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About Col. Archibald Alexander Woods
- Son of Martha Poage and Andrew Woods
- Pension R11825V Rank Sergeant, Virginia Militia
- Married Anne Pogue; 8 children
- In 1788 he was sent as a representative to the Constitutional Convention in Righmond, VA.
- He also served in the War of 1812 and founded Woodsfield Ohio in Monroe Co.
Biography
The youngest of Andrew and Martha's children, Archibald (1764-1846), extended the prominence of the family in the social and political circles of western Virginia. Born and raised in Albemarle County, Va., Archibald enlisted in the Virginia Militia at the age of only 16, and was under the command of Gen. William Campbell at Yorktown when he was wounded. At the war's end in 1783, he and two of his brothers followed their father's pioneering ways and emigrated to the Ohio Valley, a region then unsettled by whites that stretched to the Monongahela River and included parts of what today is West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Having received warrants for several thousand acres in the Ohio Valley in remuneration for his service in the war, Archibald, like many of his fellow veterans, availed himself of the lucrative opportunity to speculate in "western" lands, a business in which he was eminently successful. Over several years, he occupied himself in surveying and purveying lands in the Ohio Valley, and in the process, he accrued a very substantial estate.
Still only 22 in 1788, Archibald was sent as a representative to the U.S. Constitutional convention in Richmond, and for twenty years thereafter, he was president of the Northwestern Bank of Virginia and of the County Court of Ohio County. Despite his other activities, Archibald never flagged in his commitment to the military. In 1809, he was commissioned as Colonel of the 4th Virginia Regiment, and remained on duty until the end of the War of 1812.
In 1787, Archibald built the first wing of "Woodsdale," a home on Homestead Lane near Wheeling, W.Va., that would remain the family seat for over 160 years. Plans from 1815-1816 reveal a modest home consisting of "a frame house 26 feet by 34 in the clear two stories high..." It was here that Archibald Woods brought his bride, Anne Poage, in 1789 to live and raise a family, and succeeding generations added their own touches, extending the house and grounds. Archibald's son John J. (b. 1807) continued farming the land, and following his marriage to Ruth H. Jacob in 1848, began raising his own family on the John J. Woods Home Farm. In 1891, Ruth and her children ceded a portion of the original property to establish Woodsdale Park, and in 1897, John's heirs further subdivided the estate. Still, one of John's sons, Archibald (d. 1912), managed to continue the operation of the farm, and even after his untimely death in 1912, his wife, Rebecca, remained there to raise her three daughters.
With the steady growth of the small communities around Woodsdale in the late 19th century, by 1919, the Home Farm had become completely engulfed by the city of Wheeling. Prior to the marriage of Archibald and Rebecca in 1905, several parcels had been sold as building lots for residential purposes. The Woodsdale Children's Home, along with several private residences were built on portions of the Home Farm between the 1890s and 1910s. The original homestead was torn down in 1949, though the entrance and the streets bearing the names of early settlers remain.
Notes
- Folder 30 Bills of sale from Geo[rge] Sampson,Northampton County, Virginia, to Archi[bal]d Woods, 15 December 1787. 2 items. "For 2 slaves, a boy named Littleton and a girl named Pink."
- Elijah Woods, Sr. was born in Rockingham Co., Virginia, in 1778. He migrated from that county to the Upper Ohio Valley, with his Uncle Archibald Woods. (from a letter from Dr. Tiffin to Worthington, in the Ohio State Library, Worthington Manuscript Collection, and from Thomas Worthington's Biography , "mention is made on page 20 about moving from Virginia to Chillicothe, Ohio, a Mr. Woods and several large boys who were millwrights, with a group of five free Negro servants joining them in their journey, 1798")
- Archibald Woods settled about three miles east of Wheeling on a farm which now composes Woodsdale, Woodlawn and some other residential areas. He also had 6,000 acres in Tyler County, Virginia. (according to his will).
Sources
- Woods family papers, William L. Clements Library, The University of Michigan.
- Archibald Woods Papers, Manuscripts and Rare Books Department, Swem Library, College of William and Mary.
- Chronicles of the Scotch Irish Settlement of Virginia by Lyman Chalkey. Vol. 2, pp 290-299
Links
- http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=:3349820&...
- Find A Grave Memorial# 75974229
DAR Ancestor #: A128820
Woods, Archibald, 1764-1846
Archibald Woods, of Wheeling, W. Va. and Ohio County, W. Va., was a Federalist who served in the Virginia House of Delegates and was a member of the Virginia Convention of 1788. He briefly served in the Revolutionary War and later was an officer in the Virginia militia, attaining the rank of colonel before resigning in 1816. Woods was president and a director of the North Western Bank of Virginia. He owned a flour mill, traded whiskey and leased out land. One of the founders of Woodsfield, Ohio, Woods was a land spectulator in military warrant land in the Northwest Territory and bought public land in Ohio and Indiana in addition to having extensive land holdings in West Virginia. He promoted the building of the Cumberland Road which passed through Wheeling.
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Col. Archibald Alexander Woods's Timeline
| 1764 |
November 14, 1764
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Augusta or Botetourt County, VA, United States
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| 1794 |
1794
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| 1846 |
October 26, 1846
Age 81
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Wheeling, Ohio County, WV, United States
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October 1846
Age 81
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Stone Church Cemetery, Elm Grove, Ohio County, WV, United States
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