[5][6] 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.

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.

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.

Appointed the federal land registrar by President James Monroe, Virginian Coles had released his eleven slaves while on the way to Illinois to take his post.

The American Revolution fading from memory and the War of 1812 two decades earlier, Wood saw the recent overthrow of the Ottoman Empire by the Greeks, the birthplace of Democracy in 800 A.D., a rebirth of freedom.

[12] Wood himself turned the four large columns at the front of a house from coffeywood trees, which he selected, on a horse-powered lathe he fabricated.

He found his craftsmen in St. Louis and New Orleans, where he sought men arriving from Germany who were skilled in construction trades.

The large mansion is now owned by the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County and is open for tours from April through October.

The General Assembly, soon to adjourn its session in early 1860, granted Wood's request that he be allowed to remain in Quincy to manage business interests and the construction of his stone octagonal mansion.

A room on the south side of his Greek Revival mansion was expanded to become the official governor's office of the State of Illinois.

Wood's greatest achievement in his ten months as governor was his work to reorganize the Illinois militia, which had been neglected since the end of the Mexican War.

[15] Governor Richard Yates appointed Wood one of five Illinois delegates to the failed "Peace Convention" in Washington, D.C., in February 1861.

An economic decline in 1875 cost Wood his fortune, and creditors forced him to sell his assets, including the stone mansion.