Jethro Wood was born at Dartmouth, Massachusetts, on the sixteenth day of the third month of 1774. His parents were members of the Society of Friends. His mother, Dinah Hussey Wood, was a niece of Ann Starbuck, a woman of remarkable ability and high standing in colonial annals. Ann Starbuck was virtually governor of Nantucket. The niece was a woman of excellent intellect, and most winsome character. Her conversation sparkled with genial wit and good cheer. Her husband, John Wood, was a man of sterling worth, calm, self-poised, strong willed, and eminently influential. Jethro was their only son. On New Years Day, 1793, he was married to Sylvia Howland, at White Creek, Washington County, New York. The fruit of this marriage, every way a happy one, was a family of six children, namely: Benjamin; John; Maria, wife of Jeremiah Foote; Phoebe; Sarah, wife of Robert R. Underhill; Sylvia Ann, wife of Benjamin Gould. Of these children the only survivor is Mrs. Gould, who with her sister, Phoebe, were the Misses Wood of the Adams note. So much for the domestic setting of this diamond of inventive genius. Even as a boy, Jethro Wood showed plainly the drift and trend of his mind. The child was indeed "father of the man," and almost from the cradle to the grave, he was an inventor. In his childish plays he seemed busied with the idea which he ultimately perfected. Many curious incidents and memories are treasured among the traditions of his neighbors and friends. "When only a few years old," writes a venerable man whose recollection spans two generations, "he moulded a little plow from metal, which he obtained by melting a pewter cup. Then, cutting the buckles from a set of braces, he made a miniature harness with which he fastened the family cat to his tiny plow, and endeavored to drive her about the flower-garden. The good old-fashioned whipping he received for this 'mischief,' was such as to drive all desire for repeating the experiment out of his juvenile head." Such innate and ruling passion might be suppressed, but could not be subdued. As his mind matured, his thoughts took definite shape. His home was always upon a farm, but he was never a farmer, in the sense of Poor Richard's homely couplet: "He who by the plow would thrive, Himself must either hold or drive."