Benjamin Wood

Benjamin Wood (1820 – 21 February 1900) was a nineteenth-century American politician from the state of New York during the American Civil War.

He was the brother of US congressional representative and New York City Mayor Fernando Wood. In 1860, he purchased the New York Daily News (not to be confused with the current New York Daily News, which was founded in 1919), of which he was the editor and publisher until he died in 1900.

In 1861 the federal government effectively shut down the paper (by suspending its delivery via the postal service) as being sympathetic with the enemy. Wood was able to re-open the paper 18 months later. During the interval, he wrote one novel: Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession.

Wood was elected as a Democrat to the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eighth Congresses (March 4, 1861 – March 3, 1865.) He was a member of the New York State Senate in 1866 and 1867 and elected to the Forty-seventh Congress (March 4, 1881 – March 3, 1883)

His wife, Ida Wood, became a famous recluse and miser whose true identity of Ellen Walsh became the subject of a famous court case after her death in 1932, the story of which is told in Joseph Cox's book The Recluse of Herald Square.

References

• Benjamin Wood at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress Retrieved on 2009-03-25

External links

• Mr. Lincoln and New York: Benjamin Wood
• Works by Benjamin Wood at Project Gutenberg
• "Benjamin Wood". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6717380. Retrieved August 11, 2010. 

Preceded by James Kerrigan

Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from New York's 4th congressional district 1863–1865

Succeeded by Morgan Jones