My Genealogy Hound

John R. Wood, planter, Marianna. This prominent agriculturist of Lee County, Ark., owes his nativity to Hardeman County, Tenn., where his birth occurred November 7, 1835, and is the son of Dr. George Wood, who was born in Albemarle County, Va. Dr. Wood received his education in the University of Virginia, and graduated from the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia. He then went to Hardeman County, Tenn., practiced in Hickory Valley for eight or ten years, and there married the mother of our subject, Eliza Harkens, who bore him six children. On account of failing health, he gave up his practice and engaged in cultivating the soil, continuing at this for ten years, when his health had so improved that he moved to Searcy, Hardeman County, and resumed the practice of medicine. He there gave his children all good common school educations. In 1853 he and his brother bought a plantation in this county, and he abandoned his practice and moved to Arkansas in 1869. He sold the place on which Marianna now stands to his brother, and in January, 1870, when he came out he bought another farm, then in St. Francis (now Lee) County. Here he died in 1872, at the age of seventy-one years. He remained at his home in Tennessee during the war, but was a Union man. John R. Wood attended school in Bolivar and Jackson, Tenn., finishing his education in West Tennessee College, at Jackson. He wished to become a civil engineer, and after working two years at this his father had him give up the profession. In 1859 he engaged in merchandising with J. A. Jarrett, father of J. R. Jarrett, of Marianna, and continued at this business until the breaking out of the war. He then enlisted in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, was commissioned captain, but not liking the position resigned. He returned home, and there joined Gen. Forrest’s regiment as a private, participating in the battles of Shiloh and Corinth, and fell back with the army to Tupelo, Miss. There his health failed him, and he hired a substitute. He then went to Columbus, Miss., and entered the commissary department, as an agent to buy corn and beef, etc. He remained six months, when, his health still continuing bad, he went home and remained on his father’s plantation, in Hardeman County, for twelve months. He then went to Memphis, and clerked in a wholesale grocery and cotton house, until the close of the war, when he returned to Hardeman County. He farmed during 1867, 1868 and 1869, and in 1870 moved to Lee County, Ark., with his father, remaining with him until after the latter’s death, since which time he has carried on the farm. He was married in 1860 to Miss Paulina Guy, a native of Hardeman County, Tenn., and the fruits of this union have been five children: George, Lucy (wife of Mr. Millett), Paulina, Fannie and Mary W. After the death of his first wife Mr. Wood married, in Arkansas, Miss Mary Pugh, a native of Greene County, who bore him five children, two now living, Samuel and Thomas; those deceased were named John R., Eliza and Jane.