Page:Men of Mark in America vol 2.djvu/496

 LEONARD WOOD OOD, LEONARD, surgeon, soldier, public administrator, major-general in the United States army, was born at Winchester, New Hampshire, where his parents temporarily resided, October 9, 1860, the son of Charles J. and Caroline E. (Hagar) Wood. He is a direct descendant of William Wood, who landed in Massachusetts nine years after the landing of the Mayflower, and of Susanna White, whose son, Peregrine White, was the first white child born in New England. His immediate ancestors were nearly all farmers, but his father adopted the profession of medicine and the career of a country physician, and was known as a man of fine attainments and strong individuality, though possessed of a rather taciturn manner. The old Wood homestead was at Barlow Landing, in Pocasset; and here within a stone's throw of Buzzards Bay, Leonard spent his childhood and youth. During the winter he attended the district school, and later, for three years, he was a pupil at the old fashioned academy at Middleboro, Massachusetts. He was fond of languages and history, but indifferent to mathematics; and the greater part of his miscellaneous reading consisted of books of travel, history, adventure and an occasional novel.

His father died in 1880, and shortly thereafter he entered the Harvard medical school. His means were scanty, but by tutoring and with the money accruing from a hard-won scholarship, he was able to meet his expenses and was graduated third in his class. After graduation he took up work in the city hospital, and at twenty-four began the practice of medicine in Staniford street, Boston. He soon abandoned his practice here, however, and took an examination in New York for admission as a surgeon to the army, and passing second in a competitive examination of fifty-nine, he received his commission, January 5, 1886. He was first temporarily assigned to service at Fort Warren, Massachusetts; but, in June, 1886, he was ordered to Arizona, and during the next two years, he was almost continuously in the field with Miles and Lawton, chasing the Apaches, under the wily Geronimo, through Arizona, New Mexico and 400 miles into old