Isaac L. Wood was born around 1822 in New Providence, New Jersey, as one of multiple children in a devout Methodist family that valued faith, discipline, and modest well-being. His life, on the surface, was that of a humble farmer following in his father’s footsteps—steady, quiet, and grounded in a rural Christian community.

Sometime prior to 1854, his older brother David J. Wood migrated to Dansville, New York, where he built a successful enterprise in shoes and leather, eventually becoming a pillar of the local community. In 1854, Isaac followed, moving into David’s home and launching a produce speculation business—buying and selling eggs, butter, and other perishables—under David’s financial support.

But the produce venture stumbled, and Isaac’s financial troubles deepened. As his desperation mounted, he remained a fixture in his brother’s household.

In mid-to-late May 1855, tragedy suddenly shattered the Wood family’s stability. David fell gravely ill with violent vomiting and purging and died just three days later—his doctors attributing it to “cholera morbus,” a common but ambiguous diagnosis of the time. Skeptical but uninformed, the family accepted the verdict—until Rhoda and her two children went down with the same terrifying symptoms several weeks later. Rhoda died quickly; the children survived, albeit shaken.

Isaac seized the moment. With David gone, Rhoda briefly inherited the estate, now co-owned with another brother. But her death thrust Isaac into guardianship of the children—and control over a sizable estate of between $20,000 to $30,000. An unexpected note surfaced around that time: a $2,650 promissory note supposedly from David to Isaac, offered as proof of a debt owed. Yet this note raised eyebrows, as investigators later found it was forged, and alterations in David’s account books only deepened suspicion.

In the summer of 1857, new light broke in. Joseph J. Welch, who’d moved into David’s house, discovered arsenic-laced powders—pure arsenic, arsenic mixed with magnesia, and cream of tartar—in the barn. Bodies were exhumed, and Prof. Hadley, a Buffalo chemist, confirmed arsenic in the stomachs of both David and Rhoda. The coroner’s jury concluded Isaac was responsible, triggering his arrest.

Isaac didn’t wait. He fled to New Jersey, where soon after, his wife—and possibly child—died under similar suspicious circumstances, again pointing to arsenic poisoning.  Authorities tracked Isaac for two years, eventually cornering him in January 1857 on a prairie farm near Rantoul, Illinois. Without fanfare, he was lured back to New York under the pretense of settling the estate.

Isaac’s first trial began on February 1, 1858. It ended in a hung jury—reports vary, but one juror, Moses Long, refused to convict due to personal opposition to the death penalty. The second trial, starting May 3, packed more drama. After ten days of testimony and three grueling days to assemble an impartial jury, Isaac was found guilty after just 2½ hours of deliberation. The defense argued that evidence surrounding financial wrongdoing was irrelevant to the charge of poisoning Rhoda—but the court disagreed.  Appeals failed, and Governor King’s brief reprieve gave way to the final fate: execution scheduled for July 9, 1858.

On July 9, 1858, his execution became courtroom theater. Only 60 witnesses were admitted inside the scaffold enclosure, while hundreds watched from outside under guard and band accompaniment. Isaac, composed and religious, delivered a dramatic final speech extolling God’s judgments, recited scriptures, shook hands, and confessed his innocence before gasping his last breath by the “upright jerker” hanging method—his neck broken, yet his heartbeat lingered for several minutes. The body was taken by his sister for burial in Avon before being transported to New Jersey.