A New Roadblock on my Mayflower Journey

In February I touched on my journey into proving my line back to an ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, who was a passenger on the Mayflower.  I’m continuing the research to obtain as many official registration records as possible.  Where I can’t get those official records, I’ve ventured into secondary records such as censuses, church registers, published family histories, and old newspapers. I’ve also joined several genealogical societies and Facebook Genealogical groups from different areas. 

I am so close, and yet so far, from my application being accepted.

I can prove with official records that I am descended from William Wood and Hannah J. Dodge (whom we believe was ‘taken in’ and adopted by a Thompson family at a young age).  That section of my tree looks like this:

With research, we start with what we know and work our way back, which is how I followed the records to this relationship. Early on, I thought my 4^th great grandfather’s name was John because that is the name given on the death record for William.  My research expanded to look for records of any kind because government registration was not in place in 1834 for births.  I was unable to find anything that linked William Wood as the son of John Wood.  I did however piece together census information starting in 1851 for William Wood as the father of William and this William’s father’s name was John Wood.  I looked at John Wood being the grandfather, not the father of William the younger and started finding connections that supported this theory. 

More often than we might think, historical records can hold incorrect information and I believe that the name John was not correct.  I believe this because 1) I could not find a household with John as the head who had a son named William; 2) I could find several records that showed a William Wood and son William Wood; 3) William juniors’ son Gilbert reported the death.  Gilbert was a young boy when William senior died and he may not have known or remembered his grandfather’s first name; 4) I can find more substantiation for the relationship of William and William, and none for John and William as father and son.

As mentioned in my last post, I must prove parentage about a person with supporting documentation. At that point, I was researching the parentage of one female ancestor but have since learned from the historian I’ve been working with that I need to try to get more definitive proof of parentage for William Wood.  Essentially, my brick wall in terms of the certification process starts with William in 1834 rather than the female ancestor born in 1760.

One of the records sources I found William on are the Canadian Census records from 1851 through the 1911 census, the last before he died.

When reviewing the 1851 Census I found Wm Wood listed twice on the same page and I believe it is a record of the same person.  Families of the time often lived near or on the same property and the first record shows the household of David Wood and his wife Magdalene, their son and Wm Wood listed as a Labourer and not a member of the household family.  (See the image below). David is Williams older brother and I believe William was residing with or helping around the farm.  He might possibly have been there when the census was taken so he was included.  After all, it was the first census, and they were enumerating everyone in the household.  

Census record image from Ancestry

On the same page of the census, lines 26 to 31, is the household of Wm Wood, aged 64, widow and his children – Jane, Ebenezer & Hannah along with a boy named Gregory Whitelock, Wm Wood jun, age 19 also a labourer, and Margaritte Babcock. They are listed as family members.

Census record image from Ancestry

    

On the 1861 Census I find William Wood senior living with William & Hannah and their children William, Eliza Jane, and George C.

Census record image from Ancestry

On this same page are William’s brother Ebenezer’s family and other family surnames I recognize as familiar to our family:   Boomhower, Woodcock, Thompson, and Peterson.

By the 1871 census, William senior is now living with David and Magdalene’s family (the same family listed on the 1851 census).  This record is only a few pages after William juniors’ family listing in the census, again supporting the theory they are related and living nearby one another.

These census records analyzed together with other records I’ve found make me confident that William’s father was William Wood, born in the United States who married Mary Woodcock of Lennox & Addington in September 1819.  The roadblock? Mary died before the 1851 census was taken and birth registrations were not in place.  I am struggling to find an acceptable record that says she was the mother of William but I’m not giving up!