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The Green Bag
opened an olfice for the practice of his profession in Charlottesville, Virginia,
Conventions of the Seventh District he received the almost unanimous vote for
and in 1870 was elected Commonwealth's Attorney for that county, which position
in the Seventh District, and each time
he filled for nearly forty-one years with out having had opposition for the nomi
nation since 1873. The office of Com monwealth's Attorney; for Albemarle
Congress of all of the Eastern Counties failed of nomination by only a few votes. In 1881 he was elected captain of the Monticello Guard at Charlottesville, and
County for over sixty years, up to the
commanded that famous old company at
time of Captain Woods’ death, has been held by only three lawyers, all of them highly distinguished in the profession: Judge William J. Robertson held the
the Yorktown celebration in October,
ofi‘ice from 1850 up to his election to the
Supreme Court Bench in 1858. Colonel R. T. W. Duke was then elected and held the ofiice until he was elected to Congress in 1870. Captain Woods was then elected and held the ofiice up to the day of his death, his successor by appointment being Judge R. T. W. Duke, Jr., the second son of Col. R. T.
W. Duke. In 1872 Captain Woods was made a
member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Virginia, a position which he held for four years, having been at the time of his appointment the youngest member of that Board ever elected.
In politics he was a Democrat. He was Chairman of the Democratic party of Albemarle County for several years, and as elector represented the Seventh Congressional District of Virginia, and
also was a member of the Presidential Electoral Board in 1888, which cast the
vote of Virginia for Cleveland for Presi dent. He was permanent Chairman of the Virginia Democratic State Conven
tion which met in Staunton in 1896 to elect delegates to the National Conven tion. In two Democratic Congressional
1881. In 1893 he was made Brigadier General of the Second Brigade of Virginia Confederate Veterans, which position he held until 1901, when he declined re election.
Captain Woods was elected President of the Virginia State Bar Association on August 5, 1908, and his address delivered at the meeting in 1909 upon “The Neces
sity for General Culture in the Training of a Lawyer," was very able and elo quent. ~ Captain Woods as a lawyer was noted for peculiar painstaking accuracy in the
preparation of his papers.
As an advo
cate he was able, zealous and earnest, and as Commonwealth's Attorney, whilst fair and just, he was a terror to the evil
doers brought to the bar of justice. He was a man of exceedingly hand some presence, genial, afiable and very
popular, both with the profession and the public at large. Captain Woods was married in 1874 to Miss Matilda Minor Morris and had five children, E. Morris, Sallie Stuart, now the wife of James Rucker, Maude Coleman, a noted Virginia beauty, who died in 1901, Mary Watts, who inter married with Dr. Frank Lupton of Bir mingham, Ala., and Miss Letty Page Woods.
