JOSEPH WOOD

WOOD

Posted By: Jake Tornholm (email)
Date: 4/22/2020 at 14:20:30

JOSEPH WOOD, of section 16, Grant township, came to this county in March, 1879, where he is one of the well known and popular citizens. He was born in Durham, England, July 5, 1832, a son of John and Isabella (Cook) Wood, the former a native of Edinburgh, Scotland, and the latter of England. When Joseph was one year old his father died, and the mother afterward married and lived in England until her death, which occurred at the age of eighty-three years. Our subject, the only son of his father, lived in England until twenty years of age, and for several years worked in the coal-mines for the Marquis of Londonderry. At the age of twenty years he sailed from Liverpool, and landed at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He worked in the coal-mines at Schuylkill, that State, eight years, and then went to Rock Island county, Illinois, where for about twenty years he worked for P. L. Cable, a well-known railroad man. During the war he enlisted in the One Hundred and Twenty-sixth Illinois Volunteer Infantry, Company H, under Colonel Richmond and Lieutenant- Colonel A. M. Beardsley, of Rock Island, Illinois. Mr. Wood was first under fire at Humboldt, Tennessee, then at Vicksburg, Haines' Bluff, Helena, Little Rock, Pine Bluff and Duval's Bluff. He was honorably discharged at the close of the war at Camp Butler, Springfield, Illinois. He then returned to Rock Island, and in 1879 came to this county, and bought his present farm of John Phillips, which consisted of 140 acres of rich land, well improved. He has a good frame house, 24 x 26 feet, one and a half stories high, and also a grove and orchard of three acres, stables, cribs and feed lots. There is also a schoolhouse on one corner of the farm.

Mr. Wood was married in Schuylkill county, Pennsylvania, in 1855, to Miss Ellen Lockey, a native of Northumberland, England, and daughter of William and Ann (Newton) Lockey, natives also of England. Mrs. Wood was but four years of age when her parents came to America, settling in Pennsylvania, where the father died in Schuylkill county at the age of forty years; the mother died in Mahaska county, Iowa, at the age of eighty-three years. Mr. and Mrs. Wood have five sons and two daughters, viz.: Isabella, the wife of William Hall, of Oskaloosa, Iowa; William is married and lives at Oskaloosa; Robert, Newrick, Joseph, John, Mary Ann at home. They lost one child, James, by death at the age of nine months. Politically Mr. Wood is a Republican, and is a member of the G. A. R., Lenox Post. Both he and his wife are members of the Methodist Church. His parents were Wesleyan Methodists, and Mrs. Wood was brought up in the Protestant Episcopal Church.