Woods, Alva (1794-1887)
Role: Professor, trustee, fellow. interim presidentDates:
Portrait Location: Library Annex
Artist: Arnold, John Nelson (1834-1909)
Portrait Date: 1892
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 43 1/2 x 33 1/2 in. (110.49 x 85.09 cm.)
Framed Dimensions: 57 x 47 in. (144.78 x 119.38 cm.)
Brown Portrait Number: 66
Brown Historical Property Number: 1856
Alva Woods was born the son of a Baptist minister in Shoreham, Vermont, in 1794. Woods received an elite education; he attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, then matriculated at Harvard University, graduating in 1817. Following his graduation, he returned to Andover to attend Andover Theological Seminary. After a year's hiatus during which he taught at Phillips Academy, Woods graduated from the seminary in 1821, and was ordained as a minister that same year. In 1822, he obtained a professorship of history and mathematics at what is now George Washington University (then called Columbian College) in Washington, D.C. His duties as a professor included fundraising, which required him to travel extensively throughout the United States and to Great Britain, where he acquired not only funds but also books and other educational items for the school. He left Columbian College in 1824 (by then, he had married Almira Marshall of Boston and needed employment at a more solvent institution), and went to Brown University as a professor. He remained at Brown for four years, serving both as a professor of natural philosophy and mathematics and as interim vice president of the school from 1826 until 1827. In 1828, Woods accepted the presidency of Transylvania University, in Lexington, Kentucky. The school was not a Baptist institution; a letter of recommendation written on Woods' behalf stated that he had "as little bigotry as any Baptist I know"! Ill luck dogged Woods' tenure at Transylvania; the school's main building burned down with the loss of much of the school's library and other accoutrements. After three years in Kentucky, Woods left to become president of the University of Alabama, a position in which he served from 1831 until 1837. He was interested in teacher education, and helped found the Alabama Female Athenaeum to train women to be schoolteachers. Six years in the sultry South, however, sapped Woods' health. Since at this point, Woods had sufficient wealth to exempt him from even having to work again, he retired at the age of forty-three and returned to Providence, where he volunteered in his capacity as a pastor at Rhode Island's state prison, and also as a Sunday School leader at Providence's Dexter Asylum, a home for the indigent, elderly, and mentally ill (now the site of Aldrich Dexter field). He also served as a trustee of Brown from 1843 until 1959; he was a fellow of the university from 1859 until his death in Hamilton, New York, in 1887.
This portrait was a gift of his Woods' son, Marshall Woods (Brown class of 1845). Painted by John Nelson Arnold in 1892, five years after Alva Woods' death, it was a copy from various portraits from life made by the same artist. Arnold (1834-1909) was an artist of note in Providence. During his career, he painted various governors and other influential Rhode Islanders. He and his wife, Clara, who was an artist specializing in still lifes, maintained a studio in East Providence.