Hood was born on February 2, 1808, in
Philadelphia. He was the eldest of twelve children born to Eliza Forebaugh and John McClellan Hood, an Irish immigrant and wholesale grocery and wine merchant. John Hood constructed Hood Mansion, a country estate in
Limerick,
Pennsylvania, in 1834. The site of a family mausoleum where Hood and his parents are interred, the estate has been abandoned since 2008. A 1827 graduate of the
United States Military Academy, Hood worked as a surveyor and topographical engineer. He is best known for working with fellow officer
Robert E. Lee to map the border between the state of
Ohio and
Michigan Territory in 1835, when he earned a promotion to first lieutenant. He resigned in 1836 to work as a private-sector civil engineer in Cuba before rejoining the
Army Corps of Topographical Engineers as a captain. He mapped the
Oregon Territory in 1838 but reproduced errors found in earlier maps. In 1839, President
Martin Van Buren dispatched an expedition led by Hood to survey parts of
Indian Territory bordering the states of
Missouri and
Arkansas (present-day northeastern
Oklahoma). Hood contracted a disease, probably
yellow fever, while on the expedition. He died in
Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, on July 17, 1840, Hood's journals, letters, drawings, maps, architectural plans, and other papers are held in the collections of the
Winterthur Library and the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at
Yale University. == References ==