If the information gathered is correct, James M WOOD was my great-great-grandfather, and John Mollott WOOD was my great-grandfather. I very well remember my grandfather, John Terry WOOD. As a five-year old, I was at the foot of his bed when he died in 1957 at the age of 69.
Family lore is that James M WOOD had united with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in England, and emigrated from England several years after Joseph SMITH (leader of the church) was killed in Carthage, MO in 1844. The story was that James and his family went to Salt Lake City, Utah, where Brigham YOUNG had taken the largest group of LDS people following SMITH's death. Upon arriving in Utah and seeing evidence of polygamy as well as many strange doctrines they had never heard of in England, they decided to leave that branch of the church. Hearing about a "reorganization" of another group of Latter Day Saints in Missouri which had started in the 1850's, they decided to head for Missouri. Utah Mormons got wind of it and set their "avenging angels" out to do the WOOD's the favor of taking their lives rather than let them leave the "true church", so James and family had to slip out secretly by night to escape their pursuers.
Eventually they arrived in Missouri, settled and multiplied in the area. John Mollott WOOD is buried in Coal Cemetery outside El Dorado Springs, Missouri, as are a number of my family of origin. Coal Hill is the cemetery of Coal Hill RLDS church, which is the little country church several generations of our branch of the family attended. I was fifth generation RLDS, but left that movement in the early 1990's, much to the dismay of my parents.
So my lineage is from James M WOOD > John Mollott WOOD > John Terry WOOD > Maurice Lavern WOOD > my siblings and I.
- Lyle Wood, Muskegon, Michigan, USA
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I'm not sure that I can help much but you may be able to help me! I'm researching the MOLLART family for my wife whose great-grandmother was Selina MOLLART who was born in Burslem in 1880, the daughter of James MOLLART and Mary Ann GRUNELL, one of eight children. James was the son of John MOLLART who was born in about 1825, the son of James MOLLART. Some sources on the internet state that John was the brother of your James MOLLART although there are a few loose ends to tie up before I can confirm this fact. My problem is that I cannot find John in the 1841 census but his supposed father is listed at Biddulph (Mow Cop). However, your information adds more evidence to the fact that they are connected as John also went to Missouri but it would have been after 1854. He is beilieved to have died there in about 1860. At that time, John had two sons by his first wife (Jane), James and Charles, and a daughter by his second wife (Theresa), Selina. John and Theresa had a son John born in Missouri in about 1861, presumably after his father had died, Theresa, returned to Hanley with John and Selina soon afterwards as she remarried in Stoke in 1863. Do you have any information about this family? I am interested in knowing why they went to Missouri and what they did there.
Regards
ps. If you believe Charles Dickens version of life in the nineteenth century, many emigrants to America were very disillusioned and returned back to England after only a few years (see "Martin Chuzzelwit").