Bray Family

My ancestors

  1. Unravelling my family name: Woodlands - published 26 August 2021

Francis Woodlands, my father

James Woodlands, my grandfather

Cornelius Bray, my great-grandfather 

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Unravelling my family name: Woodlands

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This post has been years in the making. It all began when cousin Gail kindly took an AncestryDNA test. The results revealed exactly what I’d hoped for—and so much more. To tell the full story, I need to go back to her maternal grandfather, James Woodland, and then further still, to his mother and her family. None of this history had been passed down—until now. I’m thrilled to have documented it so it can be shared and preserved for future generations. A surprising start to my family history journey When I began researching my family history in 2016, I never expected to uncover that "Woodlands" wasn’t actually my family name. I’d carried it for more than 60 years—long enough to find its place at the tail end of the alphabet a mild annoyance, and its length a bit of a mouthful alongside "Christine Margaret." Over the following five years, I slowly peeled back the layers of the past. While some questions still remain unanswered, one truth emerged: my grandfather wasn’t...
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Agnes Cahill - My Woodlands great-grandmother

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Since early in 2016, I've been looking at my paternal grandfather's family - researching, questioning and sharing with a few of "the cousins" along the way.  There've been a few surprises!  The biggest being that Cornelius Bray was my grandfather's biological father and James Woodland (Snr) was his step-father.  We knew my grandfather as James Oswald Woodlands but his birth name was Oswald Cahill. So it's probably time that I started to record some of what I've uncovered...  After all, there's a lot more to research - my grandfather's biological Bray family and his known (or social) Woodlands family! My grandfather's biological pedigree My grandfather's "social" pedigree Agnes Cahill is at the centre of the story.  Agnes's descendants are a small groups these days - one granddaughter, great-grandchild (including me) and great-great-grandchildren.  Maybe we'll find out how many as more join our Facebook group! Here...
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🌿 Finding Minnie’s father: How DNA helped solve a family mystery

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New threads revealed through DNA — connecting lives, places, and generations Every family has its quiet questions — stories half-told, details never written down but often wondered about. One such story belongs to Minnie Alious Hookeywin (born 1896 at Bellingen; died 1982 at Newtown) - pictured here. Minnie is not one of my direct ancestors, but she connects to my extended family through marriage. Her mother, Emily Jane Hookeywin , later married Thomas Cahill (known as Carroll ) — the brother of my great-grandmother, Agnes Cahill . From this point forward, he is referred to as Carroll , the name by which he was known to Emily and their family. There is no clear reason for the change of name. Thomas and his relatives continued to be known within the wider Cahill family, so the variation was most likely a simple misunderstanding — perhaps the way his name was heard or recorded after he moved from the Cahill family’s home in the Hunter region to northern New South Wales, where he met an...
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