John Wood (d. 15 May 1822), cartographer, was born in Scotland, but the place and date of his birth and the names of his parents are not known. From the range of his interests in adulthood, he likely had a broad classical education and an unusually inquisitive mind. His earliest-known publication was a technical work on art, Elements of Perspective (1797), which was written while he was master of a drawing academy in Edinburgh. He lived for a short time in Switzerland and published A General View of the History of Switzerland in 1798.

Sometime in 1799 or 1800, Wood immigrated to New York City, where he tutored the daughter of Aaron Burr, vice president of the United States from 1801 to 1805. He also supported Burr's political career, producing in 1801 a work entitled The History of the Administration of John Adams, Esq.; Late President of the United States. Wood's polemic took Burr's side against Adams too enthusiastically, causing Burr to see the work as a political liability and trying to curb its publication. After the suppression attempt was made public, the book appeared in June 1802 and Wood reportedly spent some days in prison on charges of libel but was never tried. Shortly afterwards Wood published A Correct Statement of the Various Sources from which The History of the Administration of John Adams was Compiled, and the Motives for its Suppression by Col. Burr (1802).

Late in 1802, Wood moved to Richmond to become an editor of the Virginia Gazette published by prominent Federalist printer Augustine Davis. By January 1805, Wood was teaching mathematics, science, Latin, and drawing at a Richmond academy. In May he was commissioned a surveyor for the city, and in July advertised that he was opening his own private school for young men. By September, however, he had resigned his post as city surveyor and traveled west to undertake a survey in the Louisiana Territory. He stopped in Frankfort, Kentucky, where he and a partner began publishing the Western World newspaper in July 1806. The paper quickly gained notoriety for its accusations against Burr's allegedly treasonous machinations in the western United States. But when he testified at the grand jury investigation of Burr in December 1806, Wood recanted his claims, and the jury declined to indict Burr for treason. Wood left Frankfort that month and moved to Washington, D.C. In January 1807 he began co-editing the short-lived Atlantic World and also published A Full Statement of the Trial and Acquittal of Aaron Burr, Esq (1807).

Wood returned to Richmond by February 1808 when he advertised in the Richmond Enquirer his intention to expand his Manchester Academy to more students. The following year he published A New Theory of the Diurnal Rotation of the Earth and joined the faculty at Louis Hue Girardin's academy for boys, whose students included one of Thomas Jefferson's grandsons. Wood was appointed professor of mathematics at the College of William and Mary in January 1812, but did not remain long. By August he had announced and quickly abandoned plans to open an academy in Charlottesville. Instead, he became head of the Petersburg Academy, where he remained until 1816. In September 1814 he established the Petersburg Daily Courier, but both of his partners left, and he sold the paper in December to concentrate on the academy, where he remained its principal until 1816. In 1818 he helped establish the Richmond Academy for educating "youth of both sexes in the languages, arts, and sciences." Wood had a reputation for eccentricity in both appearance and behavior, according to political enemies and former students. He was described as so "ungainly in person and manner, and so unique in gait and dress, as to excite the scrutiny and attract the notice of passing strangers."

The prospect of a new career beckoned to Wood. As the nation expanded westward, an improved transportation network from the seaboard inland became a necessity. Private joint stock companies alone, however, could not afford the construction and maintenance expenses. On 5 February 1816 the General Assembly created the Fund for Internal Improvement and the Board of Public Works to invest money in these transportation ventures. As a result, numerous turnpikes, bridges, canals, and railroads were constructed in the decades preceding the Civil War. Before the work began, however, there was a need for a new map of the state. The General Assembly passed another act in February 1816 calling for a detailed map of each county, to be followed by a carefully drafted and engraved statewide map.

Wood's relationship with Jefferson emboldened him to ask the former president to recommend him to the governor to head the map project. Jefferson agreed and even lent Wood his sextant. Although Wood applied for the position of principal engineer to the Board of Public Works late in 1816, he was instead appointed one of five surveyors to chart Virginia's rivers for the map. In 1819, Governor James Patton Preston put him in charge of the whole endeavor. Wood hired Danish immigrant Herman Bőÿe as his assistant. Bőÿe was an engrossing clerk in the Virginia House of Delegates, writing the final versions of bills in a neat hand. He graphically turned Wood's surveys and notes into the manuscript maps.

Beginning in 1819 the two men completed ninety-six county maps over the next three years, prior to Wood's death. Bőÿe was awarded the contract to finish Wood's work, including having the statewide map engraved and distributed in 1827. John Wood died in Richmond on 15 May 1822 and was buried in Shockoe Hill Cemetery. In his will, Wood left his estate to several friends, including his "Library and all my philosophical and mathematical instruments" to Governor Thomas Mann Randolph, Jefferson's son-in-law. The Richmond Enquirer's obituary concluded with a kind tribute: "John Wood had friends, and very warm ones; because he had a warm heart to love others, and with all his eccentricities, there was a simplicity of feeling and manners about him, which was interesting and attractive."

Sources Consulted:
Richard W. Stephenson and Marianne M. McKee, eds., Virginia in Maps: Four Centuries of Settlement, Growth, and Development (2000), 121–122, 146; correspondence in J. Jefferson Looney, ed., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, (2004– ), esp. vols. 2, 8–14, and 16; Henrico Co. Order Book, 12:9; Richmond Enquirer, 1 Jan. 1805, 24 May 1805, 2 July 1805, 26 Feb. 1808, 2 Jan. 1813, 5 Oct. 1816, 30 Nov. 1816, 7 Dec. 1816, 4 Aug. 1818 (first quotation); Richmond Virginia Argus, 27 Jan. 1807; Petersburg Daily Courier, 27 Dec. 1814; Petersburg Index, 3 and 22 Aug. 1868 (second quotation); Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia, (1819–1820 sess.), 8, (1822–1823 sess.), 88–89; Ronald Rayman, "Frontier Journalism in Kentucky: Joseph Montfort Street and the Western World, 1806–1809," Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 76 (1978): 98–111; Thomas N. Baker, "John Wood Weighs In: Making Sense of the Burr Conspiracy in the Western World," Ohio Valley History 14 (2014): 3–22; will and estate inventory in Richmond City Hustings Wills, Inventories, and Accounts, 3:181–184 (third quotation), 232–239; obituaries in Richmond Enquirer, 17 May 1822 (fourth quotation), and Alexandria Gazette, 25 May 1822.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by John S. Salmon and Marianne M. McKee.

How to cite this page:
John S. Salmon and Marianne M. McKee, "John Wood (d. 1822)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Wood_John, accessed [today's date]).

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