R003 
Husband: William Edward (Neddy) Wood
Father: Joseph Wood [R002]
Mother: Martha (Epperson) Wood [R002]
Born: 2 or 10/22/1777, in Prince Edward County Va.
Died: ~1848. Place of burial not known (see below)
Wife: Sarah (Sally) (Gilliland) Wood
Father: James Gilliland [R300]
Mother: Susanne (Young) Gilliland [R300]
Born: May 12 1788
Died: 9/2/1850 [S031]. Buried in Indian Hill Cemetery [S017].
Married: 9/24/1805, in Botetourt County. “d James b- Samuel Gilleland
con- James Gilleland, father- September 13 1805 wit- Samuel
Gilliland & Shepherd Gilliland min- John Helms- September 24
1805” (b=bondsman; con= consent) [S008].
(2010) Edward Wood was referred to almost universally by that name in legal documents, but in a few instances it comes out that his first name was really William. Several of his Randolph County W.Va. descendants were named William Edward. According to [S031] his nickname was Neddy, at least in Randolph County.
Edward was born in 1777, in Prince Edward County. As a child of 10-12, he came with his parents to Botetourt County between 1787 and 1789. He married Sarah Gilliland in 1805, in Botetourt County. Edward and Sarah were 28 and 17 when they married.
Sarah’s parents had come to Botetourt County from Lancaster County Pa. via Rockingham County Va., which is probably where Sarah was born [R300]. At the time of her marriage Sarah and her parents lived in Griffith Va., then in Botetourt County but now in Alleghany County (which was created in 1822) [S017]. Griffith was a very small town at the foot of Griffith Knob, ~10 miles NE of the Wood homestead south of Glen Wilton, where Edward presumably lived with his parents at that time. (Griffith later found itself on the Millboro/Clifton Forge railroad line when it was put through after the Civil War [S061]. Today the town is nonexistent; none of the old buildings remain.)
Children: (dates are mostly from [S031])
Augustus Wood, 9/7/1806-6/15/1892 [R361]
Mary (Wood) Moore, 1807 or 1808-8/1/1883 [R354]
Amanda (Wood) Moore, 1810-4/11/1875 [R350]
James Wood, 11/29/1811-10/24/1848 [R365]
Joseph T. Wood, 8/17/1813-? [R363]
Martha (Patsy) Ann (Wood) Douglas, 2/19/1815-1886 [R355]
Harriet (Wood) Wilson, 1/28/1818-? [R353]
Elizabeth J. (Betsy) (Wood) Lemon, 10/26/1819-2/21/1903 [R351]
Sarah A. (Wood) Tolley, 7/8/1821-? [R356]
John Carter Wood, 1/20/1824-6/8/1876 [R362]
Elvira Emmaline (Wood) Armentrout, 11/24/1824-3/1909 [R352]
Francis Marion Wood, 3/25/1830-10/2/1863 [R004]
America (Wood) Pierce, 3/14/1833-? [R364]
Those are Edward and Sarah’s children according to Bath County sources, but Randolph County W.Va. cousins list two more [S031,
S086]:
Caroline Wood, 11/28/1816-1/28/1817
William Wood, 3/5/1823-?
William may have lived only briefly, as Caroline did. He is not named in the agreement to divide Edward’s land holdings, made by his children after his death (e.g., Bath County DB11-384).
I have not seen a Botetourt County deed with Edward Wood’s name on it, but the 1810 Virginia Census [S034] lists an Edward Wood in Botetourt County whose household consisted of 1 male less than 10 years old (this would be Edward and Sarah’s first child, Augustus); 1 male between 16 and 26; 1 male between 26 and 45 (Edward himself); 2 females less than 10 (presumably Patsy Ann and Betsy); 2 females between 16 and 26 (one was Sarah); and 2 slaves. This leaves unaccounted for only one couple between 16 and 26 years of age who shared their home. Perhaps Edward and Sarah lived in a separate building on the farm of one of their parents.
On 9/19/1810 Edward and his brothers Thomas [R252] and Joseph Jr. [R254] became indebted to Frederick Step of Bath County for $187.50, payable by 9/1/1813. They defaulted on the payment and eventually, in 1826, Step sued Edward for payment [S115].
In October of the same year Edward, 33, bought a 208-acre tract of land in Bath County, ~12 miles to the north of Woodtown, from Frederick Step and William Mayes and their wives (both names are spelled various ways) for £600 (DB4-61). The tract had been patented in 1743 to an earlier William Maze, the grandfather of the 1810 William Mayes and of Polly (Mayes) Step, the wife of Frederick Step. The tract, A in Fig. R003a, spanned the Cowpasture River and consisted largely of fertile bottomland. Edward moved his family to a house that already stood on the property. (This building later came to be called the “White house,” a reference to its subsequent owner, not its color; it is described in [R020]). His family is also listed in the 1810 census of Bath County, except without the male between 16 and 26.
Between 1811 and 1819 Edward bought or patented four other tracts of Bath County land (DB4-208, SB1-449, DB4-318, DB5-218, SB1-471). In some cases he bought/patented the same tract twice, for reasons unclear to me. All these tracts are plotted in Fig. R003a. In 1819 Edward settled a long-standing land dispute by ceding 25 acres of cherished land known as “the mossey [or mooney] field” to the executors of Richard Mayse, “to prevent tedious Actions & expensive Law Suits” (DB6-7). The “mossey field” is tract E in Fig. R003a. (Janis LaRue [S007] tells me the ownership of this tract is still disputed!)
Edward’s father Joseph Wood [R002] died in 1816. His inheritance was a slave boy named Burrell, whom he promptly sold to his Botetourt County brother James for $50 (Fig. R003b).
The censuses of 1820 and 1830 show Edward Wood living in Bath County. The 1830 census listed 2 boys less than 10 (John Carter, 6, and Francis Marion, just born); 2 men 15-20 (Joseph, 17, and James, 19); 1 man 50-60 (Edward, 53); 1 girl less than five (Elvira, ~5); 2 girls 5-10 (Sarah, 9, and Elizabeth, ~10), 2 girls 10-15 (Harriet, 12, and Martha, 15), 1 woman 30-40 (Sarah, 42), 2 male slaves 10-24, and 1 female slave 10-24. Note that Augustus (24), Amanda (20), and Mary (23) were no longer in the household. Augustus had married his first cousin Mary Vernon Wood in 1827, Amanda and Mary had married their Botetourt County first cousins Joseph and John Wood Moore within 10 days of each other in 1828, and all three families had moved to Randolph County (below).
Between 1811 and 1836, Edward’s brother Thomas [R252] occupied the adjacent farm upstream of his on the Cowpasture River (Fig. R003a). In 1836 Thomas sold the farm to their brother Joseph Jr. [R254], who worked it until 1845.
The Bath County voter lists show Edward voting there between 1813 and 1818. He was active in the Windy Cove Presbyterian Church, and in 1844 was one of the founders of the nearby Indian Hill Methodist Church [R023]. However after 1820 his ambitions shifted to what is now West Virginia, where land was cheap (about 30¢ an acre) and certain to appreciate in value. That state was still largely virgin territory and heavily timbered, and Edward and his son Augustus began a career in logging. According to [S087], “...the first saw-mill in Mingo [in Randolph County, 70 miles N. of Edward’s home] was built by Edward Woods and John Smiley at the Laurel Thicket, on H. C. Tolly’s place, near Valley Head, in 1822. The wagon which hauled the irons for the mill was the first that crossed the mountain to Mingo. It was driven by Augustus Woods, who cut the road as he came. He drove two horses from Jackson’s River...” (Augustus would have been 16 in 1822.) See [R025] about Mingo W.Va.
On the same day, 5/27/1825, Edward and his nephews James Morton Wood [R251] and Tommie E. Wood [R261] bought tracts of land in Pocahontas County from Brown Jenks and his wife Laura. Edward bought 2000-acre lot E1, shown in Fig. R003c, for $1000. In 1826 Edward bought 3000 acres of land referred to as the “Wedge Lot” on the Tygart Valley River in Randolph County, also from Brown Jenks and his wife for $500 (DB9-348; Figs. R003c and R361b). In 1833 he bought another 1100 acres of Randolph County land from Jenks for $400 (DB11-164). Remember, this was a time when Edward was in default of a debt for $187.50 in Bath County. He may have been slightly unethical; see [R277] and [R251] about questionable legal disputes with his sister and his nephew in 1844 and 1848, respectively. Ever mindful of his spiritual life, however, in 1836 Edward donated two acres of land from his Wedge Lot for a church and a school house at Mingo Run (DB12-218), with the stipulation that if the meeting house was not erected within eighteen months the deed was null and void. The church was built in 1838 (Fig. R003d).
Edward’s intention was to divide his land holdings in Randolph and Bath County among all his children, and the tracts they were to get were settled upon. He got only as far as writing and entering deeds in Randolph County for Augustus (DB11-349), Elizabeth (Lemon), Amanda (Moore), Mary (Moore), Patsy Ann (Douglass) (DB18-467), and Harriet (Wilson) before he died (see the preambles of [R904] and [R913]). This appears to have happened in 1848, soon after his son James’s [R365] death. Edward’s burial place is not known, nor is that of Sarah, who died soon afterward. Family tradition [S007] is that Sarah was buried in the Indian Hill Cemetery (Fig. R003a), near the White house, but the cemetery is now grown up and most of the headstones have crumbled, so this cannot be verified. Logically, Edward is buried there too: he seems to have maintained his home in Bath County, in spite of his energetic activity in Randolph County. [R902] and [R903] detail the disposal of Edward’s personal property in Randolph and Bath Counties, respectively, in 1849 after his death. These show that he did not maintain any significant residence in Randolph County. The sale of his Randolph County property did include the sawmill irons that Augustus hauled across the mountain, though. Edward’s Bath County estate included nine slaves. However, if death overtook Teddy in Mingo, it is unlikely that his children there would or could have moved his body back to Bath County for burial. There is no stone for him in the Mingo cemetery, but there are few or no other inscribed stones that old. He could be buried in one of the graves there that are marked only by undressed, uninscribed slabs of the native rock.
Surprisingly, considering his constant traffic with lawyers who wrote deeds and litigated for him, Edward died intestate. Death seems to have taken him by surprise. He had not deeded parcels of land to many of his children, as he intended to, when he died. Edward’s children reached an agreement to complete the division of their father’s land according to his wishes (preambles referenced above). In 1849 Edward’s heirs sold tracts of Wedge Lot land for $1 to Powhattan and Sarah Tolley [R913], John Carter Wood (Randolph County DB18-79), and Joseph T. Wood (DB18-75). In 1854 the heirs sold Edward’s Bath County homestead to Francis Marion Wood [R904] and a Randolph County tract to America Pierce (DB20-65) for $1 each. The statement of Edward’s intentions in [R904] and [R913] included a tract of Wedge Lot land for his daughter Elvira too, but I have not found a deed conveying it. Elvira and John Armentrout appear to have received the NE portion of Edward Wood’s original 1810 tract of Bath County land, which abutted on their property; see [R005]. However, I have not seen a deed transferring this land either.
John Wood Moore [R354], Edward’s Randolph County son-in-law, was appointed Administrator of the estate, which was settled between 1849 and 1852 (Bath County WB5-381, WB5-447). $1203.50 was realized, after debts of the estate were settled, and this was split evenly among ten of his children. Curiously, the children who remained in Bath County, Francis Marion and Elvira, were omitted from this division. So was America Pierce.
Sarah died about 1850. Edward’s intentions as reiterated in [R904] included the condition that sons Francis Marion and James, who were to receive the Bath County homestead, would “maintain and support Sarah Wood the widow and relict of the said Edward Wood during her natural life.” The agreement, which was signed by Edward’s heirs 5/20/1854, notes that this “was faithfully complied with.” By then James had died too.
Sources: [S001, S017, S018, S031, S083, S120]
