Woods, David Flavell

Life Span
to
Dickinson Connection
Class of 1859
    Full name
    David Flavell Woods
    Place of Birth
    Birth Date Certainty
    Exact
    Death Date Certainty
    Exact
    Gender
    Male
    Race
    White
    Sectional choice
    North
    Origins
    Free State
    No. of Spouses
    1
    Family
    Richard Woods (father), Mary Jane Sterrett (mother), Helen R. Stewart (wife, 1860)
    Education
    Dickinson (Carlisle College)
    University of Pennsylvania
    Occupation
    Educator
    Doctor, Dentist or Nurse
    Other
    Other Occupation
    Banker
    Relation to Slavery
    White non-slaveholder

    David Flavell Woods (Dickinson Chronicles)

    Scholarship
    David F. Woods was born in Dickinson Township, Pennsylvania on September 16, 1837, the son of Richard and Mary Jane Sterrett Woods. He was educated in local schools but prepared for higher education in an academy connected with his uncle, the Reverend David Sterrett Woods, in present day Juniata County. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, near his birthplace, in 1856 as a sophomore with the class of 1859. He graduated with his class and, for a time, went to Huntington, Pennsylvania to work in the banking house of Bell, Garretson, and Company. He wearied of this career choice quickly and his family funded his study of medicine in Philadelphia, some of it with fellow Dickinsonian and Cumberland County native Dr. R.A.F. Penrose. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a medical doctorate in 1862.

    Woods was a resident at the Blockley Hospital for a year and then at the Episcopal Hospital in 1864. He opened his own practice on South Thirteenth Street in Philadelphia in the spring of 1865. He also assisted in instruction with the University of Pennsylvania medical school, though he was forced to give up much of this work when his practice became so successful and popular that he had to move to North Fifteenth Street. In 1872, he gave up teaching completely. He did continue with visiting duties at the Episcopal Hospital and, for a long period, at the Presbyterian Hospital in the city.

    In October 1860, Woods married Helen R. Stewart of Philadelphia. He died of pneumonia in the city on July 28, 1910. He was seventy-three years old.
    John Osborne and James W. Gerencser, eds., “David Flavell Woods,” Dickinson Chronicles, http://chronicles.dickinson.edu/encyclo/w/ed_woodsDF.htm.
    How to Cite This Page: "Woods, David Flavell," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/index.php/node/6908.