Volume 5, Number 1 - Fall 1973
CIVIL WAR CAPTAIN THOMAS W. WOOD OF TANEY COUNTY, HIS ANCESTORS AND HIS DESCENDANTS
Researched and Compiled by Wm. L. and Vera Wood, Strafford, Missouri
An early resident of Taney County, Missouri was Capt. THOMAS WILSON WOOD, born December 20, 1826 in Cumberland County, Kentucky to John and Sarah (Crouch) Wood. John Wood was born September 28, 1783 in Washington County, N.C., (now Tennessee) and went to Kentucky in 1803 where he met and married Sarah Crouch. She was born in 1792 in North Carolina and had come with her parents James and Agnes (Denton) Crouch to Kentucky when very young. John and Sarah Wood made their home on the land he first settled along Spring Creek, and here they remained until their deaths, John on January 31, 1861 and Sarah a few
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years later. Their children were: Martha, who married Henry Johnson; William, who married Emiline Brock; Anna, who late in life married her widowed brother-in-law, Henry Johnson; James, whose wife was Elizabeth Amos, went to Missouri and then to Lamar County, Texas; Thomas Wilson, of this sketch; John Jefferson, who married Lavina Myers; Agnes, whose husband was Charles Harrison Myers, a brother of Lavina; Samuel Wilburn, who married Emily Adaline Wright, and also went to Lamar County, Texas; Emily, who died soon after her marriage to James Crawley; and Jesse Willis, who married his cousin Sarah Maria Wood in Madison County, Illinois. Two other children died as infants. (1)
The grandfather of Thomas Wilson Wood was Samuel Wood, born May 2, 1737 in Leicestershire, England, and who came to America in 1755. Tho only eighteen he soon enlisted in the Virginia Militia, a company commanded by Col. Geo. Washington, and was with Braddock when he met defeat at Ft. Duquesne in the French and Indian War. A few years later, in Loudoun County, Virginia, he married Sarah Reives, born October 13, 1747 to James and Sarah (Bean) Reives. Samuel and Sarah Wood were parents of seven sons: William b 1773; James b 1774; Samuel, Jr. b 1777; Thomas b 1779; Abram b 1781; John b 1783; and George b 1787. The last three were born after the family moved to Washington County, where the father died in 1800. (2) During the Revolutionary War, Samuel Wood did his part to aid his adopted country in its fight for freedom. Altho lameness and poor health may have limited his military service, he served in other ways, by caring for the sick and wounded in his home after the battle near Alexandria, and by giving his pewter tableware to be melted and made into bullets when the Colonial troops at Georgetown ran short of ammunition. (3)
On April 6, 1848, Thomas Wilson Wood, our subject, married his cousin Mizzana Wood. She was born Marth 5, 1821, a daughter of William and Elinor (Ryan) Wood. William Wood was in the North Carolina Militia as early as 1791, going on several engagements against the Cherokee and Creek Indians. (4) and was commissioned a Lieutenant by John Seivier, the first Governor of the State of Tennessee. (5) History states that William Wood was among the first to come to the Stockton Valley area of Cumberland County, Kentucky and surveyed much of the land there for the early settlers. He was in the Kentucky State Legislature for 23 consecutive years, and held other minor county offices, as sheriff, surveyor, and treausrer. (6) In 1813, he was Captain of a company of volunteers in Governor Isaac Shelby’s campaign to Canada, where the rank of Brevet Major was bestowed on him. (7) William Wood was also active in the early Baptist movement in Kentucky, being one of the thirteen organizational members in 1802, of the Clear Fork Baptist Church, and was church clerk for that body until his death in 1851. Major Wood and his wife are buried in the cemetery near this church. (Altho in a different building, this church near Albany, Ky., still occupies the same ground and celebrated its 171st homecoming in September of 1973.) (8)
The children of Thomas and Mizzand Wood were William Jefferson, b 1849; James R. b 1850; John Henry b 1854; and Thomas Lafayette, b 1861. Two daughters, Eliza and Sarah, died when infants.
During the Civil War the counties of Cumberland and Clinton, as well as others bordering the Confederate State of Tennessee, were the scene of continued strife and guerilla warfare. Reuben Wood, a cousin of Thomas and Mizzana, was murdered in November of 1861 by the
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notorious rebel, Champ Ferguson and his band of Confederate Rangers. Then early in 1862, their nephew, William Johnson, a Union Soldier home on leave, was killed and his father, old Henry Johnson, was threatened by the same rebels.9 Other families in the area had been harrassed and worse until it was unsafe for the men and boys, so a volunteer unit of cavalry was formed in the area with Thomas Wilson Wood elected as Captain. This company was mustered into the U.S. Army Dec. 23, 1863 at Columbia, Kentucky and discharged January 10, 1865 at Camp Nelson, near Louisville, Ky. and was designated as Co. "C" of the 13th Ky. Vol. Cay. Altho very young, William J. Wood, the oldest son of Thomas and Mizzana, was also in this unit, and was discharged a Sargeant. (10)
There were many battles and skirmishes in the area, and with most of the men and older boys away fighting, many families fled northward to seek refuge and safety among strangers. Among these was Mizzana and her boys who went with the family of her brother-in-law Henry Johnson, to settle between Sedorus and Parkville, Illinois.
When the hostilities were ended Capt. Thomas Wood went back to his home, only to find it burned and the ground ravaged. After attempts to relocate in a neighboring county of Kentucky, he went to Kansas, as did many of his military comrades. In this new state, with free land, he settled in Sumner County, near the town of Corbin. (11)
The Johnson family met sorrow while living in Illinois when the mother, Martha Wood Johnson died December 7, 1865. In 1869 two sons, Isaac Newton (12) and James Johnson (13) brought their families to Missouri and settled in Taney County. Mizzana and her family remained in Illinois until sometime after 1870 when Thomas found the family and after a joyful reunion they all traveled to their new home in Kansas. About ten years later William J. married Ellen Hull and Thomas L. married Margaret Smith in Sumner County and raised large families there. James R. died unmarried in 1882.
The other son of Thomas and Mizzana, John Henry Wood, came to Taney County to visit his Johnson cousins near Bradleyville. While there he met Ellen Roller, born February 21, 1865 in Virginia, a daughter of Phillip and Rosanna (Bledsoe) Roller, who had brought their family to Missouri a few years previous. On March 8, 1883, John Henry and Ellen were married and established their home near her family who lived in the Roller community some five miles west of Bradleyville. John Henry Wood was a farmer and also taught school a few years. Their children were: Zana Ann, who married Lonnie B. Clark, a son of John and Isabel (Moody) Clark; James Madison and Robert Morris, both unmarried; Henry Alvis who married Opal Newton, daughter of Nevils Asberry and Nelly (Nicholson) Newton; and William Andrew who married Olive Clark, daughter of Volney and Serilda (Moody) Clark, a cousin of Lonnie. Ellen (Roller) Wood died August 19, 1894 and is buried in the Bradleyville Cemetery.
On May 24, 1896, John Henry Wood married second, Sarah Clark, born June 2, 1862, a daughter of Francis and Nancy (Clem) Clark. (no relation to Lonnie and Olive) The children of this marriage were: Sarah E., unmarried; Herschel, who died an infant; Noel Marion, who married Piccola Newton, daughter of Jasper and Delcenia (McAdoo) Newton; and Orion Wilton, who married Jessie Holloman. John Henry Wood died September 2, 1935, in Taney County and is buried at Roller Cemetery. His widow died in 1945 in Selah, Washington where she lived with her two sons Noel and Orion Wood.
Thomas and Mizzana bought and sold several pieces of farming land in Kansas, even two lots in the city of Wellington (14) perhaps with the thought of moving to town, but none seemed to be just what they desired and after their son John Henry came to Missouri, they followed in a few years. Thomas was heard to remark that he left Kentucky to get out of the rocks, and Kansas to get out of the mud, only to come to Missouri and settle on hilly, rocky soil, very much like that in his native Kentucky. But Mizzana was not permitted to enjoy her home in Missouri for long, as she died December 18, 1893, and was the first to be buried on ground given to the public for a cemetery by Hiram and Barbara Lawson. This was recorded as Roller Cemetery and is located in northern Taney County about half way between Taneyville and Bradleyville, Missouri. (15)
On November 2, 1895, Thomas Wilson Wood married Matilda Diadamie Essary, born January 12, 1867, a daughter of Andrew Jackson (Jack) Essary and his wife Cassandra Deckard. Cassandra often told of her experiences when a girl in the Civil War, of the time rebel soldiers entered their home and upon finding the kraut barrel, grabbed and ate it by the handfuls, as though they were starving. When the soldiers asked her father if he had a gun he replied "no"
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but Cassandra without thinking answered in the affirmative. Soon realizing what she had done, she crawled under and through the crowd of men, got the gun and stuck it through a hole in the floor, and thus the family was not killed.
Thomas and second wife Matilda continued to live on the homestead, where they were parents of three boys, Mckinley b 1897, and who married Clara Victoria Smith; Emanuel b 1900, who married Fern Hobbs, a daughter of Lorenzo Dow Hobbs and Martha Alice Caudle; and Andrew Jackson b 1901, who married Ardith Cranfill. Thomas Wilson Wood died January 18, 1912, and is buried in Roller Cemetery next to his first wife. Matilda lived until April 13, 1964, and died at the home of her son Emanuel at Ozark, Missouri and is buried near Ozark.
Emanuel Wood has musical talent which has prevailed through each generation of the Wood family, enabling him to play any string instrument. He is a regular member of the band "The Fiddlers Four", playing either the fiddle, guitar or banjo. This group has entertained the large tourist crowds at Silver Dollar City near Branson, during the Craft Festival and "Root Diggin’ Days" for the last six years.
Two sons of Captain Thomas Wilson Wood are still living, McKinley of Oxnard, California and Emanuel of Ozark, as well as many grandchildren, and great grandchildren through the fourth generation from his two families.
*FOOTNOTES
1. Family Record. Similar copies of handwritten family record have been found in the possession of several descendants of Samuel Wood.
2. Washington County, Tennessee Wills. Book I pp. 51-52.
3. Patriot Index, D.A.R., Washington, D.C., 1966, p. 758.
4. Pension Application (Warrant #10772). Made by Mary Wood for bounty land in 1853.
5. Commission Book of Governor John Sevier 1796-1801. Tennessee Hist. Commission, Nashville, 1957, p. 45.
6. J.W. Wells. History of Cumberland County (Louisville, Ky. Standard Printing Company, 1947)
7. A.C. Quisenberry. Kentucky in the War of 1812 (Baltimore, Genealogical Publishing Company, 1969) p. 196.
8. M.M. Gaskins. Lighthouse in the Wilderness. (Albany, Ky., The Clear Fork Baptist Church, 1972).
9. Thurman Sensing. Champ Ferguson, Confederate Guerilla. (Nashville, Tennessee, 1942)
10. Adj. Gen. Ky. Report, p. 357-358.
11. Russell County, Ky. Deeds Bk. H. p. 442-443, Sumner Co. Kansas Deeds
12. Isaac Newton Johnson was the grandfather of James W. Morgan of Taneyville, Mo.
13. James Johnson was Taney County Representative in the State Legislature, 1874 until 1894. He was also Clerk of the Circuit Court and Recorder of Deeds.
14. Sumner County, Kansas Deeds.
15. Taney County, Mo. Deeds. Book 3, p. 206.
Researched and Compiled by Wm. L. and Vera Wood, Strafford, Missouri.
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