“Charles Williams, Prisoner Number One. Burglar. Light Black Skin. Five feet seven inches tall. Foot: eleven inches. Scar on nose. Scar on Thigh. Broad Mouth. Black eyes. Farmer by trade. Can read. Theft included one twenty-dollar watch, one three-dollar gold seal, one, a gold key. Sentenced to two years confinement with labour. Received by Samuel R. Wood, first Warden, Eastern State Penitentiary …”
- Eastern State Penitentiary Timeline
Brief History of Eastern State Penitentiary
The establishment of the Eastern State Penitentiary began after concerns about the conditions at the Walnut Street Jail. Hence, Benjamin Rush established the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons in 1787. The society appointed an acting committee of six members to visit and observe the conditions at the Walnut Street Jail.
After seeing how bad the jail was, the society turned their efforts towards the legislation. They proposed to abolish iron shackles and to establish a set salary for the jailer to avoid corruption. They all supported solitary confinement to prevent hardening criminals from first-time offenders as well as to separate prisoners by age, gender, and crime committed.
With the legislation approval, and the newly built "Penitentiary House" in the Walnut Street Jail, the society and the jail became models of prison reform efforts in the United States and in Europe.
Even with the improvements of the Walnut Street Jail, the society still wanted more reforms to improve the prison. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons called for a larger state institution to separate ALL prisoners, resulting in the Pennsylvania legislature to approve funds to build the Eastern State Penitentiary.
Fun Fact #1: There were four architects who submitted designs of the Eastern State Penitentiary: New York architect Charles Loos, Jr. and three Philadelphian architects John Havilland, William Strickland, and Samuel Webb. Havilland won the commission and received $100 for his design. He was appointed later on to oversee the construction.
The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons oversaw the facility while members of the society filled three of the eleven state-appointed commissioner positions and Samuel R. Wood served as the first warden of the Eastern State Penitentiary.
Who Was Samuel R. Wood?
There were speculations of the early life of the ESP's first warden, Samuel Wood. Sources say that Samuel Wood was born on August 25, 1776 in Blue Bell, PA to John and Catharine Davis Wood. Every resource about Samuel all stated that there was no information about his early life up to his career as a warden. What we do know about him prior was that he was a Quaker, a member of the Philadelphia Prison Society, and an inspector of the Walnut Street Jail.
Family Research Process
I was able to find leads about his family in PA by starting with his parents John and Catharine leading to one of his brothers James Wood (1771-1851). The "Wood family file" linked from Find a Grave mentioned Samuel's name as one of James's brothers and the son of John and Catharine. I was able to find his grandfather James Wood (1706-1760) as well as their father John Wood (1747-1832) after scanning through 50 pages on Ancestry (there's A LOT of John Woods).
When I finally reached their father John, I was able to identify Samuel. His full name, according to Ancestry, was "Samuel Davis Wood." The information confirms his birthday: August 25, 1776, the exact match of the information other people found about him. It is uncertain if he has a middle name.
But then I came across another Samuel R. Wood who was born in 1791 and died in 1858. It was stated that he was a "staunch" Quaker who served as the inspector of the Walnut Street Jail before becoming the first warden of the Eastern State Penitentiary.
"Samuel R. Wood (1791-1858), a Friend, was long a member of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. He was also a member of the board of commissioners which built Eastern Penitentiary, and was selected by the Prison Society to lobby with the legislature in 1828-1829 to secure the final adoption of the 'Pennsylvania system.' He was Warden from 1829 to 1840."
- Footnote of Arthur W. Silver's "Tocqueville and Beaumont in Philadelphia: Their Interest in the Society of Friends" (54)
Everything was known about Samuel after his debut as a warden and opening of the Eastern State Penitentiary.
Samuel was appointed by the governor to the Building Commission to select a site, a design, and to oversee the construction of the Eastern State Penitentiary. During meetings, there were debates of whether or not labor should be included for solitary confinement. Samuel was in favor of labor while Thomas Bradford, Jr., fellow member of the Philadelphia Prison Society, opposed it.
Fun Fact #2: Samuel was in favor of Havilland's design of the Eastern State Penitentiary over Strickland's design.
He was appointed as the first warden by the board of inspectors of the Eastern State Penitentiary. On October 25, 1829, Samuel took in his first prisoner named Charles Williams. As a strong believer of prison labor, he put Charles to work making shoes. He ended up making as many as ten pairs of shoes every day.
Samuel was involved in improving the heat and water supply. Realizing that the warming hot air furnaces were not installed in Havilland's plan, he ended up purchasing six small stoves that were "troublesome, expensive, and dirty."
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, and his friend Gustave de Beaumont, a French magistrate, visited the ESP in 1833, and described Samuel as,
"a man of superior mind, who, influenced by religious sentiments, has abandoned his former career [sic], in order to devote himself entirely to the success of an establishment so useful to his community."
Political scientist Dr. Francis Lieber also talked about Samuel's contribution to the ESP:
"I have never found a superintendent of any penitentiary of a more human disposition, and clearer mind on all subjects of the penitentiary system than Mr. Wood; I must add here that I have received from no one more sound and practical knowledge of the penitentiary system, generally, than from Mr. Wood. I have for my part never become acquainted with a person whom I thought equally fitted for that station."
Samuel thought highly of the inmates at the ESP. He wanted to turn those convicted into a moral man:
"No prisoner is seen by another, after he enters the walls. When the years of his confinement have passed, his old associates in crime will be scattered over the earth, or in the grave... and the prisoner can go forth into a new and industrious life, where his previous misdeeds are unknown."
He wanted his officers to "turn the thoughts of the convict inward upon himself, and to teach him how to think; in this solitude is a powerful aid."
He also believed that education, proximity of family, and temperance are things that would prevent the convicts of doing an criminal activity.
"In some respects the early years of Warden Wood's regime were almost unbelievably informal. In August, 1833, Wood released prisoners 79 and 80, both of whom were trained in shoemaking. They petitioned him to be allowed to stay and work, and as Wood was unable to find employment for them outside, he assented to the temporary arrangement. In another instance, when a released convict returned after a fruitless day of job searching, Wood made him a gift of his old set of tools, (often required for employment,) and permitted him to spend the night in his old cell. Instances such of these were related by Wood as proof of the fundamental benevolence of the system."
- Jacqueline Thibaut, 211
In 1834, he faced scandalous charges brought against his management by the prisoners and employees. Charges include:
"licentious behavior" with females on the premises of ESP
embezzlement of prison funds and appropriation of public property for personal use
the infliction of excessive physical punishments upon prisoners
relaxation in the practice of solitary confinement
PA State Attorney General George M. Dallas was informed about the allegations of Samuel Wood and the other officers, and asked Governor George Wolf to form a joint investigative committee to review the allegations.
As a result, Samuel and his officers were exonerated by the majority of the investigative committee.
NOTE: The head of the minority investigative committee, Democrat Thomas B. McElwee of Bedford County, published the whole testimony from the committee hearing. Read it here.
He complained to the board of inspectors he was spied on and did not receive respect from the people around him. He claimed that some of his prison guards were "deists" since Samuel himself was an Orthodox Quaker. It was said that he framed the conflict as a struggle between Orthodox and Hicksite Christians.
It was unclear if the allegations against Samuel was politically motivated.
Conclusions
There was so much to learn about him as a warden at the ESP. He supported solitary confinement with labor with mixed outcomes and he faced accusations from some of the prisoners and employees at the ESP.
I would think his religious beliefs were applied in his work as a warden and his thoughts on turning convicts into human beings again.
It's interesting that there was a lot of information about Samuel Wood, but so little on his early life before he became a warden. But somehow, few researchers and historians were able to determine the family members of Samuel Wood as well as his birthplace. But then there were other sources I found that said otherwise about Samuel in terms of his lifespan.
Was he born in 1776 or 1791? Were his parents John and Catharine Wood? Did he live in Blue Bell/Whitpain as sources say? Hopefully we will find the answer to these questions...
Bibliography
Child, Deborah M. "Tributes in Paper from the City of Brotherly Love." Americana Insights. Accessed September 2, 2021. https://americanainsights.org/essays/tributes-in-paper/.
"Eastern State Penitentiary, Bounded by Fairmount Avenue, Corinthian Avenue, Brown Street and Twenty-second Street, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA." Survey (photographs, written historical and descriptive data), Historic American Buildings Survey, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, 1983. From Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (HABS PA, 51-PHILA, 354-; https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/master/pnp/habshaer/pa/pa1200/pa1207/data/pa1207data.pdf accessed September 2, 2021).
"Eastern State Penitentiary Historic Structures Report, Volume I." Eastern State Penitentiary Task Force of the Preservation Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, City of Philadelphia Historical Commission, Mariana Thomas Architects. July 21, 1994. https://scalar.usc.edu/works/pandemonium/media/ESP%20HSR%20v1.pdf.
Michel, Laura. "Pennsylvania Prison Society." The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. Last modified 2016. https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/pennsylvania-prison-society/.
Teeters, Negley K. "The Early Days of the Eastern State Penitentiary at Philadelphia." Pennsylvania History 16, no. 4 (1949): 261-302.
Thibaut, Jacqueline. "'To Pave The Way To Penitence': Prisoners and Discipline At The Eastern State Penitentiary 1829-1835." The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 106, no. 2 (1982): 187-222.
"Timeline." Eastern State Penitentiary. Accessed August 28, 2021. https://www.easternstate.org/research/history-eastern-state/timeline.