Woodham Family History
T
his section is devoted to Woodham family history, from our earliest beginnings in England, up to the present. If you are a Woodham or descendant of a Woodham, you are urged to send us information and records to preserve in the Woodham Family National Library for future generations.This site is sponsored by the Woodham Family Association, an international, non-profit family club for all descendants of the Woodham family, founded in 1978.
We hope to add basic information to the website on our family history that will help you know and understand more about your family heritage. On our English Origins page, you will learn of our beginnings in ancient England and how several different Woodham, Woodhams and Wadham families developed in our Motherland.
We also have a special page on Edward Woodham Junior, our ancestor who served as a soldier in both the North Carolina Militia and the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War for Independence. Click on "NEXT" at the bottom of this page to continue to the history pages.
The newest history section honors Woodham kin who served in World War II. It includes a list of all known Woodham kin who served in the military services during the war. Click on "Woodhams in World War II" in the INDEX below.
If you came directly to this page, be sure to visit the Woodham Family club's HOME page; the Woodham family NEWSLETTER (news about your kinfolk); the Woodham Family Cemetery page and our other sites. Click on "HOME" at the bottom of this page to get started.
Robert Earl Woodham is the son of the late RUFUS WOODHAM and NORMA TURNAGE and grandson of JOHN WESLEY WOODHAM and Lillie Mae Sanders. Rufus was a native of Henry County, Alabama and his father John Wesley was born in adjoining Dale County, son of Ira Edward Woodham. Robert Earl's daddy was killed in World War II when he was a child and his grandfather died not long afterward, so he grew up without knowing either of them. When he was 12 years old and he and his mother were living with his grandfather Turnage, he began seeking more info about his daddy's family. When he entered college at the age of 17, Atlanta with its big libraries and state archives was nearby and he began making frequent trips there to do research. This was the beginning of his "serious" endeavors in family research.
He later went to work for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the largest newspapers in the South. He also has worked as a writer and editor for daily newspapers in Albany, Cordele and Thomasville, Ga. and as a correspondent for papers in Tallahassee and Jacksonville, Fla. and United Press International. He later became assistant editor of Industrial Development Magazine, Travel Development Magazine, Site Selection Magazine and others and later, assistant editor of The Independent Sentinel, a suburban Atlanta paper.
Robert Earl also served as Information Officer for the Southwest Georgia Area Planning & Development Commission (13 counties and their cities) and later for the Georgia State Planning Bureau. He researched and wrote or edited many professional studies for these two public agencies.
All this newspaper and magazine writing and editing background helped greatly in his family history hobby. Now, after 50 years of research, his hobby has become a real passion. His collection of records now total more than 3,000 notebooks and many boxes, and eight filing cabinets of family information and documents. He is the author of 21 books on his family.
Please be warned ... a number of folk have placed large amounts of information on the Internet about the Woodham family -- information which came directly from me and my publications over the years. Quite a number of these folk have placed this information on websites which are commercial businesses operating for profit.
NONE of these folk have asked me for permission to use my research for Internet display nor for permission to quote from my publications. Not only does this constitute plagiarism (which writers and researchers consider the worst crime!), it also is theft of services (MY services!) under the law. "Plagiarize: to steal and pass off as one's own (the ideas or words of another); to present as one's own an idea or product derived from an existing source."
Not one of these folk are members nor supporters of the Woodham Family Association. I don't believe that any have ever been a member. In fact, none of them have ever bought copies of my publications but apparently obtained the information from copies in libraries.
These websites also fail to give me and my publications as a source for their information and THAT makes it theft of services. It is obvious in most of these websites that none of them have ever done any serious research on the Woodham family but have instead relied solely upon the hard work of others -- especially myself.
The biggest problem with these websites is that there are MISTAKES in almost all of them. For instance, several list an "Ethelred" or more correctly "Etheldred" Woodham as a son of Edward Woodham Sr. This is wrong. This information comes directly from my small booklet which I printed in 1980 for the family club (and my family sheets which many copied at the first and second national family reunions). I had found a printed list of pay receipts for men in the North Carolina Militia during the Revolutionary War. It listed him as a "Woodham". However, when I later visited the NC State Archives and examined the original document under a magnifying glass, it revealed the name was actually Etheldred "WOODSON".
Almost all the websites list our English ancestor incorrectly. Since I wrote the booklet, I have done a great deal of research on English records. The person which I originally put down in my records as a possible ancestor turned out to have died as an infant. In fact, the father had three sons with the same name and all three died as infants.
There are other mistakes on the websites which can be traced directly to my publications and my research as well as other mistakes that they came up with on their own. For instance, many of the sites list a person as a Woodham that I found on census records back in the 1960's. I added him as a possible son of a relative. Years later, I learned the spelling on the census record was a mistake and that he was actually a WINDHAM ... unrelated to us. But today he is on the Internet sites of several of the folk who have used my info without permission -- listed incorrectly as a Woodham. There is another case of a WINDHAM being mistakenly identified as a Woodham but years later I learned of this mistake (a girl). Those old records of mine list one person as a son of our ancestor but after making a special trip of close to 900 miles roundtrip, I learned that he was a "johnny-come-lately" and NOT a descendant of our ancestor. I visited the cemetery where he is buried and his tombstone proved this. Yet, he is still on these websites -- mistakenly as a 'descendant' of our family.
Many folk have also contributed my research to the "Family Tree Maker" "Genealogy.com" website, another commercial website. The FTM website is owned by "Genealogy.com", a division of the A&E Television network, which in turn is controlled by ABC Television Network which in turn is part of Capitol Cities/ABC, a multi-billion dollar global media corporation; which is now in turn a part of the Disney Corp. Another corporation, MyFamily.com owns "Ancestry.com" which bought out the supposedly "non-profit" Rootsweb and now claims to have more than 1.5 BILLION names in their databases (they don't bother to mention that millions are actually duplicates) and charge monthly fees to view most of their DONATED records.
My information is now FOR SALE by the millionaire fatcats who own Capitol Citys/ABC (Disney), Broderbund and Ancestry.com. I did NOT spend 50 years of very hard work and thousands of dollars of my money as well as funds of the Woodham Family Association to do all this research just so it could be used and sold by these corporations for THEIR profit. I have not authorized any of these folk to do so and I strongly resent this theft of my research by these folk and its sale by these corporations. An update: Genealogy.com is now owned by a corporation operating out of Utah. They also now own "Ancestry.com".
Broderbund is selling discs every day with their Family Tree Maker computer program which contain MY research, along with these old guesses and mistakes of mine -- contributed (or sold?) to them by these folk without my permission or knowledge. These corporations have reaped huge profits off of the work of folk like myself who have not received one cent for our efforts.
One person, Larry Kea, has a very large website posted with a commercial corporation which has quoted almost ALL of my published research, including all my guesses (such as our possible ancestor) and my errors. He has not asked me for permission to use my research nor has he ever supported our family club. I have asked him to remove all of my research from his website but he has refused to do so. Be warned...his website does contain mistakes and guesses made by me more than 35 years ago and which are no longer valid. Kea has posted a message on one commercial website stating that "...much of the information he [me, REW] has "(Copywrite)" is actually in the 'Public Domain,' which can be used without prior permission." Records in the Public Domain cannot be 'owned' by a person, regardless of how much "research" is done." Well, cuz, you are right -- when anyone writes a book or other article and does not obtain a copyright to protect it, someone can in turn 'print' or display that information. But if you understood jurisprudence, you would know that plagiarism is 'theft of services' and going back to old English common law, is something that is still illegal.
Folk like Kea can whine that MY research is "available for the taking" to sell (or donate?) to big corporations but that does not excuse their actions. All the whining in the world still makes it plagiarism -- theft. Remember that when you buy your next CDs with the commercial family history programs or when you copy "their" records off the commercial websites. Ain't it great that seedy thieves can steal from you and then claim "well, it's free for the taking!"??
Right is right and wrong is wrong. I did not devote more than 50 years of my life and a great deal of hard work just so someone could sell (or give?) this work to a major business corporation to profit from.
Similar sites with major mistakes are those of Jan Allison, Celeste Bynum, Sue Allen, Michelle Woodham and others who have also posted my research without my permission.
I have noticed that for some folks or facts, some of these folk give Frank Miller Richey of Lilburn, Ga. and one of his "Trails" books (Beasley Trails, Woodham Trails, etc.) as the source for their information. Actually, Richey has never done any research on either the Woodham family nor the Beasley family. He told me that he had copied all his information for his book Woodham Trails and his Woodham information in his Beasley Trails came from my two Woodham books, our family newsletters which I wrote and other information I had donated to the Darlington Archives and the Old Darlington Genealogical Society Library at Hartsville. So the original "source" for this information is me, not Richey. Richey agreed not to print any more of his Woodham books.
If you want to get information about Woodham kinfolk, then contact our family club and get it first hand. Your "second-hand" stuff from the Internet is probably tainted with mistakes and guesses.
The Family Association has already published several books about our family and soon will have several more published. You can read more about the books at the main Association page. Click "Books" above.
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This website is devoted to the memory of Rufus Woodham and all the other members of the Woodham family
who have died while serving in the military forces in defense of America.
We have a section on all known Woodham kin who served in World War II. Click on "Woodhams in World War II" in the INDEX below.
to Woodham Family Association HOME page17 June, 1998
