Rev. Thomas Benton Wood served at a small church named Woodlawn Cumberland Presbyterian Church after Wood in commemoration for his service to the community. The land was situated in northeast Steens, Mississippi from the years 1869-2005. The community continued service after Wood’s death with a number of temporary pastors and celebrated their centennial in 1969. Tragically, the church was demolished in 2005 due to irreparable infrastructure damage. Rev. Wood was born January 24, 1836. He was educated at Richland Presbytery in Tennessee for a decade of his life before transferring to Mississippi in 1869. Wood is buried in Caledonia, Lowndes County, Mississippi. Wood was married to Sarah Hart Lyon (1846-1925) and the son to Clementine Brown Wood (1809-1894)

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In his sermon journals, Rev. Wood demonstrated a care for the small community in Steens. He preached a message of love and fear all at once. Love for God and family, fear of immorality and Death. From these notes, it is evident that Rev. Wood did not conform to the changing belief in heaven during the time. Rather, he reinforced a traditional understanding of the afterlife, one where the only company in heaven was God -- no earthly bonds were to be present upon Salvation. Below are a collection of his notes that convey his compassionate nature and show that he felt himself to be moral compass of the community.

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Rev. Wood’s sermon journals indicate that he was focused on the idea that the existence of grief indicated the constant presence of God in one’s life. He emphasized the importance in understanding that God was omnipresent and would continue to harbor Christians’ souls within life, death, and the afterlife. In order to help alleviate the grief of his congregants, Wood preached this message of intimacy with God in regard to the three major aspects of a soul’s existence: life, death, and eternity. Wood demonstrated a compassion for parishioners without conforming to new cultural trends in perception of heaven, which would allow departed souls to reconnect in heaven instead of severing relationships to focus on worshipping God for all eternity. Instead, Wood spoke of a message that allowed the bereaved a glimpse into the compassion and ever-loving embrace of God throughout their lives. More importantly, Wood wished for his congregants to see the light of his teachings as purer compared to the contemporary understanding of heaven. He believed this philosophy to be more divine as it followed, according to him, a traditional route to understanding God as a benevolent entity. Specifically, Wood understood that by pouring one’s entire faith into God and by following God’s laws, human souls would exist in heaven with God in his most pure essence, which was taught to be more favorable than reconnection with departed loved ones in heaven.  

Wood’s sermons emphasized the importance of belief in God alone and the salvation he could provide. His dedication to the continued effort of teaching this form of Presbyterian theology was admirable for the time because it was common for religious sects (both Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish alike) to adapt their teachings about the afterlife in order alleviate emotional trauma experienced by grieving families after the Civil War. His stalwart dedication to previous doctrinal teachings emphasized his character as a man loyal and confident to his faith. On the other hand, it can paint the image of man stubborn and set in the ways of his teachings as a means of deflecting his own personal and spiritual turmoil, especially when noting the sermon journal these teachings are drawn from are his last thoughts on death and his soul’s immortality after he was departed from this realm.