The Ancestry of Eliza Martin

Eliza Martin was the youngest daughter of Belinda Woodcock and Richard Martin. Eliza was less than a year old when her family immigrated from Ontario to Ogle County, Illinois. Eliza had 9 brothers (Jonathan, Freeman, Isaac, James, Anson, William, Isaiah, William H., and Ezra) and 4 sisters (Margaret, Electa, Hannah, and Lucy). The Martin family was accompanied in their immigration by Eliza's grandmother, Lucy Bishop Woodcock, her uncle, Freeman Woodcock and his family, and members of the Nettleton and Bissell families. There was a great deal of intermarriage between these families and the Griffith and Crippen families.

Richard Martin's grandfather, William, emigrated from Ireland with his parents in 1740. They lived in Duchess County, New York. On his mother's side, his great-great-great-grandparents, Thomas Bass, Sara Wood, Henry Neale, Hannah Pray, James Draper, Abigail Whiting, John Aldis, and Mary Winchester were all born in the United States. Richard Martin's parents immigrated to Canada at the time of the Revolutionary War. They sympathized with the British cause, i.e. they were Tories. The area of Canada where they settled, north of the St. Lawrence Seaway, was a common choice of the Loyalists.

Belinda Woodcock came from a similar background. Her parents were born in the United States and immigrated to Canada at the time of the Revolution. Belinda's ancestry is also English, with surnames of Woodcock, Washburne, Williams, Palmer, Colby and Waterman. As with her husband, her ancestors were early settlers in the United States.

Clarence Woodcock and David and Gretchen Martin Mills have been extremely generous and thorough in the information they have provided. Their websites are listed below. Information about the Martin family was also provided by Leigh Martin-Brillis and James Scofield.