Welcome
My Name is Walter Dowling Wood and welcome to my family history website. If you have any problems or have suggestions while here, please let me know by sending me a message. You can contact me by clicking on my name at the bottom of each page.
My wife Sylvia and I live in Apopka (Orlando area) Florida with our cat Cece. I have four adult children and two grandsons seen at left at my daughter's wedding in March 2023. Recent and historical photos of my family can be found in the Exhibits link in the Genealogy Pages.
We are active in a local Bible believing Christian church, Thrive Church here in Apopka. The Assemblies of God have an excellent summary of our Christian beliefs on their website.
I am a semi-retired hydrogeologist having worked in the environmental field; specifically the areas of water resources, mining, sinkholes, contamination assessments, and surface and ground water monitoring. I have worked for local government agencies, geotechnical engineering companies and the US Geological Survey during my career. Other things I have done include hotel/motel management, selling seaplanes, owning a salt-water aquarium business, pet shop and breeding parrots. From 2001-2003 I served as President of the Florida Association of Professional Geologists a section of the American Institute of Professional Geologists. My current job is customer support for Geotech Computer Systems, the company that provided the environmental database monitoring system that I used while working with Lake County (Florida) Environmental Management Division before retiring.
Hobbies
Genealogy is one of my main hobbies and the main focus of this website. I also enjoy building, repairing, and programming computer (including working on these web pages). I have beta tested a number of versions of Windows with Microsoft including ME, XP, Window Home Server, Vista and Windows 7, 8 and 10. I also tested products for Symantec. I enjoy fishing when I get the chance and like to read both fiction and nonfiction.
My Family History
My first cousin Richard Dowling introduced me to genealogy around 1995 and I got hooked. He had done most of the general work on my Mother's DOWLING and MCDANIEL lines. That left me to work on my Father's parent's lines, WOOD and MCCORD. These three lines are now documented to early colonial times but my MCCORDs have proved a little more difficult. More recently I have begun assisting my wife in researching her family roots that lead back to Italy (VENTURA) and Germany (ZOZ). Additionally I have been working to provide my four children with information for their maternal lines including BARFIELD, MCLEOD, LOCKE, JACOBS and more.
I manage multiple DNA kits for family members and have copied many of these results to GEDMatch, My Heritage and Family Tree DNA.
I find the study of my genealogy very interesting, much like a detective story but real. On my Mother's side it has been reported that her DOWLINGs may have settled at Jamestown. Also in her line were three LAMAR (or LE MAIRE) brothers who were Huguenots that left France and came to America to avoid being persecuted by the Catholic Church for their Christian beliefs. My direct ancestor Thomas Lamar had another of his descendants that served on the US Supreme Court.
An ancestor on my Father's side, Frederick HILL, was one of many Hessian soldiers were hired by the British to fight against the Colonies during the American Revolution. Frederick deserted the British to join the American side serving under George Washington. My Grandmother Wood's MCCORD family moved from an unknown location in Pennsylvania to Iowa in the mid-1800s making them very difficult to research.
I have found that most of my ancestors I have identified arrived in the North America prior to the American Revolution and several, on both sides of my family, served in the Revolutionary War. One ancestor Richard WARREN even arrived on the Mayflower. This line has been proven by a Community Tree the Mayflower Pilgrim Genealogies on FamilySearch.org.
Searching My Genealogy Pages
There is a wealth of family history here but before doing anything else I strongly encourage you to read the Site Organization and the Families pages. These pages will give you an idea of what is contained here, how it is organized and how to find it.
This site is broken down by surname groups and my immediate ancestors. You can look up individuals by their surname and given name using the Surnames Index and Master Index menus. If you cannot find what you are looking for there, use the Search menu which has some very powerful options. Note that some persons may only appear in notes and/or on some other individual's pages. Additionally, there may be information included in some of the attached materials are searchable PDF files.
Please note that living persons may not be listed or only have very limited information displayed
If I do not list a death or burial record, but a person was born, married or had a child before 1923, I have assumed that they are dead.
If any record does not have a source, consider that informaiton a hint. You may also find slightly different information on my family trees at Ancestry.com or My Heritage.
Civil War History
While researching the DOWLING family in South Carolina, I found that several persons had lived through Gen. Sherman's march through the South during the Civil War and recorded their Memories of this Civil War Era in their own handwriting. These make for very interesting historical reading.
Use of Materials on this Website
I have spent a lot of time trying to gather, research and verify the information contained on my site. I have also tried to make gather, identify, scan, edit and make available photographs of as many persons and places as possible with more to come in the future. While most everything is made available at no charge, when you post my material elsewhere, please help other's find my site by including a link to this site with what you share.
The facts, names, dates and places you find here cannot be copyrighted and you are free to copy them. However the descriptive narratives and most photographs on this website are my creative work product. I am releasing these materials under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. You may copy, distribute and display this work and make derivative works based on it ONLY as long as you follow the licensing criteria found at the bottom of each page which requires crediting this website for the original creation.
Finally, please recognize that some of the information here has come from others including Find-a-Grave, personal trees on Ancestry.com, and also family reunions where individuals simply filled in blanks on a form. As a result I have not been able to personally document all of the information you may find here. Where documentation was available, I have provided that documentation in the endnotes. If you do not see any documentation in the endnotes, you should assume that information is not documented. In any event, I strongly recommend that you verify everything for yourself before you rely on it and/or reproduce it.
I have found that some of the older books included here on the Dowling family contain information that has been proven unreliable concerning a Frampton Dowling. This issue continues to be a problem as many have blindly reproduced this incorrect information on the web.
I will correct any errors when reliable information is found and / or reported to me. If you have information I don't have, have questions or comments on what you find here, need assistance on one of these families, or can help identify old photographs, please contact me through the link in my name found at the bottom of each page.
I sincerely hope you enjoy my site and find something of value while visiting here.
Genealogy Links Relating to my lines:
Grafton Geddes Dowling Tree on My Heritage by Scott Anderson
Dowling One-Name Study by Brian Dowling
McCord Surname - DNA Genealogy Facebook page
Clermont County Ohio Genealogical Society
Ron Zoz's Site on descendants of Oswald Zoz of Oberowisheim Germany
