Tours spotlight John Wood Mansion

During the holiday season
open house tours at the John Wood Mansion this month, visitors will see more
than a national landmark that was designated one of the most important
architectural treasures in Illinois. They will visit a 176-year-old home that
symbolized the promise of prosperity of America in the early 19th century. In
Quincy John Wood had ascended from poverty to wealth.

It was not chance that inspired John Wood to choose the Greek
Revival style for the design of his nearly 6,000-square-feet, 14-room mansion
at Wood Street and Burton Road, today’s 12th and State streets. American
architects of the early 19th century looked to Greece, the first democracy, for
inspiration and found a stylistic form Americans freely accepted. Soon
buildings in Philadelphia, New York, Washington, among others in the East were
designed with heroic elements like triangular pediments atop strongly
colonnaded buildings. In 1835 Greek Revival architecture found its
way to Quincy in the John Wood Mansion. It was the first of its kind in the
Midwest.

When Wood started construction, the number of buildings
outnumbered the 700 residents of Quincy. There were 752 buildings. It was the community’s
commercial engine that drove much of the construction. Along with Wood’s first
home, his 18 x 20-foot log cabin near on the southeast corner of Front and
today’s Delaware Street, there was Helm’s flour mill, Ira Pierce’s tannery,
Jeptha Lambkin’s pottery manufactory, Nathaniel Pease’s pork rendering house,
Jole Rice’s river warehouse and the Steamboat Hotel. At the north end of the
riverfront was the log cabin in which Wood’s friend and fellow Quincy founder
Willard Keyes lived. And some 40 businesses already were operating around
John’s Square, today’s Washington Park.

Wood builds a mansion

Wood, his wife Ann and five children — all under 10 years of
age — were living in his second home, a two-story log cabin on the northwest
side of Wood Street and Burton Road when he started construction of the
mansion. Wood contracted John Cleaveland, who had arrived in September 1834
from Sandy Bay, Mass., to erect it.

Wood sought out German emigrants to provide the expert
craftsmanship apparent in the home. He went to Saint Louis and New Orleans to
interest German workmen disembarking from ships from Europe to come to Quincy
to build his home. The incentive he offered was land on the south side of his
property and the use of Wood’s pasture for cows the German émigrés would keep
in their yards, the genesis of the term“Calftown” in South Quincy.

Wood closely supervised his home’s construction, which unlike
its current east-west axis was built facing south between today’s 11th and 12th
Streets on Burton Road. Wood selected the trees from which the timbers were
made. He converted a threshing machine into a lathe, operated by animal power,
to turn the four large Green Revival Doric-style columns in the front of the
house. A notable elliptical window was set in the pediment that rests on the
four columns.

Much of the interior woodwork was butternut, which Wood chose
from nearby groves, whose Greek flutings were hand carved and painted. Plaster
medallions were cast for the Woods’ bedroom on the second floor and parlor and
front hallways. Wide pine boards form the floors throughout the home.

Family occupies ‘the homestead’

The family moved into the mansion, which Wood called “the
homestead,” in 1837, a year before construction would be finished. It would be
the Woods’ family home for the next two decades.

Wood referred to it as his farmhouse and the 1850 census
listed Wood a farmer. His pride was his huge apple orchard across today’s 12th
Street east of his mansion. The orchard extended north to Maine and a mile
east, the approximate distance to today’s 24th Street. The farm included the
“John Wood Pasture,” which extended from Burton Road (State Street) south to
Harrison Street. Wood experimented with fruits and flowers and was particularly
fond of trees. That fondness led to the planting of a row of Osage Orange trees
to surround the orchard, a natural fence so thick it kept animals out of the
orchard.

In 1855 Wood was elected lieutenant governor on the first
Republican ticket with William Bissell as governor. Said to be interested in a
house larger than the governor’s mansion in Springfield, Wood in 1857 began
construction of a stone octagonal edifice in the middle of his lot between 11th
and 12th Streets.

The new home required the move of Wood’s “homestead,” and Wood
planned and supervised its move across 12th Street to the west side of the
orchard. Interviewed by the Quincy Herald-Whig in 1848 when he was 90, William
Kerkseick, who served as the Wood’s coachman from the age of 13 to adulthood,
recalled how the house was moved. Wood took in Kerkseick after the death of his
father, who also had served the Woods, left the boy homeless.

Wood moves mansion

Kerkseick remembered that Wood did not want the row of hedge
trees damaged by the move and had a ramp built of heavy timbers over the hedge,
which rose 10- to 12-feet over the property. The mansion’s four chimneys were
removed and the house cut into two sections. The front section was moved first,
then the back section, taking 20 teams of horses to pull each section over the
hedge row. Seated perfectly on the limestone rock foundation that had been
built to accommodate the structure, the home was remodeled by Wood for his
oldest son Daniel.

A national financial panic in 1875 and failed investments
left Wood unable to take care of the debt he incurred to build his $200,000
octagonal mansion. Creditors forced Wood to liquidate assets, including the
stone mansion, which he sold for $40,000 to Chaddock College. Wood moved back
into the Greek Revival mansion with son Daniel and family, where he spent the
remainder of his days. He died June 4, 1880, and the Wood family vacated the
home that fall.

There have been several owners of the home since. In late
1906 the City Council approved the request of some businessmen at 12th and State
to build an alley that would have required the demolition of the home. Louise
Maertz, an active member of the 11-year-old Quincy Historical Society,
challenged the Board to initiate a city-wide campaign to save the mansion and
enlisted the 77-year-old Daniel Wood to help. Within a month, contributions
raised enough money to buy the property.

From the mansion’s dedication on November 21, 1907, the
community’s generosity and the leadership of the Historical Society and
countless volunteers have made possible the continued preservation and
maintenance of the Governor John Wood Mansion. Once used as a museum, it has
been restored with furnishings appropriate to the period. It is the largest and
most important artifact in the collection of today’s Historical Society of
Quincy and Adams County.

Reg Ankrom is executive director of the Historical
Society. He is a member of several history-related organizations, the author of
a history of Stephen A. Douglas and a frequent speaker on pre-Civil War
history.

Sources:

“History of Gov. John Wood Mansion: Research
Information, Photographs, Details of Maps.” File MS 920 WOO,
“Research,” Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County, Quincy, IL
(hereinafter HSQAC).

“Map: Quincy 1835.” Framed and displayed
on the Society office south wall, HSQAC.

Perry, Cicero F. “Opening of the John Wood
Homestead.” Address to Quincy Historical Society, Quincy, IL, November 21,
1907, File MSQ, “Quincy – Historic Houses – John Wood Mansion,”
HSQAC.

“Report of Committee on House and Grounds [to
Quincy Historical Society].” November 21, 1907, MSQ Files 1, “Quincy
– Historic Houses – John Wood Mansion,” HSQAC.

“Research on the John Wood Mansion, 425 South
Twelfth Street, Owned by the Historical Society of Quincy and Adams County, By
the Research and Restoration Committees.” File MS WOO,
“Research,” HSQAC.

Scholz, Nancy. “Genealogy Report on John Wood
and Family.” File MS WOO, “Research,” HSQAC.

“The John Wood Mansion.” File MS WOO,
“Research,” HSQAC.