””
Before 1858, Governor Wood resided in a large two-story frame dwelling with pilastered portico, which that year he moved across Twelfth Street into his old orchard, and on the old site he erected a magnificent sandstone palace, the finest then in the State, costing $125,000. It is now used as a boy’s school by the Methodist Church, while the old frame dwelling is owned by the Quincy Historical Society, both, with immense tracts of land within the city limits, having passed from the Governor shortly before his death through the unfortunate speculations of his sons on the Chicago Board of Trade; he surrendered everything to pay their debts.
He died in Quincy, June 4th, 1880, full of honor, at the ripe age of eighty-two years, and was buried by the side of his patriotic father in Woodland Cemetery, on a high knoll facing the magnificent waters of the Mississippi and within four blocks of where he built his log cabin in 1822. Immediately south of Woodland lies Indian Mound Park, and a mile north is Riverview Park, where George Rogers Clark’s monument stands in repose with a Continental hat in hand and arms folded, looking out in admiration on the lands his valor had saved for American freemen. There are numerous Indian mounds, both in the cemetery and parks, and they extend for many miles along the bluffs, North and South of Quincy.