ROBERT W. WOOD

Robert W. Wood, born in Augusta, Maine, was a graduate of Waterville College (now Colby College) in 1829 and received his medical degree from Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, in 1832.

Sailing from Boston in October, 1838, Dr. Wood arrived in Honolulu on April 6, 1839, the first American doctor not a missionary to settle in Hawaii. On his arrival he was appointed physician to the U.S. Seamen's Hospital at Honolulu by Mr. Anthony Ten Eyck, the U.S. Commissioner, a position he held for ten years. In 1848 he served as Acting Commissioner during Mr. Ten Eyck's absence. In 1847 Dr. Wood opened the first public pharmacy.

Dr. Wood was not in the Islands long before becoming interested in the cultivation of sugar cane. In December, 1847, he purchased the bankrupt sugar plantation owned by Ladd and Company at Koloa, Kauai, for $17,500. He brought Mr. David M. Weston from the mainland to introduce his adaption of the centrifugal for extracting sugar, installed the latest machinery and soon had the plantation on a paying basis. When he sold the plantation in 1872, the purchase price was $35,000. The doctor also put money into a sugar plantation on East Maui. With his interest in sugar, it is not surprising that in 1850 when the Royal Hawaiian Agricultural Society was established, Dr. Wood was one of the founding members and served on the first executive committee and later on the Board of Managers and as vice-president from Kauai. Although from 1849 until the time he left the Islands he abandoned the active practice of medicine to become a sugar planter on Kauai, he was one of the signers of the charter of incorporation of the Hawaiian Medical Society in 1856 and served as president from 1856 through 1858.

On July 25, 1862, Dr. Wood's wife, Delia M., and the mother of his son, Robert W., died in Honolulu. Two years later on October 31, 1864, he married Miss Lucy Jane Davis at Concord, Massachusetts.

In March, 1866, Dr. Wood left the Islands and from 1872 made his home at Jamaica Plains, near Boston. He retired from all business in 1878, and his death occurred on January 4, 1892, at Jamaica Plains.

During his years in the Islands, he was president of the Nuuanu Cemetery Association (1847), a life member of the Hawaiian Bible Association (serving as president in 1847 and again in 1857), a member of the American Club (president in 1857), and a trustee of Punahou College in 1866. On the mainland he was a member of the Hawaiian Club in Boston. In 1880 Dr. Wood donated $1,000 to Oahu College, $500 to the Queen's Hospital, and $500 to the pastor of the Bethel Church.

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