THE WOOD FAMILY
Tutus in Undis – Safe on the Waves
The Wood Clan of Wynd House are ancestors of Admiral Sir Andrew Wood, (1458-1538),“Scotland’s first Admiral.
The Wood family dynasty in Scotland was established in the 15th and 16th century, when Admiral Wood and his sons played key roles in fighting off English advances, ensuring the future of the Scottish nation.
Andrew Wood was a merchant trader and naval captain from Upper Largo who came to the attention of James IV for beating the English with his ships the Yellow Caravel and the Flower, in naval battles in the Firth of Forth.
In 1490, the King knighted Andrew, appointed him First Admiral of the Scottish Navy, and granted him lands around Largo, Fife. The King asked him to build him the largest ship of the time, modelled on the Yellow Caravel, and the ‘The Great Michael’ was built in Newhaven harbour.
The Wood story to this day is of a merchant family that made their living from maritime trading before leaving Scotland to establish business across the Atlantic in New York. But they never really left Scotland completely, and Wynd House has continued ownership of the Wood family over 11 generations.
For 200 years of that history, most of the men in the Wood family were living in New York, while Wynd House continued to be lived in by the women of the family, financed from America.
Today, Wynd House is the home of Duncan and Fiona Wood, who returned to Scotland from living in America in 2003.
THe Wood Family THROUGH THE YEARS
16th Century
1548 – Admiral Wood’s sons defeat the last English naval invasion of Scotland at the Battle of St. Monans.
During the reign of Mary Queen of Scots (1542-1587) the period known as the Rough Wooing, Andrew’s children, principally Andrew and John, played an important role in defeating England’s last naval invasion of Scotland .
On 19 June 1548, The Battle of St. Monans, fought by the Woods, the Wemyss, Anstruthers, and James Stewart, (half-brother of the Queen) and their local militia, was England’s final attempt at subduing Scotland by sea.
The Battle left up to 900 English dead on the beach and many more drowned at sea. This invasion threat took place 40 years before the Spanish Armada attacked England in 1588.
Andrew was the first son of the admiral and inherited the castle at Largo. John studied theology at St. Leonard’s college, St. Andrews while James Stewart, the half-brother of Mary Queen of Scots was Prior.
Wood family history in Fife
From the 1560s through the 1700s, the Wood’s established themselves in the area intermarrying into the leading local families including Carstairs, Chalmers, Duddingston, Kellie, Lundin, Nairne and Wemyss. They continued in their merchant trading and shipping.
Admiral Wood’s Children and the move to Elie & Earlsferry – 1560
Admiral Wood had seven children. His oldest son Andrew married Lady Kellie and remained in Largo.
Alexander Wood bought the Grange in Earlsferry in 1560 for £1,000. Alexander married Elizabeth Crichton, widow of William Dishington of Ardross, Elizabeth owned nearby Carmurie. Alexander acquired the harbour and ferry rights for Earlsferry in 1572, though by then the ferrying of pilgrims across the Forth had greatly reduced due to the Scottish Reformation.
The Woods of Wynd House, Elie & Earlsferry
In 1584, the current house began to take shape in its current form on the foundation of the old peel tower. Margaret Wood, Alexander’s daughter, married Peter Nairne, a merchant skipper and they bought the house in the 1600’s.
At this time, there were several ship owners in Elie who operated out the of the harbour; Alexander Gillespie records on 18 February 1665 sailing from Elie to Rotterdam in company of Robert Nairne in a ship called “Anna of Elie”, and between 1680 and 1686 he sailed between Leith and Bordeaux, London, Holland, Danzig, Konigsberg and Norway.
The Nairnes lent the Scott family (who owned the town and harbour of Elie), and one of the earlier lenders to the Scotts is recorded as Margaret Wood, who had money in her own right as the widow of Peter Nairne. The merchant skippers of Elie were wealthy with cash to spare.
Margaret’s brother, William Wood, was a shipmaster of Earlsferry was born in 1656 at Carmurie.
John Wood, Shipmaster, was born in 1692, attended Drumeldrie school, served as Bailie of Earlsferry and married Ann Carstairs. The Carstairs family still live in Elie just down the street on South Street.
18th Century
Scottish Enlightenment brought great developments in education and medicine, and the Wood/Chalmers/Nairn/Scrymgeour family were at the heart of this. In 1748 Patrick Chalmers married Anne Scrymgeour, and their daughter, Anne Chalmers, married William Wood, and Wynd House became the property of William and Anne in 1760. Anne’s maternal great grandfather was Henry Scrymgeour, who was a surgeon to Catherine the Great. A tankard, gifted from Empress Catherine to Henry in thanks for his services, is still in the possession of the family.
William and Anne’s son, John Wood, b 1779, married Elizabeth Dennistoun in 1807, and this is where the Glasgow and transatlantic trading house began, and the Wood family was scattered between Fife, Glasgow, Liverpool and then New York.
19th Century – Wood family merchant bankers and shippers
With the marriage of John Wood to Elizabeth Dennsitoun, (and his brother Walter’s marriage to Elizabeth’s sister, Mary) the Wood family moved west to Glasgow and beyond, taking advantage of the Union with England and the opening of trade with America and Australia. They are involved in shipping and the financing of trade from Glasgow. John and Walter’s brother, Patrick, joined the East India Company and circumnavigated the globe before establishing an expedition to settle Tasmania, funded by the Dennistoun Wood bank.
The Dennistoun family was a wealthy Glasgow-based merchant family of bankers and ship owners. The marriage of the Woods into the Dennistoun family begat a merchant bank and trading house Dennistoun Wood and offices of Dennistoun Wood were established in Glasgow, Liverpool, London and New York.
John Wood and Elizabeth Dennistoun’s oldest son, William Wood, was born in Glasgow in 1808, and died in 1894 in New York, aged 86 having fathered thirteen children, remarrying twice after his first wife, Harriet Kane, died giving birth to her 7th child.
William moved to New York in 1828 aged 20 to work for the family firm and became a successful banker and prominent public figure. According to William’s obituary in the New York newspapers “There was hardly a better-known banking house in the city.”
When he retired as a banker, William became Chairman of the New York Port Authority and Director of New York Board of Education, helping to found Hunter College, the first women’s college in New York.
During his lifetime in New York, William Wood remained involved in Scottish affairs, helping to fund the Walter Scott monument in Edinburgh, the Wallace monument in Stirling and the Scott Monument in Central Park, NY.
An ardent supporter of free trade and abolition of the slave trade, he was a prolific researcher and writer; he left two volumes of autobiography with comprehensive family genealogy.
William died in New York, and in later life wrote poetry reminiscing about looking out over the Firth of Forth from the window of Wynd House.
The Wynd House Women’s Community – 1837 – 1960
For 123 years multiple generations of unmarried sisters, aunts, daughters and nieces lived in Wynd House, financed by the Dennistoun Wood family fortunes. In 1864 the Wood ladies purchased the two cottages on the lane and 36 High Street to accommodate the growing community of ladies and their staff.
William Wood’s uncle, Captain Patrick Wood, who returned to Wynd House from Tasmania after his wife Jane Patterson died giving birth to their seventh child, Jane.
Patrick circumnavigated the Globe with the East India Company, before sailing to Tasmania to set up a farming and trading community in the Upper Clyde Valley of Tasmania. When Jane died in 1837, Patrick returned to Wynd House with his seven motherless children.
Patrick, John and Walter’s sister, Helen Wood, and Jane’s sister, Margaret Patterson, stepped in to look after their nieces and nephews.
Patrick’s three daughters, Anna, Catherine Hunter Wood, and Jane Wood, lived in Wynd House all their lives. Anna and Jane Wood are both buried in Elie kirkyard alongside their ‘beloved aunt’ Helen, who died in 1867.
Charlotte, William Wood and Harriet Kane’s daughter, moved back to Scotland and lived in Wynd House with her aunts before marrying a Reverend Edward Bell. Catherine Hunter Wood owned Wynd House for her lifetime, and she added on the 1908 addition to the house, with the Wood crest and her initials above the back door.
Charlotte Wood and Edward Bell’s daughter, Catherine Eva Bell, lived in Wynd House until 1958, when she went into a care home and died two years later in 1960.
1921 – 1960
When Catherine Hunter Wood died in 1921, the ownership of Wynd House estate transferred to her cousin, John Walter ‘Jack’ Wood, a ground-breaking architect and aviation pioneer who designed houses for the likes of the Whitney and Pratt families. He also designed museums and some of the first airports. He was a friend of the Wright Brothers and travelled extensively in Stalin’s Russia in the 1930’s to study airports and subsequently worked as strategic planner for the Army Air Corps during WW2.
Jack only managed to visit Wynd House twice, but was in regular correspondence with ‘Cousin Catherine’ and described her in letters as the ‘Chatelaine of Wynd House’.
Jack married Suzanne Cort, an actress and artist, whose family founded the Cort Theatre in New York and notably produced the first all-Black musical on Broadway, ‘Shuffle Along” starring Paul Robeson.
Jack Wood and Suzanne Cort and had two children, Michelle (Mimi) and a son, John Walter Wood IV. Jack died prematurely in 1958 after abdominal surgery; and his widow, Suzanne, kept Wynd House in trust for her son, John, who was only 17 at the time of his father’s death.
When John was 19 he went to Trinity College Dublin and he and his mother saw Wynd House for the first time. The house was lit by gas lights – heated only by fireplaces – was completely empty. The cottages in High Street were ramshackle with no electricity or indoor plumbing.
Wynd House in the 20th Century
1960-1976 – Admiral James
Instead of the house becoming derelict, Jack’s widow Suzanne arranged for Admiral William James, head of Naval Intelligence during World War Two, to have the house for his life on an ‘improving rent’ – Admiral James installed electricity and central heating and bathrooms for the first time.
Admiral James was a very active member of the local community, and keeping with the Wynd House maritime tradition, was instrumental in the development of the Elie Harbour and the founding of the Sailing Club. Admiral James was also known as “Bubbles” as he was the subject of a Millais childhood portrait that ended up as a famous Pears Soap advert.
By this time, Jack’s son, (also called John Walter Wood), now owned Wynd House and worked in London from 1964, with his Irish wife Charlotte Cusack Jobson and their son Duncan Wood.
1980’s and 90’s
When Admiral James vacated Wynd House in 1976, Wynd House was empty again, and John and Charlotte took on the task of furnishing it and looking after it. They upgraded 36 High Street and improved Wynd House, putting in three 3 windows on the garden side of the house.
Charlotte’s Irish parents, Robert and Cherry Cusack Jobson, lived in Wynd House for over a decade and became part of the life of the village, with Bob playing golf with young Tom Morris. He used the long room in the cottage as his artist studio and installed the transparent pan tiles in the roof. The landscape paintings in the house and cottage are painted by Robert.
John and Charlotte loved Wynd House and planned to retire to Wynd House and enjoy it for the rest of their lives, but sadly Charlotte died young, in 2003.
Wynd House in the 21st Century
William Duncan Wood, John and Charlotte’s son, married Fiona Houston, from a Dumfriesshire farming and entrepreneurial family. Duncan, after a childhood in Ireland and the UK, moved to the USA to study at Cornell University and to work in Washington DC. He then returned to the UK to study for a Doctorate in International Relations at Oxford University, and to play rugby – Duncan played for the Oxford Blues team and played flanker/No. 8 for Harlequins. Fiona and Duncan met while studying at Oxford University.
Fiona’s Mackie/Houston family owns the Gretna Green wedding business, and Fiona’s paternal great grandfather, Donald Bremner, was a Clyde shipbuilder with two shipyards, Dunlop Bremner and Blythswood shipyard.
After over a decade in Washington DC working in policy, diplomacy, and journalism, Fiona and Duncan moved back to Scotland in 2003 with their American-born children, Adair Wood and Lydia Wood. Fiona is an entrepreneur who set up a pioneering seaweed business, Mara Seaweed, and is a published author and journalist. Adair is an astrophysicist and Lydia is a linguist. In 2022, Adair married Erica Combe, an Australian jeweler and opal gemologist.
Fiona and Duncan are now the custodians of Wynd House and are actively involved in the life of Elie & Earlsferry; bringing the Wood family history full circle.