Background
William B. Wood was born on May 26, 1779, in Montreal, Quebec, the son of a New York goldsmith, who had gone to Canada before the British occupation of New York and returned about 1784. His mother was Thomizen English.
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William B. Wood was born on May 26, 1779, in Montreal, Quebec, the son of a New York goldsmith, who had gone to Canada before the British occupation of New York and returned about 1784. His mother was Thomizen English.
After a brief private schooling liberally supplemented from his earliest years by frequent visits to the theatres, he was apprenticed clerk in a counting-house at twelve.
Passed a year in the West Indies for his health, he returned and was jailed for debt in Philadelphia, and in 1798, poor, emaciated, ill-equipped for serious dramatic work but inspired with vague notions of his talent, journeyed alone to Annapolis, Maryland, and obtained a place in the company of Thomas Wignell, an old family friend, making his début there on June 26 as George Barnwell. It was a bad start, as Wood himself relates; nor was the sickly youth successful in his other tragic rôles that season. Not until a second sojourn in Jamaica had restored his powers and he came back to play Dick Dowlas in The Heir-at-Law did he find his true dramatic forte, genteel comedy. Henceforth, acting at Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and in summer at Alexandria, where Wignell's famous company filled regular engagements, Wood grew steadily in skill and public favor. Before his twenty-third year he was treasurer of the company's Chestnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia, its headquarters; and when Wignell died in February 1803, leaving the control and the property to his widow and Alexander Reinagle, the musician, Wood became assistant to the acting manager, William Warren, and was dispatched to England in search of new actors. Returning from this profitable tour of the British theatres, Wood began his long collaboration with Warren which made their fame. The company prospered, and Wood, upon whom fell the actual duties of managing, was not reluctant when in 1809, Reinagle dying, one or two Philadelphia friends furnished him the means to buy from Warren an equal share in the company's property and management. Following a début at the Park Theatre in New York, September 12, 1810, as De Valmont in The Foundling of the Forest, then his best rôle, Wood joined his former chief in the autumn of 1810. The new partnership endured for sixteen years, raising the theatres under its control, particularly the Chestnut Street (the "Old Drury" of Philadelphia), to international eminence, despite the gravest obstacles. With numerous English players in the company and still more English plays in the repertory, it managed to steer a safe path through the dangerous years of the War of 1812 and the subsequent economic depression. When in April 1820, while the troupe was away at Baltimore, its splendid gas-lit Chestnut Street Theatre burned to the ground uninsured, carrying with it the precious scenery, machinery, wardrobe, library, music, lights, and all, the partners leased the Olympic in Walnut Street and went on playing until a second "Old Drury" could be reared and opened in 1822. By a judicious management it preserved the organization amid the hazards of the costly starring system, yet brought nearly every actor of note to its boards, including, for his first American appearance, the youthful Edwin Forrest.
In 1826 the sixteen years' partnership between the two managers was terminated by the withdrawal of Mr. Wood. On October 1, 1828, the latter undertook the management of the Arch Street Theatre, Philadelphia, then just built; but the enterprise was not successful, and the rest of his theatrical career was divided between management and acting in the same city. He retired finally from the stage, November 18, 1846, on the occasion of a benefit at the Walnut Street Theatre. In 1855, Wood published his Personal Recollections of the Stage, a full and indispensable if slightly egoistic account of his associations over forty years. William Burke Wood died on September 23, 1861, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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On January 30, 1804, William Burke Wood married Juliana Westray, a British-born actress. The couple had a son, William Wightman Wood.