Marquis Lafayette Wood

Marquis Lafayette Wood (1829 — 1893) was a Methodist minister who served as president of Trinity College, the predecessor of Duke University, following the death of Braxton Craven. Wood raised the first endowment money for Duke. He is the only president of Duke who was also an alumnus, and submitted the 1889 resolution to move the school from Randolph County. Wood's one-sentence definition of the college presidency was that "All great enterprises require time and patience and labor and suffering and money." Following the end of his presidency in 1884, Duke was governed by a Committee of the Board of Trustees for three years, until John Franklin Crowell became president. Prior to his tenure at Duke, Wood served as a missionary in Shanghai.^[1]