Robert H. Woods San Juan County, New Mexico

Robert H. Woods, who carries on general agricultural pursuits at Farmington, has been a resident of New Mexico since 1889, when he purchased his present place. He was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1844, and there resided until twenty-two years of age, when, in 1866, he removed to Michigan. He served in the Civil war as a member of the Due Hundred and Sixteenth New York Regiment of Infantry, which command was assigned to the department of the gulf under General Banks. After two years' service in that department Mr. Woods was for one year under command of General Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley and witnessed General Sheridan's arrival at Cedar Creek, following his famous ride from Winchester, when he rallied his scattered forces and turned the tide of battle to the Union side. Mr. Woods joined the army in 1862 and served until the close of hostilities, becoming a corporal. He remained a resident of Michigan from 1866 until 1878, when he removed to Rooks County, Kansas, where he resided until 1889. He then came to New Mexico and purchased his present place of forty acres, three miles up the Animas valley from Farmington. Of this, seven acres had already been improved. He is engaged in the raising of fruit on an extensive scale.

In 1905 one acre of peaches netted $400, each tree yielding five or six boxes of fruit. Apples are also productive, and the orchards are bothered little by worms. He believes that fruit can be more profitably raised than cereals, for it averages a net profit of about one hundred dollars per acre, and he now has about twenty acres planted to fruit.

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Source: History of New Mexico, Its Resources and People, Volume II, Pacific States Publishing Co., 1907.