A Jonathan Woodman, according to hearsay, came to the Gaspé coast some time in the late 1700 or early 1800. Supposedly he was a United Empire Loyalist, who left the newly united American colonies during or slightly after the American Revolution. In a letter that I received from Hildred Woodman Voth Lepine, she wrote: -
According to Peggy Doddridge who wrote: -
“From information at the Heritage Center, I found it appears that the first documentation for Jonathan was in 1812. He was supposed to have been a cousin of Azariah Pritchard (who came from around New Milford, Conn. in 1784), so Jonathan may have followed him here at a later date. He was not on the lists of original Loyalists to arrive in July 1784, although there were several other supply ships that summer that carried more settlers. So far, I have never found a list of these later arrivals. I just checked all the church records for that early period and could not find any burial dates for either Jonathon or his wife Mary McCormick. This is not surprising as there was no established Church here for a long time and they used missionaries, or traveled anywhere from Dalhousie, N.B. to New Carlisle. At any rate, below is what I have pieced together about Jonathan Woodman.”
“He settled in Black Cape, Quebec. next to what was then called "Davis Brook" and his property ran from the Concession right out to the beach. We still call the beach over there, Woodman's Beach - it has always been called that, even though it has been many years since they lived there. I imagine Jonathan and Mary both died there. The land went to their son Joshua (who married Agnes Howatson) but they moved to the upper part of Cascapedia, where Walter and Betty (McCormick) Woodman now live, in 1863 or thereabouts. He probably sold the land to the McRae family about that time, but Joshua's son Joshua (who married Jane Hardy) stayed in Black Cape and they lived back in the Concession on the back part of Jonathan's property. That land stayed in Woodman hands until 1968 when Willie Woodman died, leaving no offspring. He was sort of a recluse.
Jonathan married Mary Oswald Ramsey McCormick, the daughter of Laughlin McCormick and Jane Lindsay of Maria. Mary was born in Scotland, but the McCormicks settled in Maria before 1800. By what I have seen of Laughlin, he was a colorful old man, too. There are still a few of his descendants in Maria today, and some in Montreal, but very few by the McCormick name as Laughlin and Jane only had one son.”
“In 1823, Azariah Pritchard tried to claim the land that Jonathan and Mary were living on in Black Cape (found that jewel in the New Carlisle Court Rouse). Pritchard claimed that there was a mistake in the Lot numbers but I couldn't find the decision, so presume Jonathan won, as Woodman's lived on that land for another forty years.”
The Internet, being such a wonderful research tool, has been solicited to a great extent. The are several Jonathan Woodman's but there is only one in particular that could possibly be the Jonathan that we are looking for. If only Dr. Watson were living. The Jonathan in question has been found in a book written by the late Eloise Woodman, a descendant of Edward Woodman who came to North America in 1635. Her book, “DESCENDANTS OF CAPTAIN JOHN WOODMAN, THE MAN FROM OYSTER RIVER” published in 1998 was a gift to me by her son. The following two pages copied from her book tell a story about a Jonathan Woodman who disappeared. I have searched far and wide (on the internet, I couldn't afford to travel) and there were other Woodman families that were living in the American Colonies around the same time but the other families have accounted for their Woodman's. Some from Rhode Island, others from Maine and other states, but none of the other families have consistently named their male Woodman's, Jonathan or Joshua. This has helped me to believe that just maybe the Jonathan in Eloise's book is my many great Grand-Daddy.
Now I do suppose that them there damn Yankees would never want to admit that us Canadian Woodman's could be related to them so I haven't made any serious requests for them to give me a sample of their genes but I would really like to have a DNA test done to see if just maybe there was any conclusive evidence that Jonathan was our Jonathan. Come to thing of it, I could ask my son to track down one of the female descendants of that Jonathan's brother's descendants and he could get into her jeans and maybe get some gene material. Now that I've written that, I have second thoughts about writing something like that, but what the heck, a little spice adds flavour, n'est-ce pas? I wrote flavor and Mr. Gates says that it should be spelled flavour so I checked in the dictionary, Mr. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, and it tells me that “flavour” is the British variation of flavor so I guess when all them “Lialistice” were kicked out of them new United Colonies, they were told “ U get out” so now we don't have no more “U's” in our flavor. I used to work in the states and I don't suppose them Yankees would ever forgive the Loyalists. They haven't even got over their own civil war and the poor southerners are still look upon as the enemy, or maybe it's the other way around, so before asking them for a gene sample, I'd better get more prepared.
I got a little side-tracked just there eh|? Well, if whoever reads this would like to add to it or delete some of it or ridicule it, please don't be shy. After all, if I am a descendant of that Jonathan, I must have some of his genes and I would dearly like to find out the truth and nothing but the truth. That's too melodramatic but since it's written, I'll leave it there.
Now, back to Eloise's Jonathan. These are scanned copies of pages 102 and 103 of her book. You can imagine all sorts of things but I suppose we'll never know for sure. Too bad! I read somewhere that Aunt Bessie thought that Jonathan came from Virginia. I haven't been able to find any trace of a Jonathan that went missing from there. Somewhere I read that Jonathan was a cousin of Azariah Pritchard. Pritchard was married to a Eunice or Unis Davis. Eloise's Jonathan's father was married to a Martha Davis. I tried to relate these two Davis' but so far I haven't been able to, but just the mention of two Daivises lends fuel to the fire. Jonathan was born in 1774 and disappeared in 1806, which would be around the right time for our Jonathan to come to Canada, marry Mary McCormick and have his first Canadian son Joshua in 1812. If only the trees could talk! Anyway, read Eloise's story and arrive at your own conclusions.