Robert Wood (timber merchant)


Robert Wood, was a Canadian timber merchant and shipowner alleged to be the son of Prince Edward Augustus and his mistress, Madame de Saint-Laurent.

Alleged parentage

Recent scholarship has established that no children were born of the 27-year relationship between Edward Augustus and Madame de Saint-Laurent; although many Canadian families and individuals have claimed descent from them, such claims can now be discounted in light of this new research. Based on the absence of birth or baptism records for Wood, subsequent generations of the Wood family had a tradition that claimed that the infant Wood was given by the Prince to his former servant, Robert Wood senior. Exactly when Robert Wood and his parentage became the subject of such speculation is unclear, but the only source appears to have been the family itself.

Parentage

Wood was in fact the biological son of the aforementioned Robert Wood, who was a servant to the Prince when he went to Quebec in 1791. Robert Wood senior married, in December of that year, Marie Dupuis. Subsequently appointed doorkeeper of the Executive Council, and later a merchant, he died in 1806, survived by seven children, Robert junior being the eldest.

Career

By 1812, Wood was commissioned culler of timber, and by 1815 master culler and measurer of masts and timber. He and his brother George started their own business as timber merchants and carpenters; the business flourished and floundered on the vicissitudes of the timber market, and Wood was bankrupted in 1826, only to recover by 1829.

Death

At some time around the end of 1846 or early 1847, Wood visited the West Indies to benefit his health; this failed to do any good, and he died in April of that year. He was survived by his wife, Charlotte, daughter of a military clerk, whom he had married in 1817 and with whom he had eleven children.