One name wonder

The great thing about the Internet is that it can connect people of like mind. My good luck connecting with other people searching for our ancestors continued when I googled Woolgar, which you may remember was the surname of my maternal great grandfather who came to Canada in the early 1900s.

I found the Woolgar One Name Study and reached out to the curator, Marion. Even though it turned out we weren’t related, she did have information about my ancestors that she was kind enough to share. She has his family tree going back to the early 1700s in Surrey, which is fantastic.

I’ve learned that one name studies are a great resource. If you want to find yours, check here to see if anyone has started one for your family. So far, my experience has been wonderful.

She was also kind enough to share this Youtube video with me that she found. It was taken by my mom’s cousin, Linda at Leslie Arthur Woolgar’s grave. That’s my mom in blue. I didn’t know they did this so, it’s pretty cool what you find when you ask.

Reaching out

While I was reaching out to my Perry relatives, one of my uncles sent me the contact information of one of our second cousins, Bill… who, as it turned out, was the same Bill I mentioned in this post. It turned out he had been reaching out to my older relatives for more information.

I emailed him and he emailed me straight away and gave me access to his online Rothwell family tree, aka, my maternal grandfather’s mother’s family.

To say I was overwhelmed with what I saw would be an understatement. He had compiled literally thousands of records on our family. Now, not all of them are in my direct line, but he has records going all the way back to 1772 when the Rothwells were the Radwells.

Wexford County is in dark green. Photo from Wikipedia.

So far, the research shows that my original Rothwell ancestor was an Andrew Radwell. He married and had three sons in Ireland, but all three men died in Ontario. I investigated further and saw that the oldest of their children was born in 1840 in Ontario, which means my Rothwell relatives were in Ontario before then. That’s about 175 years of history in this province.

It wasn’t too long before I started wondering why the name was changed from Radwell to Rothwell, so I turned to my trusty friend Google. It quickly lead me to this page, which showed an Andrew Radwell being murdered in his home for being involved in the Irish Rebellion of 1798!

Based on the dates of the Rothwell boys’ births (1812-1820), this couldn’t be my Andrew, but I can’t help but wonder if it was his father? I hope one day to have the answer, but for now, it’s an interesting new mystery!