California Biographies 

Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo. 
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


NEALY C. WOODS. While nearly a quarter century of Mr. Woods' lifetime has been spent in 
Ventura County, his successful experiences here as a farmer and fruit grower constitute only a 
portion of a varied career which has made him a soldier fighting for the preservation of the 
Union, a farmer, lumberman, business man in various states and localities.
His birth occurred at Avon in Fulton County, Illinois, June 12, 1842. His parents were Ira and 
Orpha Woods. His father was one of the earliest pioneers of Fulton County, Illinois, going there 
in 1832 and taking up a large tract of land from the Government for himself and three 
brothers. These brothers established the Town of Woodstock. There was and is another 
Woodstock in Illinois, and on account of the con- fusion of mails the town established by these 
brothers was subsequently changed to Avon, which was the birthplace of Nealy C. Woods.
Until he was about fourteen years of age Nealy C. Woods attended the public schools of his 
native village. In 1856 his parents moved to Galesburg, Illinois, and while there he had the 
advantages of Lombard College. He left school in 186i to become a soldier. He enlisted in the 
Seventh Illinois Cavalry, one of the most noted regiments sent out by Illinois, and was in active 
service until the fall of 1864. His three years' term had then expired and he procured an 
honorable discharge. After the war Mr. Woods returned to Galesburg, worked in a clothing 
store two years, and then went into the heavy timber at Nealsville, Wisconsin, and spent a year 
cutting down the forest for lumbering.
It was following that experience in the lumber woods that he first came to California. He 
located in Carpinteria, Santa Barbara County, and for a year was employed on the Blood ranch. 
Returning to Gales- burg, Illinois, he took charge of his father-in-law's brick manufacturing 
plant, and conducted it until 1888. In that year Mr. Woods removed to Topeka, Kansas, and was 
manager of a brick yard for a year.
From there he came to Ventura County, worked as a bricklayer for a time, but in the fall of 
1892 moved to the Simi Valley and bought the ninety acres of land which he still owns. In the 
spring of 1893 he set out forty acres in prunes and put another twenty acres into the same crop 
in the spring of 1894. Altogether his prune orchard has proved very profitable and satisfactory, 
but at the present time he is having the sixty acres reset to walnuts. The rest of his ninety-acre 
estate is used for general farming and pasture.
Mr. Woods is a member of the Masonic order and the Knights Templar, is a republican in 
politics and a member of the Universalist Church. At Galesburg, Illinois, December 25, 1867, he 
married Cecelia Stafford. Mrs. Woods died August II, 1914, and is survived by two children : 
Mrs. B. H. Brigham, who lives on her father's ranch; and Mrs. Charles Blackstock, of Oxnard, 
California.