Vol. 29, No. 1 .............................................................................................................. June 2008
Your Woodham family newsletter is now beamed throughout the entire world--thanks to the modern marvel of the Internet's World Wide Web. Your family news can now be seen and read by any Woodham relative--or any of the millions of folks now on the world wide Internet. In such faraway places as China or our homeland of England or Australia or way down in Argentina at the southern tip of South America. We have already had good comments and congratulations from Woodham kinfolk as far away as Yokohama, Japan, England and The Netherlands.
We NEED YOUR HELP: if you hear about a death, birth, wedding, engagement or news about a Woodham relative, PLEASE let us know. If you see an article in your local news-paper, please clip this out, along with the name and date of the paper from the top of the page, and send it to us to preserve in the Family Library as well as to print in the family newsletters.
The Woodham Family Association is now 29 years old. This is a family club for all descendants of Woodham and Woodhams (with an "S"). It began as a dream by our founder back in 1978.
More coming on this and our history
The future of our Woodham Family National Library and all the records I have gathered on our family over the last 50 years is now in doubt. For years, I had planned to donate all my family history collection to the Georgia State Archives in Atlanta. They recently completed a new archives center south of town. They already had the largest, most modern one in the South. The newest one is now even larger.
I contacted the Archives but was told that they cannot accept anything but published books on family history. They do not accept 'loose papers', such as mine or those which are in notebooks or files in filing cabinets. They said their primary duty is to preserve state and local government records.
I had also planned for many years to donate my Woodham records to the Houston Public Library in Dothan, Alabama. I wanted them there simply because that is the center of the largest number of our family in America. I wrote them and described the collection and the approximate size. It includes seven 3-foot sections of book shelves full of notebooks, as well as many records in files and loose in filing cabinets and more in boxes.
The librarian replied that they did not have space for such a collection. I realize that all libraries are pressed for space as well as funds. In the greedy world of our age, taxpayers put school bonds and libraries down at the bottom of their "needs". But my god, this library occupies what was once an entire elementary school complex. Pretty big for a town the size of Dothan, Alabama.
Some time after this, I had another heart attack. I tried to ignore it for two days before I finally started driving myself to the hospital...only to be stopped by a cop. I finally made it to the hospital but just as they were about to start an IV with a powerful drug to unclot the blood, I told the doctor that I had to go back home for a couple of days. I remembered that I still had not made arrangements about all my records. They all thought I was crazy. One doctor asked me "Are all those records more important to you than your life?" Without hesitation, I answered YES. He said I might not be alive in two days. But I was determined. So over the next two days, I tried to find a library large enough and stable enough to donate all these records to. Altogether, I have about 40 three foot wide sections of book shelves full of notebooks...hundreds. In addition, I have four filing cabinets full, a large credenza, and many large boxes. After two more days on the Internet trying to find a home for our records, I had to give up and go back to the hospital.
I had my fourth angioplasty operation. I almost had another heart attack the night I got out of the hospital and went to WalMart to get a wad of prescriptions filled. My buddy grabbed hold of me to keep me from falling when they said $276.00 for the five drugs. That was well over half my monthly Social Security income. Since then, I am now qualified for Medicare and recently had another operation...this time for a total cost of $107,000. At least the prescriptions are cheaper for me now!
Since the above, I have had two more heart attacks and one stroke. Lost a lot of weight and it left me very weak. Still trying to get back into a routine of working on the Internet on family historty every day. I have a 'home nurse' who comes to check on me regularly and a home care aide who helps around the house and takes me on errands.
In the meantime, I am still trying to find a site to preserve all these family records after I am gone.
This is an old note. Since this was written, I have had a ninth major heart attack.
Our Editor and family historian, Robert Earl Woodham has suffered another series of heart attacks. His sister found him barely conscious and had an ambulance rush him to the Columbus Medical Center. He was later transferred to the cardiology emergency unit at St. Francis Hospital where a midnight operation was performed.
This is the fourth time Robert Earl has been hospitalized with heart attacks in the last few years. Incredibly, on each occasion a red-haired nurse helped save his life by pleading with him not to give up "or you won't finish those books on your family and all that work will be wasted." During his first heart attack in Dothan, Alabama and the second about three years later in Columbus, Ga., both the nurses were from a tiny town called Slocomb, Alabama.
During this latest attack, the paramedics kept Robert Earl talking to remain conscious on the way to the hospital and he told them about the two redheads from Slocomb. When he was taken into the emergency room, incredibly, the first nurse to walk in was a redhead. The two paramedics exclaimed together "A REDHEAD!" She asked "What's the matter, you don't like redheads?" and Robert Earl almost yelled--"NO--I LOVE you!" The Medical Center does not have a heart unit so later, doctors decided Robert Earl had to be moved to the cardiology unit of St. Francis. An ambulance was called and when the two paramedics operating it walked in, they turned out to be two cute redheads!
By this time, everyone in the emergency room had heard the "redhead" story and they were all dumbfounded when the two walked in. One doctor put his hand on Robert Earl and said "Boy, somebody up yonder is looking after you." Several nurses and interns answered in unison "Amen!"
Well, the 'redhead' thing cropped up again for the fourth time after my latest attack. When I got to the hospital (the second trip), I told one of the nurses there "Get me a redhead or I'm going back home." Within five minutes, in walked a black woman with dyed hair. I said "Oh well, you'll do." But later, I ended up with four real redheads.
Another update: as of 2006, I have had another open-heart operation and also implanted a defibrillator which hopefully will cut down a lot on the severe pain I now have in my legs from poor blood circulation [now have PAD (peripheral arterial disease)]. So far, all this mess hasn't cut down on my family research! When I jokingly told the doc and his nurse that I wouldn't allow an operation without a cute redhead present, the nurse jumped up and declared "I'm not going to dye my hair! To my surprise when I went in for the operation, there was a very cute redhead...named Petra (after an an ancient city in Jordan). I'm in love again!
Yet another update. As of April 2007, I have had my sixth heart surgery. And thankfully, that cute redhead Petra was there with me again along with the doc and four other assistants. The hospital this time was full of cute blondes and redheads. I was on morhpine to help kill the pain so I managed to have a decent time of it. This latest attack was brought on by the damned drug dealers that have infested my neighborhood now for almost 9 years. Hard to concentrate on gathering family history when you can't even hear your own TV because of all the confounded commotion on the street 24 hours a day.
Be sure and visit all of the news pages. We have two pages of obituaries. You can go to each of the different pages of the newsletter by clicking on the sections below or by clicking on "continue" at the bottom of each of the pages.
NOTE: if you came directly to this page, be sure and visit the Family club's HOME page, the HISTORY section (several pages), the Woodham Family Cemeteries pages and our other sites. Click on on "BACK" at the bottom of the page to go to the HOME page.
Be sure to visit all the news pages, either by clicking on "continue" at the bottom of the page or by clicking on the pages in the Index above.
NEWTON, Ala.--The annual "Decoration Day" and Homecoming will be held Saturday, 19 April at the Woodham Family Cemetery near Newton and Ozark, Alabama. The event began in 1989 after a small group of kinfolk started restoring the historic family cemetery. The first gathering was intended to be a way to thank all the relatives who donated money and their time to help restore the family burial site.
Members of the Cemetery Committee decided that it should become an annual event to remember all the ancestors buried there. For the first several years, every grave in the cemetery was decorated with flowers as a memorial to lost loved ones.
A picnic was held the first year and that was so popular that the Cemetery Committee decided to build a small picnic shelter in the corner of the cemetery for future gatherings and for the many visitors who come to the site throughout the year. The picnic shelter includes two restrooms and a water well was installed to supply water for these and to water flowers and shrubs.
All Woodham's whose ancestors were born in south Alabama and north Florida are descendants of three men buried at this cemetery. Their descendants live throughout the world today, including such faraway places as Japan and England.
Although the cemetery was established as a family burial grounds for the Woodham family on a Woodham farm, several neighbors have also been interred there over the years, including the ancestors of all the Bagwells in the area, most of the Stevens and the ancestors of many Daughtry's, Enfingers, Glovers, Bauldrees and several others.
Bring a picnic dinner and flowers for your ancestor's graves. The Cemetery is about 1/4 mi west of the intersection of US Hwy 231 and Dale County Road 18 (Newton - Echo Road) where a former truck stop and other businesses are located and beyond a small pond along the expressway. The intersection is just north of the Choctawhatchee River and about 8 mi. south of Ozark and less than 15 mi. northwest of Dothan, Al.
Christmas for our Editor came a little early this year with a wonderful present from cousin Billy Peters of Winter Haven, Fla.
And boy, is it a wonderful present! Billy just recently completed a long trip to collect family history on which he visited the
Virginia State Archives at Richmond, Va. and the North Carolina State Archives in Raleigh, NC.
Billy had visited our Editor and historian, Robert Earl Woodham in Columbus, Ga. before his trip and Robert Earl gave him a
list of items he could search for. Billy found even more records--including even more proof that our ancestor Edward
Woodham Jr. served as a soldier in the Revolutionary War (1775-1782).
Update: New Year's weekend. Billy just dropped by for another visit tonight (Sunday) and we had a great talk about lots of families from the Wiregrass area of south Alabama. He will be going back to Virginia for another research trip and we hope he can locate even more records.
More on this later.
Your family historian has just discovered some wonderful information about our family history.."news" that is more than 10 years old. Actually, the information itself is more than 200 years old!
For years now, historians have known that the courthouse in Kinston, NC burned back in 1878 and all the public records there were burned, including all the marriage records, deeds, wills, etc. The courthouse contained all the records of the old Dobbs County. Dobbs was created in 1758, from part of Johnston County. In 1791, Dobbs County was abolished and its land divided into two new counties, Greene on the north and Lenoir on the South. The records of Old Dobbs were preserved at the courthouse of Lenoir County at the county seat of Kinston. Unfortunately, the courthouse burned in 1878-destroying all the old records.
Only a handful of documents (all records in various state offices) have survived, the most important of which are the Colonial and state land grant records. However, someone found the original Dobbs County Deed Grantor Index book back in the 1980's. After the courthouse burned, someone used the Grantor book to create a new Grantee book. A grantor is the person (s) who sells or gives land or other property and the grantee is the person who buys it (or receives it as a gift). These books were index books for all the deeds of old Dobbs County. All they contain is the names of the parties to the deeds and the page numbers of the old deed books they were recorded in. No much information but at least they can tell us about when a person was living in old Dobbs. When the courthouse burned a second time in 1880, both books were saved. Until found in the 1980's, they had been forgotten for decades. I have not been to the Lenoir County courthouse since 1986 and did not know about the rediscovery of the Grantor Index Book until now.
What is important about all this is the fact that our ancestors, Edward Woodham Senior and his son, Edward Woodham Junior, moved to Dobbs County and lived there throughout the period covered by this deed grantor index. Edward Jr. obtained a patent for a land grant from the Colonial government in Dobbs in 1757. He lived there from that time until he died about 1784. With all the public records destroyed in the courthouse, we have only a precious few historic documents left on our ancestors. These are limited to the land grants, a couple of county tax lists and some military records. Gone are the marriage bonds which would have told us who our founding Mother's were. Gone are any wills, estate records or deeds of gift which could have told us much more about their immediate families.
Now, what does this "new" information from the Deed Grantor Index book mean for us? It is very important--much more so than it first seems. We now have a few more clues on our ancestors. Unfortunately, some of the new clues merely raise even more questions. To start with, the first mention of a deed for our ancestors is shown in Deed book 6, for deeds registered between April, 1758 and April, 1765. The first one is where Edward Junior sold (or gave) some kind of property to Edward Senior.
This doesn't make sense. A North Carolina Militia record shows that Edward Jr. was born in 1746 so between 1758 and 1765, he would have been just a young teenager and not legally capable of making any kind of deed. A new mystery. Not long after this deed, another one was registered whereby Edward Sr. sold land to Stephen Miller.
The next deed in this book also presents both a great new piece of information as well as another mystery. Around 1764 or 1765, Mary Aires sold land (or some kind of property) to Edward Woodham. This was the first of two deeds she made to Edward. In the second one, the spelling of her name is listed as ARIS. This is the name given by Edward Junior to his eldest son. Until now, I had believed that Edward Jr. was simply a religious man who named his son after an ancient Greek leader of the early Christian church. Apparently not so. This now appears to be a family name: it has always been common to give a child a "given" name, especially those of mother's but also sometime those of friends and neighbors or those of famous people. Another deed from Mary Aris to Edward was registered in Deed Book 10, Apr., 1773-May, 1775. Was she widowed young and later remarried to a Wiggins? This deed did not say whether it was Senior or Junior in the deed.
The next question is "who" was this Mrs. Mary Aris (Aries)? This appears to be a corrupted spelling of the family name that normally is spelled AYRES / AYERS. Could this be Edward Senior's daughter that was born in 1741? This would certainly answer why Edward Jr. would name his son after her husband. However, most descendants of the Wiggins family have believed that Mrs. Mary Wiggins was the daughter.
The Grantor Index shows that Edward Sr. and Edward Jr. registered at least 13 deeds in Dobbs County between 1758 and 1784. Several of these were with the Caswell family, including Richard Caswell, who became the first governor of the newly independent State of North Carolina during the Revolutionary War. He also became a general of the North Carolina Militia and the Continental Army. They were next door neighbors.
In 1784, Edward Sr. died and Edward Jr. moved his family to the Stokes Bridge Community of old Darlington District, now part of Lee County, South Carolina. The Grantor Index is full of family names who also made this move from North Carolina to South Carolina, including Richardson, Barwick, Pipkin, Ward, Wiggins and many more. This Grantor Index is the best and most comprehensive list of the families who lived in old Dobbs County. What a pity the deeds themselves no longer exist.
We've started a new page, similar to those we had in our printed family newsletter, to wish family members and their spouses a Happy Birthday!. If you know of a Woodham or descendant of the family or spouse who is having an important birthday (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, etc.) and especially their 50th, 65th, 75th and ALL those above 75 years of age, let us know so we can tell about the occasion in the family newsletter. Give details on when and where born, name of spouse, children and number of grandchildren, great grandchildren. Also some personal info on the relative: hobbies and interests, church, schools attended to include.
If you are reading this family newsletter, you are apparently a member of the Woodham family. If so and if you appreciate what your family club is trying to do, then join and support your family club. The goals and work of a family club can't be done by a small group of relatives--including such projects as the restoration and preservation of our family's two cemeteries. That requires cooperation from all the family. Go to the Woodham Family Association's homepage to find out more about the family club and how you can join and support it.
We are happy to announce a new "Woodham Discussion Group" or a mailing list, for the Woodham (& Woodhams) family. This is sponsored by Rootsweb, an organization devoted to getting family history on the Internet. For those of you who are unfamiliar with such groups, this is operated through email. You can post messages to the "group" by regular email and it is then sent to everyone of the mailing list.
The great part of it is it is FREE. We won't have to pay anything to "subscribe" to the mailing list. And if you get tired of getting email from kinfolk all over the country, then you can "unsubscribe". It is a great way to discuss family history and to learn more about your ancestors and living relatives.
Rootsweb now sponsors hundreds of such discussion mailing lists on different family names. I have been subscribing for more than two years to several of them. Folks who have never even thought of their family history have a chance to "talk" every day with kinfolk all over. They even find long-lost cousins who became separated over the years and lost contact with each other.
To subscribe to the List, just send an email with ONLY the word subscribe in both the "subject" box of the email and in the body. Nothing else.
Send your email to: WOODHAM-L-request@rootsweb.com
You will receive a note from Rootsweb the same day that you have been added to the mailing list and from then on, you will receive all the emails that kinfolk send in. Let your cousins know about the new group and tell them to subscribe. There is no cost--it is a free service of Rootsweb.
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