John Wood (December 20, 1798 – June 4, 1880) was the 12th governor of Illinois, serving from March 18, 1860, to January 14, 1861. Wood was a founder and the first settler of Quincy, Illinois. Early years Wood was born on December 20, 1798, in Sempronius, New York, in the area now known as Moravia. He was the second child and son of Dr. Daniel and Catherine Crause Wood. His mother became estranged from the family when John Wood was five and moved to Palatine, New York. Wood was sent to live with his older cousin, James, and his wife, Mary Armstrong Wood, in Florida, New York. In the vanguard of adventurous young eastern emigrants, Wood on November 2, 1818, left his New York home. He initially planned to farm in Northern Alabama. In Cincinnati during the winter of 1818-1819, however, he gained access to two books by Edmund Dana, published in Cincinnati in 1818. A resident and surveyor in the Illinois Military Tract, land set aside by Congress as bounty for veterans of the War of 1812, Dana provided the lure that changed Wood's destination. Dana's books extolled the significant advantages of a promontory over the Mississippi River at Illinois' westernmost point. Wood moved west to land near Atlas in Pike County, Illinois, squatted (resided on land he did not own), and became a farmer. Here, Wood met land speculator Peter Flinn, from whom he bought of land in the 3.5-million-acre Illinois Military Tract. Wood moved to his newly acquired land and with Jeremiah Rose in 1822 built a small, one-room log cabin on the east bank of the Mississippi River at today's Quincy, Illinois. Rose, his wife, and their five-year-old daughter lived with Wood in the cabin until 1826, when Wood married Ann M. Streeter of Salem, New York, daughter of Justice of the Peace Joshua Streeter. Land speculator Intending to speculate in land in the Military Tract, Wood had arrived at the federal land office in Edwardsville, Illinois, where he met Willard Keyes, a Vermont native. Keyes had taught French and Indian children at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, for two years and become disenchanted with his profession and disappointed that he had accumulated nothing. Learning Wood had the same idea about speculating in land, Keyes formed an informal partnership with Wood. They journeyed to the site on the Mississippi that had attracted Wood west. It was a