John Taylor Wood

John Taylor Wood
John Taylor Wood
Born	August 13, 1830 Fort Snelling, Michigan Territory, United States
Died	July 19, 1904(1904-07-19) (aged 73) Nova Scotia, Canada
Allegiance	United States of America  Confederate States of America
Service/branch	United States Navy  Confederate States Navy
Years of service	1847–1861 (USN) 1861–1865 (CSN)
Rank	Lieutenant (USN) Captain (CSN)
Battles/wars	American Civil War

John Taylor Wood (August 13, 1830 – July 19, 1904) was an officer in the United States Navy and the Confederate Navy. He resigned from the U.S. Navy at the beginning of the American Civil War, and became a "leading Confederate naval hero" as a captain in the Confederate Navy. He was a Lieutenant serving aboard the CSS Virginia when it engaged the USS Monitor in 1862, one of the most famous naval battles in Civil War and U.S. Naval history. He was caught in 1865 in Georgia with Confederate President Jefferson Davis' party, but escaped and made his way to Cuba. From there, he got to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he settled and became a merchant. His wife and children joined him there, and more children were born in Canada which is where he lived out the remainder of his life.

John Taylor Wood was the son and first child of Robert Crooke Wood from Rhode Island, an army surgeon, and Anne Mackall Taylor, eldest daughter of Zachary Taylor, (who would become a major general in the United States Army, a hero of the Mexican-American War, and who would serve as 12th President of the United States, 1849–50). Robert Crooke Wood and Zachary Taylor served together in the U.S. Army. Along with being the grandson of a U.S. president, John Taylor Wood was also the nephew of future Confederate president Jefferson Davis, whose first wife, Sarah Knox Taylor (1814–1835), was the second daughter of Zachary Taylor and Margaret Mackall Smith.

Wood was born on August 13, 1830, at Fort Snelling then in the Northwest Territory near present-day St. Paul, Minnesota. Wood was delivered by his father and is claimed to have been the first white child born in Minnesota. From 1832 until 1837, the Wood family lived at Fort Crawford located at the junction of the Mississippi and Wisconsin Rivers. Young Wood grew up in the frontier at the time of the Black Hawk War.