David Flavell Woods (1837-1910)

David F. Woods was born in Dickinson Township, Pennsylvania on September 16, 1837, the son of Richard and Mary Jane Sterrett Woods. He was educated in local schools but prepared for higher education in an academy connected with his uncle, the Reverend David Sterrett Woods, in present day Juniata County. He entered Dickinson College in Carlisle, near his birthplace, in 1856 as a sophomore with the class of 1859. He graduated with his class and, for a time, went to Huntington, Pennsylvania to work in the banking house of Bell, Garretson, and Company. He wearied of this career choice quickly and his family funded his study of medicine in Philadelphia, some of it with fellow Dickinsonian and Cumberland County native Dr. R.A.F. Penrose. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a medical doctorate in 1862.

Woods was a resident at the Blockley Hospital for a year and then at the Episcopal Hospital in 1864. He opened his own practice on South Thirteenth Street in Philadelphia in the spring of 1865. He also assisted in instruction with the University of Pennsylvania medical school, though he was forced to give up much of this work when his practice became so successful and popular that he had to move to North Fifteenth Street. In 1872, he gave up teaching completely. He did continue with visiting duties at the Episcopal Hospital and, for a long period, at the Presbyterian Hospital in the city.

In October 1860, Woods married Helen R. Stewart of Philadelphia. He died of pneumonia in the city on July 28, 1910. He was seventy-three years old.