About twenty years ago, I began to learn how DNA has characteristics that connect me to my ancestors. It felt like I had received an eternal gift from my people who lived thousands of years ago. We are, in part, a result of our upbringing, environment, culture, and much more. However, my belief about DNA is that within those threads of deoxyribonucleic acid are also echoes of ancient ancestors' character and a life force that cannot be charted. It spurred me on to know more about my Grandfather John.
Grandfather John was a man of mystery. Born in England 1888, he suffered the death of his father when he was 5 and the death of his mother at age 16. He then disappeared from the United Kingdom records. I knew him as my mother's father who had held me close. A quiet man of high moral character, John worked as a Meter Reader for Northwestern Utilities in Edmonton, Alberta, a difficult job for a man who suffered chronic pain. He had been wounded at the WWI battle of Passchendaele. John Woodroffe died when I was 3. I wanted to know more about him. So began my research into a man who became more mysterious as each government record was revealed.
My curiosity rose when I read the marriage certificate to his first wife, Agnes Mothersole, and compared it to the certificate of marriage to his second wife (sister of his first wife). The name of his father and mother conflicted with that of the first marriage certificate. And there was no John Woodroffe, born May 1888, in the Ancestry.co.uk census records. My mother and her siblings had no answers to my questions. I had hit a brick wall.
I had nearly given up until an unknown cousin, Kevin Woodroffe, arrived in Edmonton from England. He reported that he was the Grandson of Don Woodroffe - my mother's brother. Kevin had begun a family search project. He had known nothing about his Canadian relatives. His enthusiasm for genealogy reignited my quest to resume my battle with the brick wall.
Kevin and I continued to work together, he in England and me in Alberta. It took another year to break down the first wall. What I discovered sent my Woodroffe relatives into a tailspin. They are not "Woodroffe's." Our discovery did shed light on what was behind that brick wall. More questions hounded us. However, another wall appeared - silence from John's distant relatives in England. That wall is waiting for another generation to knock it down.
Aside from discovering the names of our ancestors going back to the 1500's, we have learned about occupations, illnesses, war medals, and the tenacity of the men and women for the past five hundred years. Kevin and I went a step further in adding interest to this book. Many of John's descendants have written their biography. These stories are the heart and soul of this book. The brave ones shared stories of surviving their troubled youth. Many recount hard work mixed with personal accomplishments and fun. Another near-death story describes working in the far northern Arctic for a few years that required survival skills daily and stubborn determination.
Each story is from a descendant of John Woodroffe who once stood in Belgium's muddy battlefield, in agony and bleeding, but determined to never give up. I'm so grateful for that hidden message from Grandfather John's DNA. Never bloody give up!
