Friday, August 26, 2005

William Woodcock Sr. #2


I was 20 years old when my father casually mentioned that he was an adopted child.I was stunned, here he is in his early teens posing with his blood father Clarence Messer who was a Luthern Minister. The story goes that the Messers were in the Territory of New Mexico to establish the Lutheran Church and while in Portales my father's mother died giving birth to him leaving Messer with three sons on his hands.
Charles Woodcock suffered from an asthmatic condition and would spend part of each year in Portales for health purposes where he was also part owner in a haredware store. Being childless
he and his wife Matty adopted my father.
The picture above was taken in Hot Springs on a brief occasion when Messer and my father's two older brothers were traveling East and stopped so the boys could meet and he never saw any of them again.

1 comments:

Unknown said...

Hello, I was working on computer to figure out the relationship from Messer family to Woodcock

Now I know. My grandmother was Elizabeth Messer and her half brother was John Henry Messer his wife Mary Jenette Duval Messer died in 1904. Their childern was Clarence,Rayond,Paul and William. John Henry's father was James McAnaly Messer my great grandfather. I put together the Messer genealogy for about 7 generations. My sister told me in the past she had researched also several years back to see that William "Buckles" Woodcock was related to us. She was very much impressed and told me that Barbara was such a beautiful woman and you a nice looking man. That you both worked with the Circus and Buckles was a great Elephant trainer, now retired. We are your cousins by blood.
If you contact me I can provide to you the research to the Messer
family which are German and now from my grandmother, I Elizabeth Messer, Indian, the half sister to John Henry, I am a proud Native American.
e mail: evereedok@gmail.com