An 18th century Saxilby Family
Gervas Woodsend of Saxilby 1751 -1814 Impressive Family History Research The history of the Woodsend family was researched by Will Honeybourne of Sonoma, California, whose mother’s maiden name was Woodsend; his middle name is Gervase, and Gervas Woodsend is his 4x great grandfather. There have been many generations of Woodsends with the name Gervas(e). The family pronounces it in the old, anglicised way as “Jarvis”. I was interested to discover the source material used by Will in compiling this quite detailed history, as one of the source records, the Parish Vestry Records, was lost sometime in the early 1960s. The Vestry was the predecessor of the Parish Council and the Parochial Church Council before 1894. Fortunately, the Church Warden’s Accounts, commencing in 1551 and continuing until 1790 (with a break during the Civil War in the 1640s) are held by the Lincolnshire Archives. The original research was done in the late 1940s and ‘50s by Thomas Eadie Woodsend, who employed genealogi