John Wood, Jr. and Jean Brown Wood Collected Papers

John Henry Wood Jr. was born on October 25, 1915, the son of John H. Wood and Elizabeth Cadwallader Wood of Langhorne (Pennsylvania). He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1937. Wood earned a LL.B degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940, and later became a partner in Wood and Floge of Langhorne (PA). He is a birthright Quaker, who married Jean Robertson Brown on August 15, 1924(?). They have four children: John C. (b. 1945), Roger F. (b. 1947), Elizabeth R. (b. 1951), and Susan Y. (b. 1957).

Wood served in Civilian Public Service (CPS) at the Big Flats CPS Camp (#46) in Big Flats, New York, during 1942-1943, and for a short time in 1943 at Guilford College (unit #101). His interests at this time, as documented in his papers in this collection, lay mostly in finding ways for CPSers to be involved in relief and reconstruction work in war-torn Europe, and in the controversy about whether the Big Flats CPS Camp should be run by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) or should become a government camp. However, the letters to and from his wife during his CPS experience also provide a view of the lives of two newly-married people separated by war, and their reflections on the personal concerns facing them.