The Woods were a prominent family in nineteenth century Wilmington, North Carolina. Dr. Thomas Fanning Wood was born in Wilmington in 1841, and studied botany. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Dr. Wood joined the Wilmington Rifle Guards, which later became the 18th Regiment of the North Carolina Infantry. In the infantry, Dr. Wood served as a surgeon's assistant. In 1863 he became certified as a surgeon, and he served in this capacity until the end of the war. After the war, Dr. Wood became an influential local physician; he published the Monthly Journal of Medicine and Surgery, printed in Wilmington, and started the city's Board of Health. He died in 1892 at the age of 51. Other prominent members of the Wood family include John Coffin Wood, born in 1809, and Robert Barclay Wood, born in 1815. They were two brothers and architects who were some of Wilmington's leading builders in the nineteenth century. The brothers built several churches, including St. James Episcopal Church, St. Thomas the Apostle Roman Catholic Church, and Front Street Methodist Church; five Italiante style houses: the Edward Savage House, the Donald McRae House, the Duncan K. McRae House, the H.B. Eilers House, and the Zebulon Latimer House. The Wood brothers also constructed the New Hanover County Jail and Wilmington's city hall and opera house, Thalian Hall. John Coffin Wood died in 1873, and Robert Barclay Wood constructed the Grace Street Methodist Church four years before his death in 1890.