The Wood family of Woodsboro

Dahl Drenning
Fifth great-grandson of Colonel Joseph Wood

The First Generation in America

It was in 1683, fifty-eight years before Joseph Wood leased lot 56 on Monocacy Manor in what would become Frederick County then the western frontier of the Maryland Colony that his great grandfather William Wood arrived in the Pennsylvania colony. William Wood (1624-1685) a Quaker merchant with his wife Susanna Stubbins Markel (1650-1689) and children Joseph, John, Jonathan, Stephen, Benjamin and Susanna emigrated from Nottingham in England and settled in the Philadelphia area near Darby in Chester County, Pennsylvania, at the intersection of Cobbs and Darby Creek.

William Wood an associate of William Penn and a shareholder in Penn’s Free Society of Traders owned all or part of five thousand acres in the area. Before his untimely death in 1685 William Wood began a family tradition of entrepreneurial activity and local leadership serving as Justice of the Peace, Provincial Court Judge and Provincial Counselor. It appears also that he and his son Joseph built and operated for a time fulling and gristmills in the Darby area.

The Second Generation

Emigrating with his father, William Wood’s son Joseph (1666-1721) about nineteen years old at the time of his father’s death soon became involved in business and governmental affairs in both Pennsylvania and Delaware. He held land in Philadelphia and Chester counties and in the 1690s served as Sheriff in Chester County and later became Sheriff in New Castle, Delaware serving also as a Supreme Court Justice and an Assemblyman. In 1701 Joseph Wood served as a witness and signatory to the last will and testament of William Penn.

It appears that Joseph Wood did not share his father’s religious convictions and chose instead to affiliate with the Anglican Church reverting to a faith tradition held previously by the Wood family in Nottingham. Joseph Wood married Francina Herman (1662-1749) the daughter of colonial mapmaker and Czech native Augustine Herman (1621-1686) and Jannetje Varleth (1674) of Dutch ancestry. Augustine Herman as a reward for drafting the "Map of Virginia and Maryland, 1670" one of the earliest maps of the Chesapeake Bay area received from Lord Baltimore a sizeable parcel of land in Cecil County Maryland which he named "Bohemia Manor" a portion of which he set apart as "Three Bohemia Sisters" and passed to his daughters including Francina and her husband Joseph Wood.

A son Joseph (1691-1738) and a daughter Jenneken (1693-?) were the only children of Joseph and Francina. Joseph and Francina are buried in the cemetery of Emanuel Church in New Castle Delaware.

The Third Generation

Joseph, the son of Joseph the immigrant and Francina, lived his entire life in Cecil County Maryland. He and his wife Martha had two sons and three daughters. Joseph was a slave owning planter in Cecil County possessing at one time over twelve hundred acres. He was affiliated with the Anglican Church with his wife Martha being a member of the Religious Society of Friends. Following the pattern of service established by his predecessors Joseph was a member of the lower house of the Maryland legislature from 1732 until 1737 and was a vestryman in the North Sassafras (Anglican) Parish. Joseph and Martha named one of their two sons Joseph, being now the third in the Wood family line in America to bear the same name.

The Fourth Generation

It was this Joseph Wood (1709-1782) the son of the Cecil County Legislator who married Sarah Hodgson (1708 -1747) in 1734/5 in Cecil County and relocated to the western frontier of Maryland in or about 1741 to become the second lessee on Monocacy Manor taking up tenancy on lot # 56.

[John Wood (Nov. 29, 1754-Nov. 11 or 14, 1832) served as an Ensign in the 37th Battalion of the Maryland Militia (April 27, 1779) originally commanded by Colonel James Johnson and in which his half/brother Joseph Wood was the Lt. Colonel. Joseph would have been about thirty-six years old and John would have been about Twenty-five. In the spring of 1783 John Wood moved to Berkeley County, Virginia returning for a time to Maryland before moving to Kentucky then to permanently locate in Wabash County, Illinois. His first child Susanna was born in Frederick County, Maryland in January of 1783 with the remainder of his children being born in Virginia and Kentucky. It was likely that John Wood and Joseph, his older half/brother were born on Lot 56 of Monocacy Manor. ]

Soon after taking up residence on the Manor, he assumed a leadership role in the affairs of All Saints Parish and in the civil jurisdiction that would become in 1748 Frederick County. As a new resident on the Manor Joseph Wood began to identify himself as Joseph Wood of Israel’s Creek reflecting upon the stream which ran through his Manor lot in order that he not be confused with another local pioneer Joseph Wood of Linganore.

In the time between his arrival on the Manor in the early 1740s and his death in 1782 Joseph Wood of Israel’s Creek served the public interest as a road overseer, jurist, registrar for All Saints Parish, member of committees responsible for the construction of a school and a jail in Fredericktown and as an officer (Captain, Major) in the Maryland Militia at the time of the French and Indian War.

Joseph Wood was included on a list of militia commissions (Captaincies) delivered by Thomas Cresap to John Ross in Annapolis, August 20, 1749. He was also a signatory to the 1777 "Oath of Allegiance and Fidelity" at the beginning of the Revolutionary War as well as a financial contributor to the independence effort loaning two thousand dollars to the State of Maryland. In July 1747 Sarah Hodgson Wood died leaving four children including the next generation Joseph Wood (1743-1793) who was then just four years old. Joseph Wood of Israel’s Creek known variously as Judge, Major and Joseph Wood Sr. married widow Catherine Julian three months later with whom he had six more children and continued for years to exercise his civic responsibility as an active leader in the developing Frederick County community.

The children of Joseph Wood and Sarah Hodgson:

• Robert, born August 12, 1736, and married Oct. 13, 1763 Catherine Dorsey.
• Sarah, born Jan. 10, 1739, married Nathaniel Wickam, died July 11, 1777.
• Joseph (Colonel) born September 17, 1743. May have been born in Frederick County.
• Mary, born Aug. 7, 1746, married Moses Hedges.
• Catherine, born April 9, 1749
• The children of Joseph Wood and Catherine Julien, (married Sept. 11, 1749)
  • o Elizabeth, born Feb. 5, 1750, married Aug. 6, 1769 Thomas Wilson
  • o Abraham, born Feb. 7, 1753
  • o John, born Nov. 29, 1754, married Martha Ogle (1761-1820)
  • o Rachel, born Feb. 5, 1757, married Benjamin Barnhart.
  • o Rebecca, born Sept. 12, 1759, married Thomas Reynolds.
  • o Ruth, born Nov. 24, 1761.

The Fifth Generation

Joseph Wood the son of Joseph Sr. and Sarah lived and died in Frederick County. Born (1743-1793) a year before Frederick County was separated from Prince Georges County, Joseph Wood Jr. the great, great grandson of William Wood the immigrant associate of William Penn, became imbued with and inspired by the possibilities and responsibilities that were present and available to the growing tide of settlers streaming into the area. His experience, not unlike that of preceding generations of the Wood family would be one of opportunity, risk, success, and failure. Though his memory is forever associated with the community that bears his name, the founding of Woodsboro by Colonel Joseph Wood in 1786 might have been the pinnacle of achievement for the Wood family in Frederick County and at least partially responsible for their undoing and fall from prominence.

For many years the best if not the only available genealogical and historical information regarding the Wood family was found in the pages of Thomas Scharf’s subscription history, "The History of Western Maryland" (published in 1882), in the section about the district and town of Woodsboro. The major error in this section is the claim that the father of Colonel Joseph Wood, Joseph Wood Sr. of Israel’s Creek, was an immigrant from Gloucester, England and thereby the first generation of the family in America. Joseph Wood of Israel’s Creek was in fact the fourth generation of the family in America that had originated not in Gloucester but in Nottingham settling first in Pennsylvania and then in Cecil County, Maryland. A possible explanation for this error is those who Scharf interviewed while travelling through the countryside and villages in Western Maryland in the later years of the nineteenth century simply knew very little about the family history outside of Frederick County let alone their time in Cecil County and Philadelphia. The accompanying genealogical information is however mostly reliable thus we know that twenty six year old Joseph Wood Jr. married Ann Reed (1740-?) in April of1769.

[There was in 1892 a document circulated "To the Descendants and Heirs of Joseph Wood, The First, of Catoctin Manor, Maryland formerly of Gloucester, England" suggesting that these Wood descendants may have had a claim to the estate of "James Wood" Merchant and Banker of the city of Gloucester, England, reputed to be worth about twenty million English pounds sterling. " This circular may have been in contemporary terms an elaborate "SCAM" praying upon the dream of acquiring a "windfall" of wealth from a distant relative. The circular suggested that these potential "heirs" of James Wood raise a sum of money to send a representative to England to investigate a possible familial claim before the estate of James Wood would "revert to the crown".

The 1892 circular contained Wood family history based upon the 1882 Scharf reference to Gloucester. Taken altogether then, the "formal" appearance of the document and the genealogical information contained therein, which they could verify in a published source, plus the possibility of obtaining an unearned largess peaked the interest of the Wood cousins and raised the question of "what if", for succeeding generations.

By the last decade of the nineteenth century descendants of the Wood family of Monocacy Manor and Woodsboro were scattered across ten different states and accepted the erroneous information about their English origins most particularly ancestral connections to Gloucester. It is not known whether sufficient funds were acquired to investigate the claim. Nothing in the oral or written lore of twentieth century descendants indicates that an investigation ever took place or that a claim was attempted.

James (Jemmy) Wood (1756-1836) was "for real" however, having been the owner of the "Gloucester Old Bank" with a personal wealth of 900, 000 pounds. Nationally known as "The Gloucester Miser", "Jemmy" was an eccentric character to be sure. There was in fact a protracted court case over the settlement of James Wood’s estate the knowledge of which obviously spread even to the U. S. Thus, it is not surprising that enterprising scammers found gullible and willing Wood cousins who would suspend disbelief and contemplate the possibility of an entitlement to a distant legacy. ]

It was as a young husband and aspiring entrepreneur that Joseph Wood Jr. obtained possession of the 224-acre tract east of the present-day town of Woodsboro on Cash Smith Road known as Wood’s Mill Land and there constructed an impressive brick Georgian style manor house and established a milling operation.

[An advertisement appearing in the Baltimore Md. Journal, October 4, 1791, described: "a stone mill with 3 run of burrs, Cologne, and Round Top, 1 mile from Woodsbury-Town". This appeared near the end of Colonel Wood’s life when his finances were in disarray, and he may have been looking for a buyer for "Wood’s Mill Land" and the milling operation situated there upon. }

It was on this plantation along Israel’s Creek that Joseph Wood Jr. ’s five children were born (Mary - June 25, 1772, Sarah - June 21, 1774, Elizabeth 1777-1777, Catherine - March 2, 1778, and Joseph - Jan. 9, 1781) and where he was residing when the colonies began the revolutionary process leading to separation from England. It was while living there that he became deeply committed to the cause for independence and no doubt it was there that his dream of commercial success in business and real estate began to take shape. It is sad to note that because of financial reversals soon after the war Joseph Wood Jr. and his family had a limited tenure of about twenty years in their stately home on Wood’s Mill Land from about 1769 until 1789. In those two decades, however and for a time, Joseph Wood Jr. rose to prominence as a patriot and militia officer and as a land speculator and town founder.

It has been a challenge through the years to piece together an accurate account of Joseph Wood’s military service in the Revolutionary War. No small part of the challenge has been the fact that there were other men named Joseph Wood who were involved in the war including a Colonel Joseph Wood from Pennsylvania who served at Fort Ticonderoga and was a compatriot of General Anthony Wayne. Yet another Colonel Wood served as a commanding officer at the "Hessian Barracks" in Frederick.

[In 1780 a contingent of prisoners originally captured at the Battle of Saratoga (1777) and held in Virginia were transported to Frederick to be incarcerated at the Frederick County "Alms House" and the recently constructed Barracks (Subsequently known as the Hessian Barracks) on Cannon Hill. The American commander in charge of these prisoners was a "Colonel Wood". Wood wrote to Maryland Governor Lee soon after coming to Frederick, "Upon my arrival here I have been employed …in making provisions for the troops". (Reference: John M. Walton Jr. "The Frederick Town barracks: A Witness to History")

It was in fact Colonel JAMES Wood of Frederick County, Virginia, the "Superintendent of the Convention Army" who brought British and Hessian prisoners from Virginia to Frederick and who was the officer in charge of their imprisonment there not Lt. Colonel Joseph Wood of Frederick County. ]

With membership in both the Committee of Correspondence and the Committee of Observation Joseph Wood Jr. was first commissioned as a Captain of a company in the 2nd Battalion from Frederick County on November 29, 1775. Included as a sergeant in that company was Peter Baird (Beard) very likely an Israel’s Creek neighbor of Joseph Wood and the benefactor who provided the land upon which Grace Rocky Hill (St. Peter’s Lutheran and Reformed) Church was constructed in 1767.

[Following is a list of commissioned and non- commissioned officers listed as part of Captain Joseph Wood’s Militia company of 1775 as recorded in the "Journal of the Committee of Observation of the Middle District of Frederick County, Maryland, Sept. 12, 1775- October 24, 1776. Also referenced in "Revolutionary Patriots of Frederick County, Maryland" by Henry C. Peden.

Peter Baird, Corp. , Solomon Bentley, Sgt. , Levi Carmack, Sgt. , William Carmack Jr. Ensign, 1st Lt. , John Fogle, Drummer, Biggar Head, Ensign, William Beckwith Head, 2nd LT. , John Hide, Corporal, John Kennedy, Sgt. , John Parkinson, Sgt. , Robert Sellers, Corp. Christian Smith, Fifer, Charles Springer, 2nd LT. , Lawrence Stull, Corp. The company included seventy-one Privates two of which have been identified, John Rhoads and John Kittenger. Corporal Peter Baird (Beard) and Drummer John Fogle are buried in Grace Rocky Hill Cemetery near Woodsboro. ]

By June of 1776 at the behest of the Continental Congress a convention was called in Maryland to create battalions for a "Flying Camp", a rapid response unit of short- term volunteers in the continental forces. It was as part of this newly configured unit that Joseph Wood Jr. was promoted to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the 37th Battalion (also referred to as the 2nd Battalion.) commanded by Colonel James Johnson the brother of Brigadier General Thomas Johnson soon to become the first Governor of Maryland. During the month of July 1776 Joseph Wood served as a recruiting officer receiving numerous volunteers for service in the "Flying Camp". Thomas Johnson assumed command of the Flying Camp in December of 1776 and in late December and early January 1777 began to lead the Marylanders north to Philadelphia to join Washington’s forces in that area.

Thomas Johnson wrote on the 20th of January of the arrival of the Frederick County volunteers at Philadelphia, "all of Colonel J. (James) Johnson’s Battalion that may be expected, about 250 are here, part of Colonel Beatty’s about 160, part of Colonel B. (Baker) Johnson’s about 120, part of Colonel (Normand) Bruce’s about 150 and Colonel (Christopher) Stull’s I do not know the number are also here. " It was January 21, 1777, that Brigadier General Thomas Johnson with his brother Colonel James Johnson’s battalion in the lead followed by part of those of Colonels Beatty and Bruce moved the Frederick County troops across the Schuylkill River toward General Washington’s winter encampment in New Jersey at Morristown arriving too late for participation in the recent American victories at the battles of Trenton and Princeton.

It is interesting to note that another local battalion commanded by Colonel Charles Greenbury Griffith also part of the "Flying Camp" that went north in July and August and was engaged in the battles of Harlem Heights and White Plains in October now at the end of their sixth month enlistment had returned home to Frederick County in December of 1776 just about the time Thomas Johnson’s "Flying Camp" battalions left for Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Based on the sixth month term of enlistment in effect at that time it is likely that the 37th Battalion returned to Frederick County sometime during the summer of 1777. An assumption being made in all of this is that Lt. Colonel Joseph Wood was present and part of the January 1777 expedition north of the 37th Battalion and their subsequent deployment in New Jersey. Beyond this time period little more is known of his military involvement in the Revolutionary War save for an interesting story regarding a local celebration at the time of the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783 which officially concluded the War for Independence.

Recalled nearly a hundred years after the fact there was an account in Scharf’s "History of Western Maryland" of a service of thanksgiving for the successful conclusion of the struggle for independence held by a number of people living along Israel’s Creek at Rocky Hill Church (then St. Peter’s Lutheran and Reformed Church) located on present day Coppermine Road a short distance east from Joseph Wood’s home and mill.

Following the solemn service of gratitude two hundred attendees were invited later that evening to gather along the banks of Israel’s Creek at the Wood home for a time of celebration and feasting. Thirteen toasts were made at this gala event while thirteen "platoons" were fired. The mansion house was illuminated and bon fires were lighted nearby the whole of which the account tells us was concluded with "propriety and decorum". (Scharf, Hist. of West. MD. , Vol. I, p. 145) This would have been a significant moment of joy for the Israel’s Creek community and for Colonel Wood and his family and no doubt in a few short years looked back upon wistfully by the Wood family.

Apart from the milling and farming enterprise that Colonel Wood pursued at his estate on Israel’s Creek it seems that he was also deeply engaged in land speculation. He was involved in numerous real estate transactions in the decade of the 1770s including the resurvey of several "freehold" tracts, Wood’s Mill Land and the acquisition of two Monocacy Manor lots. In 1781 he held title to nearly a thousand acres of property in the Israel’s Creek area.

When the numerous lots that constituted Monocacy Manor were confiscated from the Calvert family by the state of Maryland and offered at auction (September 10, 1782, at Grost’s Tavern in Frederick Town) most of the tenants were outbid by military officers exercising warrants they had been granted for service to the State in the War for Independence the outcome of which at the time of the auction was still unresolved. By the terms of the lease held by Joseph Wood Sr. for Lot 56 and 57 his son Joseph Jr. (Colonel) was able to assure a continuation of tenancy for his father even though General William Smallwood purchased both lots.

As an officer himself Colonel Wood purchased Lot 52 and 84 and it was upon Manor lot 52 in February 1786, he formally laid out the town that would bear his name unto the present day. In a document now in the possession of the Corporation of Woodsboro Colonel Joseph Wood the "city planner" spelled out the rates, conditions, restrictions and the rules for use of the common well to which property owners would be bound within the "town" limits of "Woodsbury" as he identified his municipal creation in the original Platt.

Mentioned in a section of the founding document was a provision for the collection of ground rent from lot owners "annually and forever" to be paid to the proprietor or his heirs or assigns. The first proprietor of course was Colonel Wood himself. It is obvious that Wood was attempting to set himself up much in the same manner as did Lord Baltimore with the establishment of Monocacy Manor that ensured the Calvert family a regular stream of income. In reality Wood was clearly more successful with his proprietary experiment than the proprietor of the Manor as the ground rent on many of the Woodsboro lots was collected by his heirs for nearly two hundred years as recently as the 1970s. In 1950 the ground rent for a full-size town lot in Woodsboro was one dollar per year.

Even as the town venture was getting under way Colonel Wood’s financial stability may have been beginning to fall apart. In 1789 Wood’s Mill Land was out of necessity sold to Adam and Valentine Creager the latter being a former tenant on the Manor and a Revolutionary comrade in arms with Colonel Wood. The home and property on Israel’s Creek would change hands many times in the next two centuries. It stands today well preserved and maintained; a reminder of the hopes and ambition of a Frederick County pioneer but also as a reminder of the fragility of the best made plans. In a sale description in 1812 Wood’s Mill Land having by then changed ownership twice in two decades and at that moment owned by Jerimiah Browning was then being identified as Browning’s Mill and was described thusly:

"One mile east of the town of Woodsbury consisting of a grist mill and a sawmill in good repair, with 200 acres of land, a sufficiency of which is meadow and woodland. The improvements are a large and commodious brick dwelling house, stone kitchen, frame barn, with other necessary out houses".

In 1792 there were a number of court proceedings over town lots in Woodsboro involving Balzar Ream as the plaintiff and Joseph Wood the defendant. In the May 16, 1793, edition of the Fredericktown Weekly Advertiser the following announcement appeared "…to sell in town of Woodsbury, all real and personal property of Joseph Wood, insolvent debtor". Earlier on May 11, a final administrative account of his estate was published in which his death was recorded. Thus, at age 46 a little more than a decade after the passing of his father we are told that Colonel Joseph Wood died on Second Street in the town which he planned and founded in a tiny cottage near the present site of St. John’s United Church of Christ. His place of burial is unmarked but may be in the cemetery of Grace Rocky Hill Lutheran Church as there was no cemetery in the town of Woodsboro at that time.

The Sixth Generation

Colonel Joseph Wood was survived by five children ages 12 to 21 the youngest being his only son Joseph (1781-1849) who would remain in Woodsboro throughout his life and who in 1813-14 would serve in two separate militia companies in the call up of the Maryland Militia in response to the British invasion in the War of 1812 initially serving as 1st Lt. in the Company of Captain Philip Smith. The second of the two companies in which he served was in the First Regiment, commanded by Colonel John Ragan as Captain of Co. I, participating in the ill-fated Battle of Bladensburg and later in the successful defense of Baltimore. Captain Joseph Wood married Nancy Graybill (1785- ) in 1804 and was a property owner (lot 55) in the town his father founded. It appears that Joseph Wood (son of Colonel Wood) was one of the founding members and a benefactor of a Universalist Church (ca. 1837) in the town of Woodsborough (sic).

[Appearing in the "Universalist Union" of 15, April 1837, there is mention of the completion of a Universalist meeting house in Woodsborough (sic). It was further mentioned that it was the "first house of the kind ever erected exclusively by Universalists in this state". (Maryland). On the Bond Map of 1858 the Universalist Church is located on Woodsboro Lot #55. In the last Will and Testament of Joseph Wood (March 1849) Wood bequeathed to the Universalist Society of Baltimore, "the Universalist Church and all such ground as is enclosed for a burying ground". Thus, it seems likely that Joseph Wood may have been one of the founders of this congregation as well as providing the land for the location of the Meeting House and cemetery being part of Lot 55. It is also possible that the cemetery referenced here appears in Jacob Holdcraft’s landmark publication, "Names in Stone" as the "Harlan Cemetery, " which Holdcraft further identifies (perhaps erroneously) as having been associated with a Methodist Episcopal congregation that the Bond Map places at the rear of Lot# 52. Four of the seven tomb stones that are listed for that cemetery were for members of the Harlan Family thus the identification as such. It is then entirely possible that Joseph Wood the veteran of 1812 the son of the town founder is interred there but there is no positive evidence to that end. Two of Colonel Wood’s daughters were married to members of the Harlan family. The Harlan cemetery is no longer extant. ]

Children of Joseph Wood and Nancy Grabill:

• Charles, Dec. 11, 1805- Nov. 4, 1890, married Mary Saylor. Charles Wood operated a Mill on Israels Creek near the current day Hill Road crossing and is buried in the St. Johns cemetery on Second Street in Woodsboro.
• John, born Aug. 1809, married to Sophia Whenrich.
• Joseph, born October 1811, married Ruth Ann Houck. This Joseph Wood may have relocated to Michigan.
• Sarah, June 5, 1844-March 20, 1875, married John Frederick Lock and lived on Lock’s View Farm on present day Coppermine Rd. which includes a portion of the original Wood’s Mill Land.
• Moses
• The Seventh Generation

Joseph and Nancy had four sons and a daughter. One son was yet another Joseph the sixth in succession to bear the name but about whom little else is known. It appears however that it may have been through their daughter Sarah who married John Frederick Lock that two remnants of the estate of Colonel Joseph Wood were passed forward in the family at least for a time. The ownership of a portion of a wooded tract called "Worst of All" near present day Ladiesburg remained in the hands of a Wood descendant as did the right to collect ground rent in the town of Woodsboro both until the 1970s. A portion of the original tract of Wood’s Mill Land was purchased by George Lock and is currently owned by descendants of Colonel Wood.

There are some descendants of the Wood family of Israel’s Creek still in Frederick County and some still in the Woodsboro area most all of which have descended through families with names other than Wood thus the town of Woodsboro remains the most visible reminder of the rise and fall an American and Frederick County pioneer family.

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