| Home Page | Names Directory |
Most of the Woodhursts mentioned in this site belong to one or other distinct trees, currently rooted at:
Currently there is no proven connection between them. Tree 4 contains only a few individuals, who appear to have been a Woodhouse family fundamentally but who used the Woodhurst spelling for a brief spell during the second half of the 1880s. There is currently no known evidence that they were related in any way to the other trees.
Trees 1 and 2, both based solidly in Kent in the 18th century, almost certainly have a common origin. They were originally developed separately on this website owing to the lack of proof that they were related. Since then, however, evidence has emerged to support the view that Richard William (1)'s father William (1) was a first cousin to William (3), both being grandsons of a common ancestor William (13) Woodhurst.
The possibility that Trees 1 and 3 might be connected was implied by a letter written in 1943 by the youngest son of Richard William (1), claiming relationship to certain descendants of James (1)'s siblings. That letter also refers to placenames highly specific to those descendants. However, there are many considerations which make this claim highly implausible. It appears much more likely that the writer of the letter happened by chance to encounter descendants of James (1)'s siblings while on honeymoon in 1901 - probably in Hastings or Ramsgate - and mistakenly came to believe they were his relatives.
It appears that all Woodhursts known to have been in the USA in the 19th century belonged to Trees 2 or 3. The earliest confirmed emigration from Kent county in England was that of William (3)'s brother John (6) Woodhurst who arrived with his family in Connecticut in 1837 and settled there and subsequently in Ohio. Several children of William (3) emigrated in the mid-1850s, and another in 1882. The widow of James (1) and her children emigrated from Sussex county to South Carolina in the early 1840s.