Today launches a new website for anyone interested in the Wood families who resided in Essex before 1852. Wood Surname of Essex is a new gathering place for researching the lives and stories of the Wood families of Essex.
Wood Surname of Essex
If you are reading this, then you are interested in the Wood surname. After twenty five years of research, our files contain thousands of documents and have built trees for several family lines that we want to share. The collection includes transcriptions of parish records, land records, Wills, and Quarter Sessions. Our research is at the stage that requires more eyes on it to find the tentacles that reach beyond the dataset we have assembled. There is a good chance we can help each other, if we start talking and exchanging information.
Invitation
You can always peruse woodsurnameofessex.com to learn more about the Wood families of Essex. To fully join the conversation, however, you need to share information about “an anchor ancestor,” a member of a Wood family that resided in Essex before 1852. Why 1852? Because many researchers get stuck at the 1841 census, which has less information than the 1851 census. What kind of information? A name plus a birth, marriage or death year is good start. If you can share where your ancestor lived, their trade, or their religion, the chances increase that our community can help further your research. Today many people do not attend church, but before 1852 most people were in pews on Sundays. Because a large percentage of Essex was nonconformist, sharing your ancestor’s religious leanings can be very useful. If your are uncertain about exact dates and places, you can always share family stories even if you are uncertain about exact facts.
Research Challenge
During the 20th century the surname Wood was the 26th most common surname in England, the 53rd most common surname in Scotland, and the 78th most common surname in the United States. On the 1841 census 53,347 individuals are enumerated with the surname of Wood in the counties of England. Of the total, 6,376 resided in London and a scant 1502 resided in Essex, which about 300 households. If you are like me, researching your Wood line is like looking for one tree in a forest. There are always more questions than answers. Are all the Wood families in a particular parish related or is there more than one clan in the parish? How long have these Wood families lived in the parish? When did they arrive in the parish? What is the research strategy when parish records are missing? To answer these types of questions, online groups are emerging to focus on a locality, such as our effort on Essex. Large genealogical sites have loads of records but lack the leverage of many eyes on one county.
Nonconformity
Thomas Wood (1719-1783), the Abstemious Miller of Billericay
Because my ancestors in Essex were Catholic, my research required ingenuity. Essex has a tradition of nonconformity. Between 1600 and 1850 about 30% of the population was nonconformists, which adds a wrinkle to the research of households in Essex, even for the research of Anglican families.
My research progressed to include bottom-up and top-down analysis. By bottom-up I mean tracing lines from 1841 back to 1680. By top-down I mean tracing records from about 1550 to about 1640. Most parishes have a gap in records between about 1640 and 1680. To separate nonconformists and Anglicans residing in the same parish, I started building family trees for lines that are not my family, which helped to interpret marriages and burials. By these methods of logic and evidence I have traced my family lines from 1840 back to 1620. I sincerely hope that my research can help you.
