Greg Tucker, Daily News Journal, November 10, 2013
Oxford educated, Cambridge graduate, theologian, missionary, architect, author/ historian, teacher, Senate chaplain, skilled physician, politician— George Andrew Smith (1815-68), a/k/a A.T. Wood, was a man for all “seasons” on three continents.
According to “A History of Rutherford County’s African American Community” by Melvin E. Hughes, Sr. (1996), page 126: “Dr. A. T. Woods, graduate of Cambridge University, England, came to Murfreesboro in 1867 and established his practice at the corner of Lytle and Academy Streets. In addition to his medical practice, he was active in politics and was a delegate to the state Republican Convention in 1868. He was a missionary to Africa.”
In “A History of Medicine in Rutherford County, Tennessee, Part II” (Rutherford County Historical Society, 1987), page 389, Robert G. Ransom, M.D. provides some further commentary: “A. T. Wood was a black physician who…placed advertisements in the newspapers, especially in Nashville, in the year after the Civil War, urging blacks to ‘Patronize your own physicians.’…He was a well-known physician among the blacks in the area and enjoyed a good following. It is not known how long he remained in Murfreesboro.”
One such ad, appearing in a Nashville paper in January 1866, read: “Dr. A. T. Wood , a graduate of Cambridge University, late Missionary to Africa, and a member of the Indiana Annual Conference, is now a practicing Physician in this city. His thorough education, and success in medical skill, has raised him to eminence among his colored brethren and friends, as well as demanded respect from the whites both north and south…Private diseases promptly attended to in strict confidence. Terms quite moderate. Colored friends patronize your own Physician.”
Smith, alias A. T. Wood, left his home and place of birth in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1845 and traveled throughout Maine presenting himself as the Reverend Alfred Thomas Wood, an Oxford-educated, Calvinist Baptist preacher from England. Prospering from his “calling,” the reverend in 1849 married Irene Stuart, a white woman. This bold liaison prompted inquiry and his Nova Scotia origins were exposed. His claim to have been shipwrecked on Canadian soil while en route from England to the U. S. was not persuasive. Convicted of fraud, he was jailed but soon released on a promise to leave the state.
Next in Boston, Smith joined the abolitionist struggle and was soon identified as an articulate and forceful spokesman for the former slave community. At several events he shared the podium with leading aboli
tionist William Lloyd Garrison. The Liberator, Garrison’s abolitionist publication, featured his remarks in several editions in 1850, and “Wood” became the pastor for the First Independent Baptist Church of People of Color in Boston. Before the end of the year, however, the reverend and his wife disappeared. The Liberator ran an “official resignation” that referenced an investigation of “moral character.”
Appearing next in New York, Smith claimed to hold a doctorate of divinity from the Stepney Theological School in England. He joined the American Colonization Society (ACS) and arranged for passage with his wife in July 1850 to Liberia. Upon arrival, Smith assumed the pastor role for Liberia’s first Christian congregation, The Providence Baptist Church. Now claiming a Cambridge education, he became a paid agent of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) “working to spread the gospel” in the new African nation.
In December 1850 Smith was named chaplain of the Liberian Senate. In the same month his wife, Irene, died of malaria. Eight months later the ACS and SBC learned of his fraudulent history and all financial support was cancelled.
Undaunted, Smith married the stepdaughter of the Liberian collector of customs and sailed for London in June 1851 as a fundraiser for Liberian Christianity. While he was canvassing the British Isles, his Liberian wife died, and Smith was arrested for fraud and debts. Making no claim to English roots, he selfidentified as a Liberian citizen.
In February 1852 Smith was released from prison in Liverpool and married Frances Dale, a British citizen. By then news of his arrest and conviction for fraud had reached Liberia, so he headed for Ireland and again preached and lectured on missionary work in Liberia and the need for funding. Identifying himself as an agent of the Liberian government and an abolitionist, Smith/ Wood boasted of his personal contact with the characters identified by Harriet Beecher Stowe in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
His claim of contact with fictitious characters exposed Smith as a fraud and once again he was arrested and sentenced. After serving his sentence, he travelled to Hamburg, Germany with his wife in the summer of 1854. While in Germany he published a mostly fictitious history of Liberia in German (“Geschichte der Republik Liberia”). Also during his stay in Germany his third wife disappeared.
Upon returning to Liberia in March 1855, Smith was immediately arrested for fraud and forgery. After a short prison term, he was released to serve as a school teacher in rural Liberia. After two years as a teacher, he disappeared and there is no record of him until he reappeared in Montreal, Canada in late 1859 advertising himself as the former Superintendent of Public Works in the colony of Sierra Leone. In this role he claimed to be a trained architect of African lineage. (Sierra Leone was established in the 1780s as a British colony for relocation of black loyalists who had escaped enslavement in the United States by seeking protection with the British Army during the American Revolution. They had originally been given land in Nova Scotia, but the harsh winters and local opposition prompted the relocation of many Black Loyalists to west Africa.) In 1860 Smith again assumed the guise of a religious figure—the Reverend A. T. Wood. Moving to Ohio, the Reverend Wood became the pastor of an African Methodist Episcopal (AME) congregation in Cleveland. He also resumed lecturing on Liberian missionary work and canvassed across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
In 1864 Smith was promoted to a larger AME congregation in Chicago, but this elevation prompted the AME hierarchy to investigate his history and A. T. Wood was again exposed.
Known for what he was, or wasn’t, in the northern states, Smith headed south.
Still using his A. T. Wood alias, Smith launched his Nashville practice in 1866 with an advertising campaign and soon was busy as a Cambridge-educated physician specializing in service to his “colored brethren” and treating “private diseases.” He also took up the cause of “Freedmen” rights during southern Reconstruction and associated with the Radical Republicans.
Soon after arriving in Nashville, Smith “adopted” a 15-year-old girl. This led to charges of “moral corruption” when it became apparent that he was having relations with the underage “daughter.” Formal charges were not pressed, but Smith found it convenient to relocate his practice to Murfreesboro in 1867.
In Murfreesboro, “Dr. Wood” took another bride and continued his medical practice and political activity as a Republican convention delegate. George Andrew Smith, alias A. T. Wood, died “unexpectedly” in 1868, as he prepared to attend the Republican national convention. A short obituary appeared in area papers on May 14: “Death of a Prominent Negro Radical—Dr. A. T. Wood, a negro Radical stump orator of some note, died at Murfreesboro day before yesterday, of apoplexy.” He was buried in a pauper’s grave.
A special thank you to Frank Mackey, author of “The Curious Case of A.T. Wood,” and to Rutherford County Archivist John Lodl for research assistance. Rutherford County Historian Greg Tucker can be reached at gregorytucker@ bellsouth.net.