Leonard Wood, Jr. – Captain, United States Army

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LEONARD WOOD, JR. TO WED
Governor General’s Son to Marry Miss Dolores Graves, Actress

LANCASTER, Pennsylvania, November 10, 1923 – Leonard Wood, Jr., son of Governor General Leonard Wood of the Philippine Islands, and Miss Delores Graves, an actress of San Francisco, will be married next Wednesday in New York City.  This was made known today by Mr. Wood, who is here promoting theatrical productions.  Miss Grave recently completed a long engagement in her future husband’s company.

Mr. Wood is a graduate of Cornell University and served in the American Army overseas as a Captain.  Miss Graves is a graduate of the American School of Dramatic Arts and a former student at the University of California.

LEONARD WOOD JR. BREAKS ENGAGEMENT
General’s Son and Miss Graves Decide Stage Career and Marriage Are Incompatible

WASHINGTON, December 27, 1923 – The engagement of Leonard Wood, Jr. and Miss Delores Graves, an actress, has been broken by mutual consent.  Mr. Wood is the son of General Leonard Wood, Governor General of the Philippine Islands, and brother of Lieutenant Colonel Osborne C. Wood.

The decision was reached when the couple realized that married life and the stage might not go well together.

“In this business it is difficult for persons to marry happily,” Mr. Wood explained. “One of us would have to sacrifice a career.  When one married he would like to have a home.  Miss Graves is an actress and has her career ahead of her.  We thought it all over and decided to call the wedding off.”

Mrs. Wood is in the theatrical profession and is now promoting the Washington Theater Guild.  He met Miss Graves about eight months ago.  Later Miss Graves became a member of the Wood Players, a stock company which recently closed an engagement in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, after playing at White Plains, New York.

Miss Graves’s home in San Francisco.  She was graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

ACCUSES LEONARD WOOD, JR.
Fort Wayne Major’s Wife, Loser in Stocks, Makes Mail Complaint

DETROIT, February 21, 1924 – Complaint that he had used the mails to defraud was made today against Leonard Wood Jr., son of the Governor-General of the Philippines, by Mrs. Caroline Smith, wife of Major Frank A. Smith, Chief Clerk at Fort Wayne.  The complaint was forwarded to the Chief Inspector of Mails at Washington.

“I lost my money,” explained Mrs. Smith, “but I probably wouldn’t have made a complaint if I had not read in the newspapers that young Wood had made $800,000 in one week on the Stock Marker.  I feel that young Mr. Wood traded on the reputation of the army.  My husband served under General Wood for fifteen years and trusted him.  My people and my husband’s people have all been in the army.  We relied on the honesty of army officers, and then it became evident that we had been bilked.  Young Mr. Wood circulated and sold stock to many army officers and even some of the non-commissioned men, Sergeant Alfred Westler, for example, formerly of Fort Wayne, invested $1,000.”

HAMON’S DAUGHTER SHOWS WOOD LETTER
Calls Missive She Obtained From General’s Son in Chicago an “Apology”

CHICAGO, March 15, 1924 – The late Jake Hamon’s 16-year-old daughter, Olive Belle, came back to Chicago from Washington today, bearing what she called “a letter of apology” from Leonard Wood, Jr., who recently stated that Hamon officer to give to General Leonard Wood the Republican Presidential nomination in 1920 in exchange for his appointment as Secretary of the Interior.

The inference drawn was that Hamon, an oil man, was looking for a chance to get at the Teapot Dome and other oil reserves.  The daughter said her mother objected to the Washington trip.  “She it too proud to tell what she knows, though she knows a lot,” said the girl.  “So I ran away and went to the Capital.  I met young Leonard Wood outside a theater in Washington and told him I wanted an apology,” she continued.  “He said he would give me one.  Nest day he wrote me this letter.”

She produced a typewritten letter signed “Leonard Wood, Jr.”  It reads:  “I am only too glad to write you what I said in my interview to the press.  I meant in no way to cast any personal reflections upon your father, under whom I worked in Texas.  I was merely asked several questions relative to the convention in Chicago and I stated the incident as I recalled it to a reporter.  As for my personal feeling toward Jake Hamon, all I can say is that they are the pleasantest.  I hope you feel better after reading this.  Yours sincerely, Leonard Wood, Jr.”

LEONARD WOOD JR. SAYS HE’S BANKRUPT
Files Petition in Brooklyn Listing Debts of $14,585 and $842 in Assets
Has $91 Cash and $1 in Bank
Lawyer Says client’s Plight to Theatrical Venture and His Befriending of Others

NEW YORK, September 11, 1925 – Leonard Wood, Jr., son of Major General Wood, Governor General of the Philippines, filed a petition in bankruptcy yesterday in Brooklyn.  Wood’s liabilities were put at $14,585 and his assets at $842, of which only $91 are cash in hand and $1 on deposit in the South Shore Bank of Staten Island.

The young man did not appear in court, but was represented by a member of the legal firm of Klauber & Cameron of St. George, Staten Island.  Wood makes his home at Great Kills.

Henry Klauber said last night on Wood’s behalf that had creditors not pressed him he could in time have paid 100 cents on the dollar and would still do so.  The lawyer asserted that the young man’s troubles had been caused by befriending others and had begun about three years ago when he backed a theatrical stock company in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The venture was not a success, said Mr. Klauber, who charged that Wood’s partner and the leading man left town together, leaving Wood stranded and under necessity of providing for the rest of the company.  He tried to go on for a time but was compelled to give up when debts piled up without any income to offset them.

Wood’s creditors are listed as Samuel Small Russell, 2 West Fifty-first Street, $465; Eleanor Gates and Frederick Moore, 750 Fifth Avenue, $250; Harry Wood, Great Kills, Staten Island, $240; L. Gordon Hammersley, 67 Wall Street, $1,000; Emil Ledered, 50 East Sixty-sixth Street, $300; Mirabeau C. Towns, 3 Maiden Lane, $200; Sarah E. Smith, 213 West Seventy-ninth Street, $175; Neal R. Andrews, 21 West Forty-sixth Street, $700; Nash Rockwood, 527 Fifth Avenue, $3,200; Herbert Huff, 265 Millbank Avenue, Greenwich, Connecticut, $750; Casey and Wheeler, White Plains, $300; Darcy and Wolford, 114 East Thirty-ninth Street, $150; Frank O. Miller, 755 Seventh Avenue, $200; Century Play Company, 1440 Broadway, $150; J. Elmer Thompson, 947 College Avenue, Bronx, $700; E. Roland Harriman, 10 East Sixty-eighth Street, $5,000; Averil Clark, 51 Wall Street, $500; Murray Taylor, 2 Rector Street, $125; and the Commodore Hotel, $180.

His assets include, besides $92 in cash, notes from Leoncio Serpa, President of the Pro-Cuab Club, $350; properly in reversion, $100; and a note from Miss Helen Edwards, Actor’s Equity Association, $100.

LEONARD WOOD JR. IS HEARD
Tells Referee He Hopes to Pay $14,585 Liabilities by Writing

NEW YORK, September 27, 1925 – Leonard Wood, Jr., the son of Major General Wood, who filed a petition in bankruptcy September 10, giving his liabilities as $14,585 and his assets as $842, was examined yesterday in the first hearing of his creditors before Referee Frederick W. Griffort at St. George, Staten Island.

Only one of the fourteen creditors named appeared.  He was Samuel S. Russell of 2 West Fifty-First Street, who had a claim of $465, and he was accompanied by his attorney, Robert Blum of 120 Broadway.  Mr. Blum sought to establish that Mr. Wood had assets which he did not list.

At the end of the hearing Mr. Wood said he had written three or four photoplays, but he insisted that they had no value.  He said his liabilities represented money borrowed to operate a stock theater at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which had failed.  He also said he wrote fiction and sometimes received as much as $500 for a short story, and that he hoped to pay his creditors in full.

LEONARD WOOD, SON OF NOTED GENERAL, DEAD

NEW YORK, August 27, 1933 – Leonard Wood, Jr., son of the distinguished Major General, whose 39 years encompassed a series of tragic incidents that finally led him to polishing brass rails on a harbor boat, died in a hospital today.

Weakened by an attack of influenza four years ago, the son of the former Governor General of the Philippines succumbed to a sudden onset of lobar pneumonia in Bellevue Hospital.

In a comparatively short life Wood experienced the first warm glow of success as a writer then plunged into bankruptcy.

When the World War started young Wood was a student at Cornell University.  Late in 1916 he joined the British Army, and when the United States entered the war he transferred at once.  He emerged as a Lieutenant in the Ambulance Corps.

In 1924 he engaged briefly in banking and became head of the Acme Production Company, an oil company which came under investigation by the Post Officer Department.  The following year he was adjudged bankrupt with liabilities of $14,585 and assets of $842.

His much publicized brother, Brigadier General Osborne C. Wood, now Adjutant General of New Mexico, was en route by airplane from Santa Fe to attend to the funeral services.  Other survivors include his mother, Mrs. Louise Wood, and a sister, Miss Louisita Wood, both of whom are in Germany.

LEONARD WOOD DIES OF PNEUMONIA HERE
Son of Late General, Long in Poor Health, Taken to Bellevue Monday
Served Throughout War
Later Connected With Oil Concern Until Stock Sale Was Halted
Was 39 Years Old

NEW YORK, August 28, 1931 – Leonard Wood, son of the late Governor General of the Philippines, died at 7:25 A.M. yesterday in Bellevue Hospital.  He was 39 years old.

Last Monday afternoon, when he called on E. E. Mailler of the firm of Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts of 32 Liberty Street, which handles the legal affairs of the Wood family, he complained of a pain in his side and appeared so ill that Mr. Miller suggested medical attention.

Mr. Wood called his family physician but found that he was out of town.  Then he telephoned Dr. Samuel I. Feigenof Bellevue.

At the suggestion of Dr. Feigen he drove to Bellevue for examination and was immediately put to bed in the psychopathic ward.

Dr. C. N. Colbert, who had the case in charge since Mr. Wood was admitted, issued an official death certificate giving the cause of “lobar pneumonia.”

Dr. Colbert said that Mr. Wood had been suffering from pneumonia when he was admitted and it was of the lobar type, as distinguished from the bronchial pneumonia.  In his judgment, exposure and low resistance were the probable contributing causes.

Mrs. Wood was educated at Groton School and was an undergraduate at Cornell when the war started in 1914.  When the call for American participation grew urgent in 1916, he went to England and volunteered in the British Army.  When the United States entered the war in 1917 he got a transfer to the American Army and served as a Lieutenant with the Eighty-first Division.  After the armistice he served in the military secret service of Army Occupation at Coblenz for a while but army life in peacetime did not prove to his liking.

He resigned and was immediately persuaded by a former Captain, J. M. Craven, to join him in the Craven Oil and Refining Company, in which he was made vice president.  The literature of the company, which was later shown to be based on leases on undeveloped oil lands of uncertain value, featured his name, at times without the “Jr.,” and offered stock principally to veterans and soldiers who remembered the exploits of his father in Cuba, his father’s candidacy for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1920 and his administration of the Philippines under President Harding.

The Caravan Company was later reorganized as the Acme Production Company with Leonard Wood, Jr. as president and the sale of stock proceeded until investigations by stock fraud bureaus in Maryland, Illinois and other States and by the Post Office Department, halted it.  Meanwhile investors lost several hundred thousand dollars, and an investigation was demanded.

After the liquidation of this concern, Mr. Wood decided to become a producer and, failing that, a playwright. In 1927 his father, who had retired, induced his son to join him in the Northwest.  His father died shortly afterward and the son suffered an attack of influenza which left him broken in health.

His friends attributed his latter difficulties to the unsettling influence of the war, the shock of his father’s death and the consequences of this illness.

He is survived by his brother, Brigadier General Osborne C. Wood, Adjutant General of New Mexico, and by his mother and his sister Louise.  His brother left Santa Fe by plane yesterday on learning of his death and is scheduled to arrive at the Newark Airport at 4:45 P.M. today to arrange the details of the funeral.  His mother and sister are at Mannheim, Germany, taking the baths there.

WOOD, LEONARD JR
CAP CAV
DATE OF DEATH: 08/27/1931
BURIED AT: SECTION SPIL  SITE 10
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY

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