This is a website for family historians with links to the Wood family of 
Alveley, Shropshire, England. It traces the line from William Wood, born in 
about 1739 in Alveley, and his wife Hannah Rogers, in particular the branch 
descended from their great grandson William Wood, born in 1832 in Alveley, who 
settled in Oldbury, Worcestershire, probably during the 1840s, and became a 
cordwainer. I am very grateful to Margaret Sheridan, historian of Alveley, for 
her help in establishing this family line.

In addition the site contains information on families which are in some way 
connected with the Woods, for example the Binnian / Binnion / Benyon, 
Rogers, Fletcher, Kirkham, Rowley, Williams, Scriven, Dovey and Beddoe 
families of the Alveley, Highley and Chelmarsh areas of Shropshire; the Wright 
and Skidmore families of West Bromwich and the Badham family of Herefordshire; 
the Boden, Cooke and Smith families of Oldbury, Worcestershire; the Plant, 
Nock, Westwood, Fradgley, Tromans and Willetts families of the Halesowen, 
Brierley Hill, Kingswinford, Dudley and Rowley Regis areas; the Farrier / 
Ferrier, Prowse, Burman and Pillar families of Devon; the Inett and Hinett 
families of Worcestershire and Staffordshire; the Corns family of Wombourne, 
Staffordshire; the Devey, Edwards and Russell families of Pattingham, 
Staffordshire; the Woodward family of Smethwick and Earl's Croome, 
Worcestershire; the Priestley family of London; the Brown family of Biddulph 
Moor and Biddulph, Staffordshire; the Holland family of Gawsworth, Cheshire; 
the Bickerton and Blackshaw families of Siddington and North Rode, Cheshire; 
and the Scholey, Chambers, Robinson, Randerson and Wroe families of South 
Yorkshire. For those born before 1837, precise dates are usually those of 
baptism and burial. Among the well known people who have a place here are the canal 
engineer James Brindley, the poet Siegfried Sassoon and the detective novelist Ian 
Rankin.

Recent Y-DNA evidence suggests that the Wood line has distant roots not only 
in England but also in Scotland, Germany and Italy. Males belong to haplogroup 
E1b1b1a2, a "Mediterranean" type found in north-east Africa, southern Italy, Sicily 
and Greece, but which is most frequent in the Balkans. It is rare in the Near East 
outside Turkey and appears to have originated in western Asia between 11,000 and 
17,000 years ago. Haplogroup E1b1b1a2 (or E3b1a as it was known until a recent change 
in official terminology) appears to have spread from the Pristina area of Kosovo, in 
what was part of ancient Thrace, during the past 5,000 years. It is a relatively 
uncommon haplogroup in England (4% to 5% of men) and may have reached Britain with 
units of the Roman army, perhaps Thracian or Dacian cavalrymen. There is a 12-marker 
Y-DNA match with Bob Wood of Minnesota, a living descendant of Samuel Wood born in 
about 1782 at Withyham, East Sussex. There is also a 24-marker Y-DNA match with the 
Nelson family of Liverpool (19th century), now of America. Further tests may give 
more information about these connections. The precise SNP result is: E1b1b1a2:  M78+ 
V13+ V36+ M148- M224- V12- V19- V22- V27- V32- V65-, known for short as E-V36. My 
mother Hilda Brown's mitochondrial DNA group is H3, the second most common branch of 
H. Like H1, it is found mainly in Western Europe, is at its highest frequency in 
Iberia and Sardinia, and is about 16,000 years old. Thanks to Y-DNA information 
kindly supplied by Paul Scholey, it is now known that the Scholey line belongs to 
R1b1b2, the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, with matches in Britain, 
Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

I would like to thank all those relatives and friends, too numerous to mention 
by name, who have so generously helped me gather information about these 
families and who have lent me precious photographs of relatives and ancestors. 
I owe a special debt of gratitude to my cousin Dr Ronald Edwards whose work on 
our Brown, Inett and Farrier families first encouraged me to "give to airy 
nothing / A local habitation and a name".  
 
This site is dedicated to the memory of my father and mother, Bernard Wood and 
Hilda Wood née Brown. Requiescant in pace.

"And the end of all our exploring
 Will be to arrive where we started
 And know the place for the first time."  T.S. Eliot