Woods, William Allen, , Tennessee 1837 1901 Male Jurist jurist, was born in Marshall County, near Farmington, Tenn. , the youngest of three children of Allen Newton Woods and his wife, who was a daughter of William D. Ewing.
Both of his grandfathers were well-to-do slave-owning farmers of Scotch-Irish descent, but his father was a strong abolitionist.
When he was seven years old, his mother married Capt. John Miller, also an abolitionist, who in 1847 moved to Davis County, Iowa, with his wife and her children.
Education
His father, a theological student, died at the age of twenty-six, when young Woods was but a month old.
During the next few years his desire to earn money for an education carried him through a gamut of occupations from field and forest to brick yard, sawmill, grist mill, and finally to a clerkship in the village store.
Meanwhile he attended the local school for several months each year, in his sixteenth year becoming a student in the Troy Academy and a year later a teacher in the same school.
In the fall of 1855 he was sufficiently prepared to enter Wabash College at Crawfordsville, Ind.
Graduating from the classical department in 1859, he immediately became a tutor in the college, and in the fall of 1860 became a teacher at Marion, Ind.
Career
The attention of his students was diverted by the opening events of the Civil War, however, and his school completely dissolved after the first battle of Bull Run.
The most widely known case in which Woods served as judge was United States vs. Debs (64 Federal Reporter, 724), in which he granted an injunction against strikers interfering with trains carrying the United States mails, and then for violation of the injunction ordered the imprisonment of Eugene Debs [q. v. ] for a term of six months.
In this action Woods was sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States (158 United States, 564).
Woods was of large frame and of impressive appearance, and was fearless in the expression of his opinions.
Inclined somewhat to combativeness, he was ever ready to meet an opponent in debate.
His judicial opinions, though not weighted with citations of authorities, were clear and forceful.
of Biog.
of Ind. , vol.
I (1895); C. W. Taylor, Biog.
Sketches of the Bench and Bar of Ind. (1895); Will Cumbach and J. B. Maynard, Men of Progress, Ind. (1899); Commemorative Biog.
Record of Prominent .
Men of Indianapolis (1908); Chicago Legal News, July 6, Oct. 5, 1901; W. W. Thornton, "The Supreme Court of Ind. ," Green Bag, June 1892; Report of the Sixth Ann.
Meeting State Bar Asso.
of Ind. (1902); obituaries in Indianapolis News and Indianapolis Jour. , June 29, 1901. ]
Religion
In political faith he was a Republican and in religion a Presbyterian.
Interests
Music & Bands
[Who's Who in America, 1899-1900; G. I. Reed, Encyc.
Connections
The death of his stepfather shortly thereafter put Woods to work on his mother's farm at the age of ten.
married:
A.
On Dec. 6, 1870, he was married to Mata A. Newton of Des Moines, Iowa, by whom he had a son and a daughter.
Daughter:
A.
On Dec. 6, 1870, he was married to Mata A. Newton of Des Moines, Iowa, by whom he had a son and a daughter.
