Stories of Agnes Cahill

This post has been a couple of years in the making! Cousin Gail kindly took an AncestryDNA test recently. The results revealed all I'd hoped for and so much more. To tell the story requires lengthy, details about Gail's maternal grandfather, James Woodland, his mother and her family. None of this has been handed down in our families. It's now recorded to be shared and handed down within the family. Back in 2016, when I started on my family history journey, finding out that Woodlands wasn't my family name was the last thing I expected.  After all this was the name that I'd know for over 60 years with the irritation of it being at the end of the alphabet and a real mouthful when your full name is Christine Margaret Woodlands.   Over the last five years, I've been peeling back the layers but there's still a way to go. I might never have all the answers. I knew my grandfather as James Oswald Woodlands. He'd died  seven years before my birth. He's the old...

I couldn't let today pass without letting my Cahill/Carroll cousins know that it was a significant day for the family of James and Eliza Cahill being the 150th anniversary of the birth of their daughter-in-law Emily Jane Hookeywin.  Emily was born on 29 April 1871 near Narrandera to Thomas and Ann (NSW birth registration 18540/1871) .   Emily first entered my family history when I was researching my AncestryDNA match with "ER" as part of my search for what happened to the siblings of Agnes Cahill, my great-grandmother.  You can read about how I unravelled my match with "ER"  HERE.    Agnes's brother Thomas had changed his family name (or it had been changed for him).  He and his family were known as Carroll.   After researching a photo on ancestry.com, I found the article about Emily published in the Koori Mail on 24 October 2007.  Emily and Thomas had married in 1907 in South Grafton (NSW marriage registration 7676/1907) .   I've had a ...