Samuel Newitt Wood was a man of deep principles and courage in a time when these attributes would get a man killed in Kansas. Sam Wood's internal fire blazed and with it he heated up Kansas Territory from the time he arrived in June 1854 to June 21, 1891 when he was murdered in cold blood outside a church in front of his wife.
The signing of the Kansas-Nebraska Act brought Sam, his wife and two children to Kansas from Ohio to the new settlement of Lawrence, near the California Road (later called the Oregon Trail).
Sam came from a Hicksite Quaker family of fervid abolitionists in Ohio. He was a notorious underground railroad conductor who would transport runaway slaves in broad daylight, and a lawyer even though he had a limited education. He married Margret Lyon, daughter of William Lyon who operated a way station on the underground railroad where Sam would unload his human cargos. The Lyon family were related to Stephen Foster, and distantly related to Senetor Salmon P. Chase, later Lincoln's Treasury Secratary.
Sam printed the first newspaper; Kansas Press Free-State. Founded by S.N. Wood. Subsequently bought by A.I. Baker. May 30, 1859 - July 2, 1860 under a cottonwood tree near Cottonwood Falls, Chase County in 1859. He was intrumental in the partitioning of Wise County...named first after slaveholding Virginia Governor Henry Alexander Wise, who hung John Brown in Virginia as Lincoln was campaiging in Kansas. Sam Wood named the new county Chase, the only national recongition of Solmon P. Chase except on the $10,000 dollar bill. Sam wrote many letters that were published in Washington D.C. newspapers to encourage settlement by opponents of slavery, people who could counter immigrants the proslavery men where pushing into Kansas from Missouri.
Kansas Rangers, Wood's Independent Company : Samuel N. Wood's Independent Company Kansas Rangers, afterward Samuel N. Wood's Independent Battalion Missouri Cavalry, Union Rangers (Company A), afterward Samuel N. Wood's Battalion 6th Regiment Missouri Cavalry (Company A), afterward 6th Regiment Missouri Cavalry (Company G)
Samuel Newitt Wood also served as a Captian in the 2nd Kansas Infantry Co. I. Buried in Prairie Grove Cemetery, Cottonwood Falls, Chase County, KS.
I also recommend the following books in which Sam Wood is also mentioned.