This site and its companion site at Page and Collins are an attempted to trace the history of my maternal grandparents. This site involves my Grandfather's family and its various offshoots, initially Debus and Woodliffe which were my Grandfather's parent's surnames. The other site involves my Grandmother's family of Page and Collins.

This is the family tree of the Woodliffe family originating in Lincolnshire which I am putting together. I am intending each person will have a page of their own with links to immediate relatives. As a general rule of privacy I shall not put any records on post 1910 unless I have the permission of the person(s) involved in submitting the information. Most of the earlier records are available through censuses, parish records etc and are in the public domain on line. I do have some of the later information which I am quite happy to divulge to serious Woodliffe researchers. I am always on the look out for information on the Woodliffes from any part of the country and if you have any similar information please contact me at infos@woodliffe.co.uk ( This address may change at intervals to combat harvesting by Spammers, the address becoming unreachable)

The origin of the name Woodliffe is not really known. Some sources suggest that is comes from the district known as Woodley in Berkshire or Woodleigh in Devon, however I find this difficult to believe as there are no historical records for these areas. The original speeling of the name appears to be Woodlief which I take to mean servant of the wood.

There are four distinct Woodliffe trees from around the period 1700.

  • 1. The Lincolnshire main branch which incorporates much of the East Lincolnshire familes who were from the Gainsborough area. and also those in Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and East Yorkshire, plus later on in the 19th century some of the London families.
  • 2. The Hogsthorpe (Lincs) family. probably tied in with the above but no proof as yet.
  • 3. The Welsh family, spreading to London in the early 19th century. its possible these are descendents of Robert Woodliffe married in 1654 at Hereford who is probably a descendant of the Gainsborough Woodliffes.
  • 4. The American descendants of Captain John Woodliffe of Buckinghamshire. Their ancestors may have come from Lincolnshire, predominantly Nicholas Woodliffe b abt 1475 who moved to Henley On Thames. This tree can be viewed at Ann Woodlief's site

On entering the site, by clicking on button below, you will have the option of selecting the appropriate Woodliffe by selecting the initial of the person and be taken to a list to select who you require. There is also another section to select other surnames relevant to tree. Bear in mind there are various spellings of the Woodliffe name and these are all listed under Woodliffe.

Key

Each name has been given a reference number such as w111 which is displayed in the top left hand corner of the screen. Some of the trees are not connected to to the main tree (1) The letter of the reference number refers to the tree the name appears on. The list below shoes the tree number as above and the letters relevant to that tree.

  • Tree 1 :- D, J, K and W
  • Tree 2 :- H
  • Tree 3 :- X