Woodlands Family

My ancestors

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

Francis Woodlands, my father

James Woodlands, my grandfather

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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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How a DNA match led to finding Agnes's older brother, Thomas Cahill. Or is it Carroll?

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Thomas John Cahill was born on 26 August 1866 at Black Creek (near Singleton), NSW. He's the eight of the eleven children of James Cahill and his wife, Eliza Dunn. Agnes was the next child born. Cahill family historians have been searching for Thomas for years. In May 2018, twelve trees on ancestry.com.au showed Thomas but none included any details of Thomas's life after his birth. We did think that Thomas was alive at the time of his mother's death in 1890 as he's recorded on Eliza's death certificate as "living" and aged 25.   Genetic genealogy is a tool that I'm using more and more in my family history research. In August 2017, "ER" reported as a match to me and other "Cahill/Dunn cousins" at AncestryDNA. ER's predicted relationship to me was 4th cousin ie predicted that we shared 3rd great-grandparents. I messaged "ER" a number of times but, as is too often the case, no response. "ER" did have a small t
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Myra's story (Part 3) - Robert Hollyford Whitworth

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Here's the link to Myra's story  Part 1  and  Part 2 . Myra is my half grand-aunt. On 11 October 1919,  twenty year old Myra married fifty year old divorced father of two, Robert Hollyford Whitworth, in Sydney. Myra was estranged from our family in the second half of the 1920s. I found Myra in 2017.  The last piece of this puzzle was to find out about Whitworth's family. Family Notices (1919, October 20).  Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners' Advocate (NSW : 1876 - 1954) , p. 4. Retrieved December 9, 2022, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article14007329 The parents and siblings of Robert Hollyford Whitworth Robert Hollyford Whitworth was the fifth of the six children of Robert Percy Whitworth (RPW) and Margaret Rivers Smith. RPW was born in 1831 in Devonshire England (1). Margaret was born in 1834 in Lancashire. They married in 1854 at Manchester Cathedral. RPW was a barrister's clerk.  Their first child, Alma Rivers Whitworth , was born in 1855 in Manchester. She e
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