Wood, Reuben

Born: 1792 Rutland County, Vermont

Died: 1864-10-01 Cuyahoga County, Ohio

Flourished: 1818 to 1864 Cuyahoga County, Ohio

Reuben Wood, attorney and public official, was born in Middletown, Vermont, and was educated at home until the age of fifteen, after which he studied classics and law in Canada. He was conscripted into the Canadian army during the War of 1812, but escaped across Lake Ontario and served briefly in the U.S. Army in the same conflict. After the war Wood completed his legal studies in Vermont, then relocated to Cleveland in 1818, where he had a long career in law and politics. He was elected to the Ohio Senate in 1825 and served through 1830, then two years later was elected to the Supreme Court of Ohio, remaining on the bench until 1847. Wood was elected governor of Ohio in 1850 as a Democrat, and continued in the office until 1853 when President Franklin Pierce appointed him U.S. consul to Valparaiso, Chile. He resumed the practice of law in Cleveland in 1855 and subsequently retired to his farm in Cuyahoga County, where he died. Wood married Mary Rice in 1816 and was survived by two children from this marriage.

Robert Sobel and John Raimo, eds., Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States 1789-1978 (Westport, CT: Meckler Books, 1978), 3:1205-6; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Cuyahoga County, OH, 231; Journal of the Executive Proceedings of the Senate of the United States of America (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1887), 9:233, 265, 391; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Cuyahoga County, OH, 10; Cleveland Morning Leader (OH), 3 October 1864, 1:1; Gravestone, Woodland Cemetery, Cleveland, OH.