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 2)

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Here's the link to  Myra's story (Part 1) . Myra is the half sister of my grandfather, James Oswald Woodlands. On 11 October 1919, my twenty year old half grand-aunt, Myra Woodland, married fifty year old divorced father of two, Robert Hollyford Whitworth, in Sydney. This is the only photo we have of Myra who is with her little sister Lorna around the time of her marriage. Both Lorna and my Dad, Myra's half nephew, remembered meeting Myra when they were young children. Dad was six years younger than Lorna. Their recollection was that she would return home when she was in need and would then depart without warning. There was never any mention of a marriage. On one occasion, her father told her that, if she left without warning again, she wasn't welcome back. That was the last time Lorna and Dad saw Myra. We don't know if her parents had any further contact with Myra. I'm thinking this would have been between 1923 and 1930 when James and Agnes Woodland moved from ...
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