Thursday, May 3, 2018

The "My Ancestors Lived In The Woods. So What!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Finally received the results from the AncestryDNA kit my wife gave me for Christmas this past year.  I posted a story a few months ago telling about the kit and what you had to do to take the test.  After mailing my kit, I waited and waited.  I asked my wife for the gift so I could see where and when my surname may have come from or began years ago.  My parents had told me at one time that the Woods name was Scotch-Irish, but they had no proof to share with me.  I was hoping the test would give me answers.  Well, I did find that the meaning of the surname "Woods" was: English and Scottish -  topographic name for someone who lived in the woods and Irish - English name adopted as a translation of O Cuill or a descendant of Coll' (Quill).  It was also a personal name meaning 'hound of the wood'.  Maps were provided to show how "Woods" families moved over time by selecting different census years.  The "Woods" family name was found in the USA, the UK, Canada and Scotland between 1840 and 1920.  The most "Woods" families were found in the USA in 1880.  In 1840 there were 215 "Woods" families living in Ohio.  That was about 13% of all the recorded "Woods" in the USA.  Ohio had the highest population of "Woods" families in 1840.  As far as what types of occupations the "Woods" family members had, 37% were listed as farmers, 10% were laborers and 7% were keeping house.  As for the other 46%, there was no mention of them.   Another report I received told of migrations of "Woods" families from regions in England and Wales as well as Ireland and Scotland to Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana.  
One of many charts telling of my ancestry.  Click to enlarge.
And yet another graph showed Ethnicity Estimates of England and Wales of 46%, Germanic Europe of 20%, Ireland and Scotland of 12%, France of 12%, Norway of 4%, European Jewish of 3%, Sweden of 2% and Italy of 1%.  All these groups were also said to have migrated to Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana settlements.  The final series of maps showed how the original settlers that arrived from Europe spread westward across the United States up until the 1950s.  So, what do I do with all this knowledge I'm supposed to have accumulated?  What I was hoping for was that maybe my Great, Great, Great Grandfather arrived at Plymouth Rock on the Mayflower.  Now that would have been exciting!  Do I look further into my family name?  What for!  I guess I learned something from all of this, but I kind of knew all this from what my parents told me years ago.  And, I didn't have to waste an expensive Christmas gift on what they told me.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.    

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