Unravelling my family name: Woodlands
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...