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To reach the old WOOD farm you first come across what once the PARKER
family farm and through an open field that once served as the boundary. In the tree line is a substantial stone
wall, fallen down in some spots, but for the most part still standing proud against time.
We are told it was originally built with slave labor. Along the path leading up to the
cabin, we pass a substantial wood barn. Perhaps this is the one that Clara Wood Alexander
described as the venue for her father's political meetings. |
| According to her, they were held away from the house because a part of
Josiah F. Wood's campaign tactic when he ran for office as County Trustee was to call a
meeting and open a keg a whiskey to entice potential voters. His wife, Monie Carson Wood,
thoroughly disapproved of this practice necessitating the barn yard site. Near the top of the hill in what is now a
cow pasture sits the cabin itself consisting of three rooms with an enclosed porch on the
back. |
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Originally the middle was an open breezeway. The
logs are hand hewn with easily visible axe marks and notched at the corner intersections.
Chinking fills the gaps. A stone hearth dominates the room on the right that appears to
have been used primarily as a bedroom. The
remnants of a wood mantle remain of what was once described as a beautiful piece of carved
wood. Above the rooms are open rafters that are now used to store lumber but was likely
used as children;s bedroom loft when the cabin was built. A tin room currently keeps out
the weather but originally the roof was no doubt constructed of wood. A architectural
historian dates the construction of the cabin as pre-Civil War most likely in the 1850's
or even late 1840's making this almost assuredly the home of Frances WOOD. Just behind the
cabin are two small sheds, one of which was used as a chicken house and the other as a
privy. Out the front door is a large field that slopes downhill to the present day road. The cabin has not been inhabited in at least
25 years. Before that it was used from time to time, usually as a "first" home
for various newly married couples (including DeWitt |
| Woodmore, Sr.) Clara Wood once said that she was
born in the cabin and lived there as a young girl. Out
the back door and a short walk up the hill takes you to the area that Mr. Woodmore
described as the WOOD graveyard. There are no stones visible but this is the likely burial
place of Frances Wood and his wife, Susan Stubblefield Wood.
The WOOD farm is now owned
by the descendents of their long time friends and neighbors, the Woodmore family. It lies
along the meandering Goose Creek outside Hartsville, in what is now Trousdale County but
until the formation of that county in 1876 was part of Smith County. The property passed
out of WOOD hands around 1918 upon the death of Miss Martha WOOD, the last surviving child
of Francis WOOD and an unmarried spinster. By that time J.F. Wood was already dead (1904)
and his wife, Monie had gone to live with her daughter in Nashville. |
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