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Title
Oral history interview with Erskine B. Wood [Transcript]
Date(s)
- 1999-05-06 (Creation)
Extent
Transcript; 39 pages
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Biographical history
Erskine Biddle Wood was born in 1911. He was the son of Erskine Wood and the grandson of Charles Erskine Scott Wood. He attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, earning his law degree in 1936. Wood became a lawyer who specialized in maritime law at Wood, Tatum, Sanders & Murphy in Portland, Oregon. During World War II, he served as an administrator in the Navy.
Wood married multiple times. While at Harvard in the 1930s, he and Caroline Elizabeth Hoffman married. They later had three children and divorced in 1956. In 1959, he and Virginia Kuerten Tooze were married. They later had two children and divorced in 1969. Later that same year, Wood and Doreen L. Plympton were married; they divorced in 1974. Sometime later, Wood and Ellen Story Fretz were married. They divorced in 1997. In 2001, Wood and Doris H. Spaulding were married. Wood died in 2001.
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Scope and content
Transcript. This oral history interview with Erskine B. Wood was conducted by David Jacobson at Wood’s home in Vancouver, Washington, on May 6, 1999. In this interview, Wood briefly discusses his family background and early life in Portland, Oregon, including fishing on the Columbia River, as well as his education at a boarding school in California. He then discusses his experiences at Harvard College and at Harvard Law School. He talks about his interest in admiralty law, as well as the admiralty law career of his grandfather, C.E.S. Wood. He then discusses how World War II affected his law practice, as well as some of the cases he worked on, and some of the judges he argued before. He talks about his children, and his service in the Navy during World War II. He closes the interview by discussing the changes in Oregon and his hopes for the state’s future.
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Joint copyright held by the Oregon Historical Society and the U.S. District Court of Oregon Historical Society. Use is allowed according to the following statement: In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
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- English
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- Jacobson, David (Contributor)