Thomas Boucher Wood Family Cemetery

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Marker No: 12057

27 x 42 Aluminum Subject Marker 

Geographic: 32.21566, -95.84307

Location: ​Wofford Street, Athens 

Marker Text: According to family history, Thomas Boucher Wood (1820-1897) was born in Columbus, Mississippi. He attended the University of Louisville in Kentucky in 1843 and again in 1849, at which time he received his doctoral degree in medicine with a thesis on pneumonia.
    Soon thereafter, Dr. Wood came to this area to farm and practice medicine. He and Susan Amanda Pinson (1833-1873) were married in July 1850. Susan's family were among the earlier pioneers of nearby Mound Prairie in Anderson County.
     The Wood Family Cemetery is a testament to the harsh conditions of pioneer life. It was established in 1851 when Thomas and Susan's first child, a daughter, was stillborn. Family records indicate that she was buried on the homestead. Thomas and Susan Wood had ten children. Their daughter Mary Josephine (1858-1863) was the next family member to be interred here. The following year the Woods' son, John Felix (1862-1864), died and Susan Amanda Wood miscarried a daughter on the same day. Another unnamed infant girl was stillborn in 1866. Two-year-old Amanda Joe Wood died in 1870. Susan Amanda Wood was buried here in 1873. T. B. Wood and their son, Albert (1853-1879), both succumbed to pneumonia on Albert's twenty-sixth birthday. Another daughter, Tommie Elizabeth Wood Pelham (1856-1884), was buried here next to her four infants. Some of the Wood family slaves are believed to have been buried just outside the family plot.
​      In the late 1990s, Wood descendants returned to the site and restored the cemetery. It serves as a memorial to the Wood family pioneers of Henderson County. (2000)