David Wood was born to Alyah Wood, a Baptist deacon, and Amanda Porter Wood on February 10, 1840 in Cattaraugus County, New York. His ancestors came to Massachusetts from England as religious dissenters in the 17th century, then made their way to New York. When cheaper land opened up in Wisconsin in the 1840s, the family moved to Dane County. His mother died on February 25, 1854. Dave, as a sixteen-year- old, was one of the first settlers in Lincoln Township, Trempealeau County in the winter of 1856-57, one of Wisconsin's most bitter.
Dave married Mary Parsons, the daughter of his stepmother. Dave and Mary had five children, all born near Whitehall, Wisconsin. Archie Edgar was born on February 9, 1864, followed by the birth of James (Jim) Lincoln on February 11, 1867. Sarah Dewey, nicknamed Kippy, was born in 1870 and Alta was born in 1875. In October of 1877, all of Dave's children suffered from diphtheria. Kippy and Alta, as well as Dave's niece Jane, who lived with the family as a housekeeper, died within days of each other in early October. Ralph Winthrop was born over a year later, on January 19, 1879. He married Martha Johnson on September 27, 1906. They had two children, Helen, born in 1908, and Harold Charles, born on February 24, 1910. Harold is the father of David Charles Wood, donor of this collection, who was born on March 18, 1936.
The elder Dave Wood lived in Whitehall, Wisconsin until his death on June 28, 1927. He was a farmer, a bridge builder, a wholesaler of baled hay, and eventually a part-owner of Whitehall's bank. He was a leader in the town's Baptist community.
Dave began keeping a diary in 1865. Entries for 1865-1868 are entered in the first volume of the diaries. His entries for those years are sporadic. He made an entry almost every day from 1869 until his death in 1927. The ninety-one small leatherbound diaries filled by Dave and his sons Ralph and Jim, as well as three ledgers and fifteen account books, were discovered in 1974 by great-grandson Dave as he was scavenging through a pile of scrap lumber stored in an old horse barn behind his ancestral home in Whitehall. As he sorted the lumber, an old ammunition case was revealed, housing more than one hundred leatherbound diaries, neatly arranged and in near-perfect condition. The sixty-two year record of farm life in Trempealeau County is considered to be the longest run of farm diaries in the United States.
