This is a corrected copy of my previous message --- sorry. Note especially his date of death. _________ This clears-up much of the confusion between WOOD and WOODS families in Lancaster and Cumberland Co., PA in the 1700s. Quoting from a source: "Egle's Notes and Queries of Pennsylvania, 1700s1800s" the Fourth Series, Vol. II, pp. 298-300: "EARLY CUMBERLAND VALLEY SETTLERS "Two of the oldest gravestones in the Silvers Spring Meeting House graveyard, are those of James Wood and William Mc Means. According to the inscription on the Mc Means headstone, he died in 1747. The tombstone of James Wood is a thick, heavy brown sandstone resting horizontally about a foot and a half from the ground. Its inscription is unique, and owing to its antiquity is deserving of notice. The slab is four foot and six inches long, two feet and six inches wide and one and one-half inches thick. Its head is circular in shape and the foot square. On the upper face of the slab is the effigy of a man probably three and a half feet long, carved in relief, resting on his back, representing the costume of the Georges-wig and queue, square coat reaching the knee and stiffened with wire to make it stand out at the skirt, stockings reaching above the knees, with shoes having high heals and long quarters. The effigy supports with his left arm flexed at right angles across the chest, a tree rooted and branched resting in an upright position over the right shoulder-the branches not spreading until above the shoulder. An old letter, yet preserved, written about 1800, by a lady describing the slab, states that the branches bore acorns. If so, the ravages of a hundred and forty-five winters have destroyed any sign of them. The following inscription is excellently preserved on the slab: In Memory of JAMES WOOD, who departed this life February 24th, 1750, aged 41 years. "Widow Jane Wood, who is mentioned as a taxable for the year 1751, and many subsequent ones for East Pennsborough township was this James Wood's wife. Her remains lie on the left aide of her husband's grave with only a rude head and foot stone to mark her resting place. She lived many years after her husband's death. "James Wood emigrated from County Cavan, Ireland, in 1731, where his father, Capt. John Wood, resided on as Irish estate presented him by King William of Orange for Gallantry at the battle of the Boyne in 1890-he having joined the army from Wales, on its invasion of Ireland. At the time of his arrival in America he was no more than twenty-two years old, yet was a married man. We only know in wife's Christian name, Jean. Within year after their arrival in this country their eldest son, George Wood, was born. James Wood first settled in Upper Paxtang, Lancaster now Dauphin county, Penn'a but about 1736, with a few of his neighbors crossed the Susquehanna river with his family and settled close to the western boundary of Lowther Manor, then held as a reservation by the Penn family, at a place now known as "Sporting Hill," in Silvers Spring township. His farm now belongs to Mr. Eberly. His neighbors were William Mc Means, James Silvers, William and John Orr, John McCormick and his two brothers, Samuel Fisher, Samuel Thompson, Henry Quigley, William Berryhill, William Noble, and Robert and James Robb, all fellow countrymen originally from the North of Ireland. "In connection with the family history o! James Wood, we copy the following incident which the younger James Silvers communicated to George Rupp. senior, more than eighty years ago: "During the French and Indian War a man was shot near Sporting Hill. Several persons had met on public business at Mr. James Wood's lately John Eberly's. One of the company went down toward William Mc Means, late Kreitzer's Spring, when he was shot and scalped. He had been recently married, and when they sent for his wife she was, to use the language of Mr. Silvers, who was present at the time, almost distracted, casting herself upon the corpse of the deceased, exclaiming, `Oh! Oh! My husband! My husband!' " "This neighborhood constituted the first regular settlement in Cumberland county. James Wood was evidently a methodical man, as he disposed of his worldly possessions by will and testament, which is on record in Carlisle. Samuel Fisher was one of his executors, William Noble the other, John McCormick a witness, William Treat, Esq., the Justice of the Peace. He left four children. George, the oldest, who married a daughter of his father's neighbor, William Mc Means, and who by the terms of the will according to the English custom of the time received all the landed estate. John, who married a Miss James and died at Fort Lee, on the Hudson river, during the Revolutionary War, being a member of the Cumberland County Associators, which went to the war in their regular tour of duty. His descendants now reside in Ohio. James, who went to the Carolinas and then to the Falls of the Ohio, now Louisville, Kentucky, and Jean, the only daughter, who married a Mr. Micheltree sad removed to Tuscarora Valley, now Juniata county. "The eldest son, George Wood, was a noted man is his day and generation, more than six feet tall, broad shouldered and active, he became a leader of men. He was a surveyor and well educated for the times. Unfortunately our historians have confounded him with George Woods, of Bedford, and afterwards of Pittsburgh, and it is exceedingly difficult at this day to say which was the true actor in the many adventures and anecdotes related of both. "George Wood removed his family to the banks of the Juniata river, near Thompsontown, where he died in 1807. He left four sons and six daughters, the descendants of which are scattered far and wide throughout the land." [Comments about the source: "Notes and Queries" was originally published between 1879 and 1895 as a series of newspaper columns in the Harrisburg "Daily Telegraph," then carried forward and published in five annual volumes between 1896 and 1900. The columns (and offprints of the columns which appeared in pamphlet form) were reprinted in seven volumes between the years 1894 and 1896; thus, with the five annual volumes for 18961900, the complete set of "Notes and Queries" which appears on CD #19 by Family Tree Maker totals twelve volumes. William Henry Egle was the State Librarian of Pennsylvania for twelve years. In a "Report of the State Librarian for the Year 1901," shortly after his death, his "Notes and Queries" was said to be "beyond all others the most important publication relating to the Scotch Irish in America." And in the preface to the early reprint series it was noted that "no contributions to any newspaper in the country have been so appreciated or more often referred to."] George W. Page