THOMAS W. WOOD, M. D., of Shelbyville, Tenn., is a son of James and Eliza (Oberall) Wood, natives, respectively, of North Carolina and Virginia. The father was born February 10, 1798, and the mother May 13, 1806. They were married September 17, 1829. Ten children blessed their union: John A., William J., Melissa J., Thomas W., Sarah A., Horace O., Nancy P., Martha H., Eliza T. and James G. Mr. Wood came to Tennessee about 1810, and located in what is now Cannon County, where he remained about two years, and then moved to near Woodbury, where he died November 16, 1865. He had been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South for nearly forty years. The mother died September 11, 1874.
Thomas W. Wood was born in Cannon County, where he received a good common school education, and attended the Lawrence Academy at Woodbury Station. At the breaking out of the war he joined the Eighteenth Tennessee Infantry, and participated in the battle of Shiloh and numerous skirmishes, and was selected as the one to receive the banner for his company, presented by the young ladies of Woodbury. Owing to ill health he was soon compelled to abandon active service, but was given a position in the commissary department and served as commissary sergeant until the close of the war.
He was paroled at Macon, Ga., and after his return home engaged in farming and school teaching. He began his medical studies in 1867, and attended his first course of lectures in the medical department of the University of Nashville in 1868, 1869 and 1870, graduating the latter year. He has since practiced in Bedford County, and has built up an extensive practice. Dr. Wood was appointed by the county commissioner as physician for the poor asylum, and has held that position ten years. He was twice appointed deputy county clerk of Cannon County, and at one time lacked only a few votes of being the nominee of the Democratic party for representative of Bedford County. He was at one time salesman in a wholesale hat house in Philadelphia.
Transcribed by Kathryn Hopkins
Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of Maury, Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson, Bedford & Marshall Counties, Besides a Valuable Fund of Notes, Reminescences [Sic], Observations, Etc., Etc. Easley, S.C.: Southern Historical Press, 1988.