military Soldier topographical engineer
Washington Hood was born on February 2, 1808 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. His father was John McClellan Hood, who came to America from County Tyrone, Ireland, about 1799, married Eliza Forepaugh, a descendant of early German pioneers, and settled in Philadelphia as a wholesale grocer.
Hood was appointed to the United States Military Academy and graduated in 1827.
Hood was commissioned second lieutenant in the 4th Infantry, and later was assigned to Jefferson Barracks, Missourri. Two years later he entered on engineer duty and from 1831 to 1836 served on topographical duty, being promoted first-lieutenant in 1835. He resigned his commission in 1836 but after a year as a civil engineer in Cuba reentered the army as captain of Topographical Engineers. In the line of duty Hood surveyed and made maps for the United States government. With Robert E. Lee, in 1835, he determined the boundary line between the state of Ohio and Michigan Territory, thus settling a violent controversy during which both state and territory had called out militia.
In 1837 he prepared "A Map Illustrating the Plan of the Defenses of the West and Northwestern Front, as Proposed by Charles Gratiot. " His map of the "United States Territory of Oregon West of the Rocky Mountains, Exhibiting the Various Trading Depots or Forts Occupied by the British Hudson Bay Company Connected with the Western and Northwestern Fur Trade, " compiled in 1838, accompanied a report from a select committee to which was referred a bill to authorize the President to occupy the Oregon territory, and was republished several times with other similar reports. The same map was also published in Wyndham Robertson's influential work entitled Oregon, Our Right and Title (1846).
In 1839 Hood compiled a map showing the country adjacent to the headwaters of the Missouri, Salmon, Lewis, and Colorado rivers, with various observations on the subject of practical passes or routes through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. It remains in manuscript, but has been found to be correct. When in 1839 President Van Buren desired to make grants of land by law and to issue patents to Indian tribes west of the Mississippi River, Hood was commissioned to make the necessary survey. In his report he exposed errors of previous surveys, but since correction of these errors would have deprived the Shawnees of valuable timberland and have caused a clash of all the tribes bordering Arkansas and Missouri, he advised against it. While on this expedition he contracted a fatal disease and died a few months later at Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania.
Hood never married.
