Born in Georgia and married there in 1837 to Martha Evans Gindrat, a widow with 3 children, George T. Wood came to Texas with his family in 1839 and settled along the Trinity River near Point Blank. He studied law and was elected to the 6th Republic of Texas Congress in 1841-42 and to the Annexation Convention of 1845. As a state senator in 1846, he sponsored a bill creating Tyler County; Woodville, the county seat, was named for him, as was Wood County, created in 1850. He left the Senate in 1846 to fight in the Mexican War, and his military heroics helped make him the popular choice for governor in 1847. During his governorship, the recently organized state government faced recurring Indian hostilities and a boundary dispute in Santa Fe County, now part of New Mexico. He urged the sale of public lands to pay the large public debt, and his administration saw the establishment of a state library and a penitentiary. Martha Wood, who raised silkworms and made her own silk cloth, did not accompany him to the state capital at Austin, then a rough frontier town without an official governor's residence. After failing to win a second term in 1849, he returned to his home at Point Blank, where he died at age 63 and was buried nearby.