The Wood family was founders of one of Philadelphia's great Quaker mercantile and manufacturing families, and within a couple of generations founded the Wawa Dairy Farms.

Richard Wood (-1685)of Bristol, England, was part of the seventeenth century Quaker migration to the lower Delaware Valley, his descendants settling eventually in what is now Cumberland County, New Jersey. Richard D. Wood (1799-1869) married Julianna Randolph (1810-1885) in 1832, and they became the founders of one of the Philadelphia's great Quaker mercantile and manufacturing families.

Julianna Randolph was a seventh-generation descendant of Edward Fitz Randolph and Elizabeth Blossom, early settlers in Scituate, Massachusetts, and later in Piscataway, New Jersey. Her grandfather, Edward Randolph (1754-1837), a Revolutionary War soldier who became a merchant at Philadelphia and elder in the Society of Friends, dropped the "Fitz" which many family members wrote as a middle name.

Richard Davis Wood was born in Greenwich, New Jersey on March 29, 1799 to Richard Wood III (1755-1822), a general store owner and elected member of the Assembly of the State, and Elizabeth Bacon (1776-1826). Richard married Julianna Randolph on October 16, 1832 in a Friends' meetinghouse. They had nine children: Richard, Mary, Edward, Carolina, Randolph, George B., Julia, Walter, and Stuart.

He began his business career at the age of 21 when he opened a store in Salem, New Jersey. His very first shipment of goods nearly sank after the transport vessel sprang a leak not long after leaving the Greenwich warf. True disaster was averted, however, because the goods were salvaged and consumers flocked to the Salem store to purchase the damaged goods at bargain prices. Two years later in 1822, he joined with William L. Abbott and Samuel C. Wood to form the Philadelphia dry goods house of Wood, Abbott & Wood. Wood became a central figure in the Quaker mercantile community, serving on the boards of banks, insurance companies, the Schuylkill Navigation Company, and the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.

In 1844, Wood came to the aid of his older half-brother David C. Wood, whose iron furnance and foundry at Millville, New Jersey was in financial difficulties. Richard became emeshed in his half-brother's affairs, the two quarrelled, and Richard finally bought the property at sheriff's sale in 1850. Soon after, Richard began investing in other iron companies and coal lands, including the Cambria Iron Company, which Wood rescued from disaster, and the Allentown Iron Company. To better utilize the water power at Millville, he constructed a cotton textile factory, later incorporated as the Millville Manufacturing Company, and turned an old-fashioned iron plantation into a thriving manufacturing town. Wood also promoted railroads in the territory, including the Millville & Glassboro and Cape May & Millville railroads.

After Wood's death in 1869, his six sons continued most of his business enterprises, and gradually, they divided them among themselves. The oldest, Richard (1833-1910) and George (1842-1926), and to a lesser degree, Edward (1840-), eventually became the dominant owners of the textile manufacturing and wholesale business, while the younger sons, Walter (1850-1934) and Stuart (1854-1914), controlled the pope foundry, which had expanded from Millville to a modern facility at Florence, on the Delaware River above Philadelphia in 1867. The pipe foundry passed out of family ownership when Walter died childless in 1934. George, in the meantime, had founded Wawa Dairy Farms some twenty miles southwest of Philadelphia, and his descendants in turn transferred their interests from textiles to develop Wawa as the region's dominant convenience store chain.