Exploring Wood ancestors in England

[ericwood]

I'm a fifth/sixth generation South African of 1820 settler stock (on both sides - on Wood side I'm fifth generation and on the Mills sixth). And I've got some Scottish blood thrown in too, via the Andersons from Aberdeen who went to Pacaltsdorp as congregational missionaries. And a spattering of French (Cauvin) but I tend not to trumpet that! The Mills and Anderson (and Cauvin) histories are relatively well researched and understood. The Wood line has proved more challenging, chiefly because the first Wood settler (George Alfred) left London for the Cape as a 14 year old boy and without his parents. He travelled as an apprentice to Richard Smith. For various reasons which I'll try to explain in a separate post, this makes it somewhat harder to research his family history in England.

I came to the UK in 1989 to do postgrad study and married a Brit (Juliet) who was born on the same continent as I (in Kampala). There are plenty of George's in her ancestry, but apparently no Woods. We lived in the UK for 3 years before travelling to Cape Town with our 3 month old (George, inevitably and Cornelius too). We spent 17 years there (it didn't take us all of that time to add Alice to the brood) and returned to the UK in 2015. During our time in Cape Town, my interest in George Wood (settler) was piqued by an uncle (Noel George Wood) who had been doing some digging around for a while. As it turns out, I think he was on the wrong tack. That uncle died a few months ago, before I had made much progress in finding out more about George (settler's) origins. My progress has been hampered by scant knowledge of the history and being a complete rookie when it comes to researching family history. I am looking forward to learning from others whose interests might overlap with mine and who know better than I how to translate that interest into useful discoveries. Special thanks go to Eric Lawton (NZ) for introducing me to Sue Mackay and for her amazing kindness and helpfulness already and her suggestion that I register on B-G.

Eric

[Sue Mackay]

Welcome Eric. I know you plan to post some specific queries about George Wood's origins in a separate thread, so let's hope that bears fruit.