After attending an elementary school on Dock Street, he was sent abroad to the Crypt School at Gloucester in November 1821. He returned to Philadelphia five years later and then enrolled at a private school on Market Street.[3] In November 1827, he and his family removed to Cincinnati, Ohio, where the young Wood became a clerk at the Branch Bank of the United States. After being advanced to individual book-keeper and discount clerk, he was made a paying and receiving teller (1833) and cashier (1836) in the Franklin Bank of Cincinnati.[1]
Wood later succeeded Neumann as the fifth Bishop of Philadelphia upon the latter's death on January 5, 1860.[4] At the time of his succession, the diocese (which included the entire states of Pennsylvania and Delaware in addition to western New Jersey) included 200,000 Catholics, 137 priests, 131 parishes, 17 chapels and missions, 40 parish schools with 8,710 pupils, four colleges and four academies. The erection of the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul came to a brief halt with the outbreak of the Civil War, but was later dedicated by Wood on November 20, 1864.[2] In 1865 he purchased a large tract of land in Overbrook, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, for the new St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, the cornerstone of which was laid on April 4, 1866. The seminary was opened in September 1871 with 128 students.[5] He was named an Assistant at the Pontifical Throne in 1862.[3]
On February 12, 1875, the Diocese of Philadelphia was elevated to the rank of an archdiocese, with Wood becoming its first Metropolitan Archbishop.[4] He was invested with the pallium by Archbishop James Roosevelt Bayley on the following June 17.[3] He traveled to Rome in 1877 to assist at the celebration of the golden jubilee of Pius IX's episcopate, but returned home after suffering from a severe attack of rheumatism.[2] He also suffered from Bright's disease.[3] Since the division of the diocese in 1868, Wood increased the number of churches to 127 and of chapels to 53 chapels, and founded 25 new parochial schools.[2] By 1883, there were also 31 missions, 260 priests, 99 seminarians between St. Charles Seminary and the North American College, three colleges, 22,000 students in parochial schools, six orphanages, four hospitals, two homes for the elderly and over 300,000 Catholics.[3]
In 2014, St. Charles Borromeo Seminary decided to sell an 1877 portrait of Archbishop Wood painted by Thomas Eakins. Although Eakins was not Catholic, he and his friend, Samuel Murray, would bicycle on Sundays to the seminary to attend vespers. Eakins took advantage of the brilliant vestments to animate the composition in a way not possible in his other male portraits. Proceeds from the sale will go toward the costs of renovations at the seminary.[6]
