Wooddell, Woodell, Woodle, Woodiel

43rd Alabama Infantry Flag

What's in a Name?

The names above were used -- for just reasons -- as a title by our cousin Alice (Woodiel) Craft for Volume I [West Haven, Utah 2001] of  "A One Name Study," her history and record of the Woodiel family that we know today.

When I began my personal search for the genealogical trail back through my surname Woodiel in the late 1970s I quickly discovered there really wasn't a trail.  Of course there was no Google to consult in those days, nor were there extensive and elaborate ancestry sites anywhere, save it certain volumes to be found in certain libraries.  I found very quickly that just about every Woodiel mentioned in any of these books was probably directly related to me, and I probably knew them.  Where were my ancestors?  Obviously the name had been changed  -- from, one assumed, a similar name.  But what?  Woodward?  Woodson?

So, after mulling about for a lead in local libraries in Connecticut and finding little or nothing, I spent my school's spring vacation in 1979 in Washington, D.C. at the National Archives.  I had decided to go where, if it existed, what I wanted to know had to be.  It was there, thanks to the dedicated assistance of  a librarian in charge of what in those days were vast rooms of microfilm readers, that I found, among his Civil War records, my great grandfather, a man of many names indeed. 

I should note that the only potentially worthwhile lead I had was the story that had come down through my family, often repeated at family gatherings, that my father's grandfather Tom had grown up in Alabama and had been a Confederate soldier in the Civil War where he had had one of his ears shot away (or, in better versions, cut away).  This is all I had to offer the library assistant.

After following for several days a C.R.P Woodle and a James Woodell and a J.A. Woodel and others, all of various Alabama Infantry units, I returned to the Archives one morning to the microfilm room to find the kind assistant waving to me from across the room as I entered.  "I think," he said, "I've got your man." 

Copy of Tom's enlistment document 

There it was: Woodle, William, T.J., Co K, 43 Alabama Infantry (Confederate), Private. On the next page: W.T.J. Woodle , along with a notes verifying he had enlisted May 14, 1862 at Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a period of "3 years or the war."

And on yet another record a note verifying that on May 16, 1864 T.J. Woodial of the 43rd Alabama had been admitted to the General Hospital, Howard's Grove, Richmond, Virginia:  Disease: "VS Right Ear neck (severe) shoulder."  Evidence enough for me that I had found my great grandfather Tom.

Tom's medical document.

But why all the different names?  The answer was there all the while in  a usually modest "x' where each of the documents required a signature.  In many later documents I was to locate underneath the "x" would be in parentheses (his mark).   Tom was, like his forefathers I would later discover, simply illiterate -- unable to spell or write his name.  I imagine him just muttering it in his Alabama twang, no doubt, and some sergeant writing down on his pay slip what he thought he heard.

The confusion of the varied spellings can be easily eliminated if one simply envisions the last three letters in a world before the typewriter.  What you actually have in written script are three loops.  Depending on the scribe, you have "iel" or "eel" or "ele" or "ell," etc.  Consequently, the various spellings.

Tom's great grandfather, John Waddell, was born in Donegal County, near Londonderry, Ireland, on or before 1736.  His parents were Scottish people who had settled in Northern Ireland and were what is known in this country as Scotch-Irish.  Stories vary as to why he left there for America.  However, it is generally believed he came to America in about 1750 probably as an indentured servant and settled in the Philadelphia area before eventually moving southward to northwestern North Carolina near where his older brother (according to some reports) had settled earlier.  What is clear is that John eventually crossed the Smoky Mountains to settle in what was then called Washington County North Carolina, later to become the state of Tennessee.

He was illiterate to his dying day, as were his son Jonathan, his son John, and Tom himself. The familiar "his mark" appears on his fascinating will.  William Lafayette, born in 1871 and his siblings were the first literate members of the Woodiel clan in America.  Most of us have become fairly literate since, I think it's fair to say!

First spelling of Woodiel:
Tom's furlough paper 

So, how did "Woodiel," of all the other options, rise to the top.  Well, as usual in such matters, apparently a combination of chance and circumstance.  Part of the credit goes to a Confederate Captain named (it appears)  J.S. Duerewall who signed furlough papers for Tom about a week after he was admitted to the hospital in Richmond.  He was paid forty-four dollars and apparently sent home.  He writes Tom's signature along with "his mark," but he clearly spells it Woodiel.

I remember discussing this with my father and mother, and they concluded the current spelling of Woodiel stuck because his widow Winnie, after Tom's death, was entitled to a small "veteran's pension" which required her to sign the name on perhaps the last official paper he had, his furlough certificate.  Perhaps it was she who then decided it would be spelled as it is by her children as they (unlike their ancestors for who knows how long into the past) ventured off to school.

My timeline for establishing the sons of sons.

One final note re the Tom of many names:  There is a story apparently passed down in the family by my uncle and namesake Paul Woodiel who related he had heard that Tom returned home from the war and married very soon afterward and joined his brother and his bride heading westward as far as the Mississippi River where they separated, his brother and his wife waiting on the bank while Tim and his new wife Winnie somehow floated their ox team and wagon across to the western shore, after which there was an exchange of waves to one another before the brother's wagon ventured southward down the eastern bank as Tom and Winnie headed west to the Ozarks eventually to settle around Marshall, AR.  The two families would never see one another again.

I continue to wonder, as I reflect on this piece of family history, how Tom, recently wounded, got home.  There certainly was no train, the war being nearly over, or, for that matter, a horse.  I suspect he, like Inman, the protagonist in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, the best selling novel of a decade or so ago, simply walked home.  Of the details of that venture we can only speculate, but, unlike Inman, he survived.  He made it home, and he married Winnie who must have been a pretty hearty soul, or most of us wouldn't be around.

************************

To the Memory of W.T.J. Woodle (His Mark)

                                      I'm thinking of you Tom!  You've impressed me during 

                                         the past four days while I've searched for you.

                                     Your name is everywhere -- and nowhere -- in many forms: 

                                        Thomas,Tom, William T.J., W.T.C.

                                     I have searched for you from a sense of history and out of

                                        respect for your legend, and respect for you and my father

                                          and his father who have, in part, come from you.

                                    Your memory awakens in me a sense of history: the past, 

                                       my past, and yours!

                                    Since "your mark" was the sign for what you did not know 

                                       about writing (and reading, I suppose), how did you know 

                                          why you were at Chickamauga?

                                    How did you justify the pain and anguish of your wounds 

                                       at Drewry's Bluff?  

                                    What did you stand (and fall) for Tom?

                                     In the sun here near the shadow of the U.S. Capitol 

                                        (that symbol you were bent on putting down) 

                                           I sit and wonder what you stood for, and why.

                                     After the first for the prophet Levi, I know 

                                        you were to name your second son Lafayette!  

                       

                                     Was this your sense of history?

                                      I'm thinking of you Tom.  Your progenitor knows 

                                         you were here, cause you're on the record 

                                            in the U.S. Archives.

DPW

Washington, D.C.

April 26, 1977