Son of John McClellan Hood and Elizabeth (Forepaugh) Hood. Washington Hood was the 500th graduate of West Point. He graduated in the class of 1827. He was a 1st Lieutenant, 4th Infantry at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri and later went on to be the Captain of the Corps of Topographical Engineers, US Army. He worked with Robert E. Lee in 1835 to help develop the boundary line between Ohio and Michigan. He later when on to do some mapping of the Oregon territory and the northwest. In 1839, President Van Buren sent him to do some surveying of the Shawnee lands between Arkansas and Missouri. It was there he picked up a disease, and later died from it in July of 1840 at the age of 32. Hood had also designed buildings and worked as a portrait copyist in Washington, D.C.