(died 27 Jan. 1895), manufacturer. Born on the South Branch, GC. Parents: Rodger or Roger Wood (1790-1831) and his wife Margaret McIntosh (d. 1 Nov. 1866, aged 68). Roger Wood was the son of Benjamin Wood the U E Loyalist. Alexander Wood was trained as a blacksmith. He worked in the foundry another branch of the Wood family had at Osnabruck, and learned the skills of a moulder there. For six months in 1843, he worked for Ebenezer Frost at Smiths Falls as a moulder in Frost’s foundry. He left then to work in Bytown, but returned to Smiths Falls in 1846 as a partner with Frost in the firm Frost & Wood. Wood was one of the less common Glengarry surnames. Its presence, however, in the firm name was to make it familiar to decades of Glengarry farmers.

     The firm of Frost and Wood grew, although at first rather slowly, to become one of the great suppliers of agricultural machinery in Canada. The principal products of the firm in its early years were plows and stoves. Frost died in 1863. Wood thereafter worked with Frost’s sons in managing the foundry, with a “formal partnership” (Lockwood p. 310) from 1867. In 1886 the Frost brothers bought out the partnership of Alexander Wood for $50,000. Wood appears, however, to have maintained a financial interest in the firm. He then devoted himself to his other interests in Smiths Falls, which included flour milling, sawmills and shingle manufacturing. To be his home in Smiths Falls he built a splendid sandstone mansion called “Glenwood,” which had servants’ quarters and its own ballroom. In 1955 the Cockshutt Co., owner at that time of Frost and Wood, closed down the Smiths Falls plant of Frost and Wood, ending an era in Smiths Falls history. Alexander Wood was married in 1844 to Henrietta Baird. (seven children) He was a Roman Catholic before he converted to the Church of England in the 1850s. (Lockwood p. 212) His mother was a Roman Catholic, but his father was a Protestant.

     Alexander’s brother Stephen Wood, a veteran of 1837-1838 and termed one of the best known “citizens of Glengarry,” was 91 when he died at his home on the South Branch. (obituary Cornwall Freeholder 12 June 1908)

Glenn J. Lockwood, Smiths Falls: a Social History of the Men and Women in a Rideau Canal Community 1794-1994 (1994): much on the history of the firm Frost and Wood, with some biog. information on Alexander Wood, with portrait; also description of Wood’s “Glenwood” mansion and a reproduction of the impressive illustr. from the Lanark County Atlas, 1880 * The History of Smiths Falls (1967) * Fraser, Gravestones, I, 30-31, 98, 134, 258 * Elizabeth Hoople and the Wood Research Team, Jonas Wood U.E.L. (1984?) 12-14 &c. * biog. note on Alexander Wood, Glengarry News 17 Feb. 1893 (largely from Toronto Globe), repr. Fraser Obits. 314-315 * death at Smiths Falls of his son Stephen Wood, 53, Cornwall Freeholder 13 March 1908