| John Q.A. Wood "John Q. A. Wood, Esq., is a native of New Hampshire, from whence his father emigrated to southern Micigan in the spring of 1831. Purchasing a farm, mostly unredeemed from the wilderness, he settled within the immediate vicinity of the now beautiful village of Tucumseh. . . . Though necessarily engaged durig the summer and autumn months on the farm with his father; yet during the winter and spring he was sent to the academy in the little village. Subsequently he was sent to the Academy of New London, N.H., to prepare for college, and entered Dartmouth College in 1839. There he remained three years, and then entered and graduated at Union College, N.Y., in 1843. After taking his bachelor degree, he returned to New Hampshire, and commenced the study of law in the office of Hon. Leonard Wilcox, of Arford, and completed his law studies with ex-President Pierce. He was admitted to the bar at Concord, N.H., in 1846. Soon after that event he married [with his wife who was soon] in charge, as Principal, of the Young Ladies' Seminary, in the city of Ann Arbor, Mich., where they resided until the autumn of 1954, when Mrs. Wood died very suddenly while on a visit east. Wishing to divert his mind from this great sorrow, and having perused with eagerness the glowing descriptions of the soil and climate of Minnesota--then a rising Territory--he, in the spring of 1855, in company with a younger brother and his aged mother, came to the Northwest, and settled in the fertile valley of the Sauk River. After a residence there of two years he visited Southwestern Kentucky, where he remaineded some time, married a lady of Louisville, returned to Minnesota, and is now residing at Sauk Rapids. During the political campaign which resulted in the elect of Franklin Pierce, he, in connection with another gentleman, edited the Chicago Daily Express, which was discontinued after its object was accomplished. Mr. Wood commenced his poetical efforts at quite an early age, and has continued them, at intervals until the present time." [W.J. Arnold (ed.), The Poets and Poetry of Minnesota 29-55 (Chicago: S.P. Rounds, Books and Job Printers, 1864)][online text] |
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