R361
Husband: Augustus (Gus) Wood
Father: Edward Wood [R003]
Mother: Sarah (Gilliland) Wood [R003]
Born: 9/7/1806
Died: 6/15/1892, buried with his wife in the Gus Wood Cemetery,
Mingo Flats W.V.
Wife: Mary (Polly) Vernon (Wood) Wood
Father: Carlos Wood [R250]
Mother: Glaffery (Bailey) Wood [R250]
Born: ~1805
Died: ~1860
Married: In Botetourt County [S008]. Mary V. Wood certified “above
the age of 21 years,” 11/5/1827; security and witness, her half-brother
James M. Wood [R251]. M. 11/15/1827, William Hank Minister
Children (four are shown in Fig. R361a):
William E. Wood, 11/1829-8/21/1862, m. 3/31/1857 to Martha Jane
Dinkle (19, dau. of Samuel and Elizabeth Dinkle), dau. Mary
Elizabeth (4/20/1858-4/5/1880, m. Robert C. Hall, ch. Cora
[3/28/1880-6/22/1880], Ewing A. [d. 11/9/1880])
John M. Wood, 5/7/1831-6/27/1905, did not marry. Buried in the
Augustus Wood cemetery
Sarah J. Wood, 1833-1/7/1907, m. George Beaty (his 2nd marriage)
Francis V. Wood, 1834-9/7/1861
Harriet S. Wood, 8/1835-1/1915, m. 1862 to Samuel M. Cary
(3/14/1833-8/17/1920), buried in the Augustus Wood Cemetery
Martha Ann Pettit Wood, 12/1838-11/1917, m. 3/7/1860 to Daniel
Kellison (11/1832-4/1917, s. of James and Susanna Kellison), buried
in the Augustus Wood Cemetery. Dau. Florence m. Charles Noah
Wood, s. of John C. Wood [R362], in Kansas
Joseph A. Wood, 1842-3/24/1862
(1996) Augustus Wood was born in Botetourt County. His family moved to Bath County in 1810, when he was 4. At an early age he began helping his father with his Randolph County enterprises: “...the first saw-mill in Mingo was built by Edward Woods and John Smiley at the Laurel Thicket, on H. C. Tolley 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...” [S087]. Gus was 16 in 1822.
In 1827 he married his first cousin Mary Vernon Wood, who had been born in Charlotte County. They may have lived briefly in Pocahontas County, on land that Gus’s father bought there in 1825 [R003] [S030]. Gus and Polly appear in the 1830 census of Randolph County, which lists 1 boy less than 5, 1 man 20-30, 1 woman 20-30, and 1 male slave less than 10. They lived in Randolph County thereafter (though a later census listing for son Francis shows he was born in Bath County in 1834; but this could have happened during a visit to Gus’s home place). In 1834 Edward Wood [R003] gave son Gus and Polly 185 acres of his Wedge Lot land, probably the land they were already living on (DB11-349). This tract lay in area A1 of Fig. R361b. A2-A4 were tracts purchased later from Edward’s estate.
In 1850 all of Gus and Polly’s children had been born, and all are listed in the household described by the census of that year. By 1860 son William E. Wood had married Martha Dinkle and the 1860 census shows them living in a separate household, close to Gus and Polly’s, with their two-year old daughter Mary Elizabeth.
All four of Gus and Polly’s sons served in the Confederate Army in the Civil War. Three of them died. John and Joseph were in Company F of the 31st Virginia Infantry [R024], but their records are almost empty. John enlisted at Huttonsville W.Va. 4/10/1862 and survived the war. Joseph died (3/24/1862) and was buried in Pocahontas County [see R024]. There are no military records for William and Francis. Family tradition [S128] is that William died (8/21/1862) and was buried in Albemarle County Va., and Francis died (9/7/1861) and was buried in Bath County Va.
Gus appears in the 1870 Randolph County census listing, but not Polly; she died about 1860. With Gus in the household were his son John (39), his daughter Sarah (37), his orphaned granddaughter Mary Elizabeth (11, daughter of William and Martha Wood), and a Sarah J. Thomas (41) and John C. Thomas (10, probably Sarah’s son), whose relationship to Gus is not clear.
Some remarks on Gus and Polly’s children and their lines follow. The marriage records refer to William as “William E. Wood, Jr.” I speculate that he was named William Edward Wood, after his grandfather [R003], but can’t prove it. Gus gave (for $1) 137 acres of his land to William in 1858 (DB22-304; tract A2 in Fig. R361b). In 1859, William (30) circulated a proposal “...to teach an English School at the old Church, to commence on the first Monday in December, and continue three months. Branches: Orthography, Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, English Grammar, Geography, etc...Tuition—Two dollars and fifty cents per scholar, four cents for each scholar sent by the day. I bind myself to keep good order and any time lost on my part, will be made up at the close of the session...” After William died in the Civil War his widow Martha married Lanty Potts, 26, son of M. C. and R. W. Potts, 10/9/1867 in Mingo Flats, and title to the 137 acres of land passed to their daughter Mary Elizabeth, still a minor. About 1879 Elizabeth married Robert Hall, and they had two children, Ewing and Cora. However Elizabeth, Cora, and Ewing all died within a few months of each other in 1880, which left Robert Hall and Gus Wood heirs-at-law of Elizabeth, and tenants in common of tract A2 [S129]. The two partitioned the land in 1882 (DBI-346).
Gwendolyn Wood recounts the story in an earthier way [S125]: “Elizabeth had married Hall, Bob Hall, R. C. Hall. And it wasn’t a wedding that they approved, so when this child was born, Cora I believe, Elizabeth died. And the child lived two months longer, so that gave the inheritance to Hall—the land that had been divided up. And the Woods didn’t like that, and so they buried this Elizabeth and the little daughter in the Gus Wood cemetery, and Hall said he never wanted to be buried in there with the Woods, and that suited the Woods very well, so he’s buried in the meadow, on below the cemetery, and there’s a marker up there to him. He’s buried there. But that’s why he inherited the Gus Wood land, and that Hall land runs on down the River nearly a mile, I should say, a strip down along the River. And just recently it’s been in heirship from a girl I call Tiny Moore from New York, came down here and took some pictures of it, and she died at a hundred years and left it to another Moore, and so the Moores and the Halls have it now. [The Moores used to live] on top of the hill where the John Carter Wood property was. And one of them’s a school teacher, one of them was the Post Master, here in Mingo...but this Hall, this Bob Hall’s land went down to Iry Hall and Hugh Hall, and Iry Hall’s niece was a Moore, and Iry Hall left his share of the land to Tiny Moore.”
Gwendolyn’s summary of John M. Wood (Fig. R361a) is succinct: “—never married. Horse killed him when he was in 80s. No palate in his mouth. The only one of Gus Wood’s boys alive after the Civil War.” In 1882 Gus gave his remaining son the northeastern portion of tract A1 (Fig. R361b), which included his own home (DBI-349). He had given tract A3 (137 acres) to John in 1858 (DB22-305).
Sarah J. Wood was the second wife of George Beaty (Fig. R361a), “a blacksmith, community leader, Confederate soldier, stalwart churchman” [S121]. George’s children were by his first wife. They had lived in Virginia. “During the Civil War he was here with General Lee and liked the place. Following the war and death of his wife, he brought [his] five girls and came to Mingo to live. Having been an elder in Windy Cove Church [Bath County Va., R023], he was installed an elder here. Sarah, daughter of Augustus, was the Sunday School teacher for the girls. [The girls] persuaded their father to marry Sarah and make them a home...” Their daughter Fannie (and George Beaty) appear in Fig. R362a. “Fannie married Samuel H. Wood [R372], son of John Carter Wood [R362]... When Sarah died it was in January and too snowy to travel. So she was buried and when spring came a ‘Green Funeral’ was held. Only the second one I know of in the area [S125].” In 1882 Gus Wood gave Sarah and George the northwest corner of tract A1 (36 acres) and the northwestern half of A2 (51 acres) in Fig. R361b (DBI-351).
Harriet Wood married Samuel Cary (Fig. R361a). When Gus Wood was divesting himself of his land in 1882, he gave Harriet and Sam two tracts: the southern portion of A1 (47 acres), and L3 (which he had acquired from Samuel Lemon in earlier years; 50 acres) of Fig. R361b (DBI-348).
Martha Wood married Daniel Kellison (Fig. R361a). In 1882 Gus gave the Kellisons the southwest corner of tract A1 (50 acres) and a 40-acre portion of tract A2 in Fig. R361b (DBI-354). “Martha and Dan Kellison and some Rineharts who lived up here in Mingo, and another family or two, got in wagons and went to Kansas, and homesteaded some land. They drove out there and then they stayed a year or two, and one of John Carter Wood’s boys [Charles Noah] went out there to visit, and married their daughter [Florence, in 1885]. The Kellison daughter out there. But at any rate, they went broke. Their crops failed, and it was dry, and they came back. And Harriet, Gus Wood’s daughter Harriet who’d married Cary, he lived here beside of the Mingo store and Post Office, and when Kellison came back and Cary, and they were all in the store every night to talk, they’d loaf in there till nine o’clock at night or more, and Kellison just kept telling tales about Kansas: Oh-h-h, it was just such a fine place to live. Just black, rich soil, deep, and you could just do most anything. Just be a perfect place, if they just had water. And of course Cary had furnished the money, had bought him a horse or some horses ...and he got sick of that, he said, ‘Well, so would hell!’...He wasn’t very proud of Kansas. [S125]”
I have always supposed Augustus, as Edward Wood’s [R003] first son, probably inherited whatever papers and family mementos his father had held, and I’ve wished I could track them down and see them, wherever they are.
Sources: [S030, S031, S032, S075, S077, S083, S088, S104, S106, S123, S124, S128]
