He studied law,[2] but then moved to Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1834 and then to the backcountry pioneer village of Fort Wayne in 1836.

Rather than being a lawyer, Wood joined with Thomas Tigar to work on the Fort Wayne Sentinel, which was founded in 1833.

Four years after its founding, Wood bought ownership of the newspaper sometime around the Panic of 1837, and he promptly sold the paper in 1840 to I.D.G.

He was elected to serve a second one-year term as mayor in 1841, but halfway through the year he asked the council to allow him to return to his private affairs.

He established the Fort Wayne times, a Whig paper, in 1841, and sold it to Henry W. Jones in 1842.