Was she really daughter of a titled man?
Sharon Kathryn Lynn Arnold has been doing some research and found this:
"... leads me to believe that A Michael Marion Woods and his brother Samuel Woods married sisters- Elizabeth and Mary Campbell. The entire thing is a mess, with their sister marrying a Wallace and then, in true clan style, 2 or 3 cousins intermarrying again!"
https://www.ancestry.com/media/viewer/viewer/02f603b3-a740-4617-a78...
Here's another bit:
The Woods and Campbell families were people of culture and property, but they were Dissenters and Presbyterians who had likely endured many petty tyrannies at the hands of the English ecclesiastics. The tide of population from Ireland to the American colonies was just then of tremendous volume, and thousands of the very best people of Ireland were seeking homes beyond its borders. Their objectives were twofold: to escape persecution, and to make a start in the perceived land of promise across the Atlantic. In America, good land was abundant and cheap, and the promise of freedom and protection to all must have been inviting.
In 1723/1724 , Michael's brother-in-law Peter Wallace Sr. died. With that event, our people decided to emigrate, and it was off to America.
Along with his brother, Samuel, Michael had served in Marlborough's first campaigns on the Continent, and both were knighted about 1705 in London, obtaining a monetary award for their services to the Crown that they could build upon to afford later migration and land. They both met their wives in London, sisters whose father was a member of Parliament (1705-1707), and had many daughters to marry off and only limited funds for that purpose.
In 1724, at the age of 40, Michael and his wife Mary (Campbell) Woods, along with their eleven children, his widowed sister, Elizabeth and her six children, and his brothers William, James and Andrew Woods and their families boarded ship. Michael's wife, Mary, was of the mighty Campbell clan of Argyle. Nothing is known of Lady Mary (Campbell) Wood's brothers; James, Gilbert, and Alexander. It is possible they too were on board. It is also possible that other family members, whose relationship is unknown, were also on board. These people always moved as families, members of clans, and communities.
Arriving in Pennsylvania, Michael Woods spent about ten years in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In 1734, owing to the attitude of the Quakers and the insistence that the proprietary government pass restrictive measures against the Scotch-Irish, Michael Woods decided to move to a new location. He had had enough of oppression and constrictions. The Virginia frontier seemed attractive and Gov.
William Gooch, of that colony, was favorable to dissenters, other than Episcopalians, as defenders of the English of Eastern Virginia. Too, he was a Scotsman and knew the sturdy and reliable character of these Scotch-Irish.
The following article is taken from the The Daily Progress newspaper of Charlottesville, Virginia (1762-1962). It quotes a book by Mary Rawlings, published in 1935. Therefore, the article had to be written after that date.
Michael Woods Led A Band of Settlers
Most of Albemarle's first settlers followed a gradual westward movement from the Tidewater. Mighty Michael Woods did not.
In 1734 this ancestor of countless local residents and scores of western pioneers brought a band across the Blue Ridge Mountains from the Valley of Virginia.
They had come from Pennsylvania, traveling over 200 miles, and are believed to have been the first whites to come through Woods' Gap by the old Indian trail. There were 25 or 30 of them. Michael's wife, Mary Campbell, his sons and his sons-in-law and their families.
They took up large holdings from Greenwood to Ivy. In 1737 Woods entered a claim for 1,300 acres on Mechum River and Lickinghole Creek. He also purchased 2,000 acres on the head waters of Ivy Creek.
Woods was born in the north of Ireland in 1684 and came to this country "sometime in the decade of 1720. Landing on the banks of the Delaware, he spent some years in Lancaster County, Pa., thence ascended the Valley of Virginia and crossed the Blue Ridge."
His home was near the mouth of Woods Gap and there he was buried in 1762 in the family burying ground a short distance from the dwelling.
His will mentioned six children, three sons and three daughters. Historians say there is evidence that there were four other children, two sons and two daughters.
Miss Mary Rawlings, in her book Ante-Bellum Albemarle, wrote that the family was Scotch or Scotch-Irish, a family of education and refinement.
One of Michael's daughters, Hannah, was married to William Wallace who settled on the Piedmont plantation in the Greenwood neighborhood. This land remains in the hands of the Wallace family.
While many of the family descendants remained here, many more joined the westward movement. They went to the other areas of Virginia then being settled, and they went west and south--to Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio--where they were prominent in the early affairs and government of those areas.
Of Michael Woods home, Miss Rawlings wrote "the original name of the plantation was Mountain Plain, the Mountain Plains Church having been built on a part of the land and named in commemoration.
With the passing of the property to Chief Justice John Blair prior to 1788, the name of the home was changed and it has since been known as Blair Park.
One of the Woods researchers was the late St. Clair County, Missouri historian, John Mills. He once found the graves of both Michael Woods (Sr.) and his wife, Mary Catherine Campbell near the first site of the Forks of the James Meeting House, somewhere near Glasgow, Virginia. That site has now been lost. Graves were moved to accommodate either a freeway or highway junction, leaving only these two behind -- and unmaintained.
On the monument that may still exist with these graves, according to the late Mr. Mills, is an inscription noting that Mary was the first white woman in the Valley (Shenandoah) murdered by Indians in 1742. It is believed this was the same incident in which her son-in-law John McDowell sold liquor to the Iroquois party on its way to attack Cherokee on a hunting excursion that went too far north.
There are several contemporary accounts of the military aspect of all this, with a mention of a few white settlers (unnamed) having been killed before McDowell was ordered to go after them. Some accounts, among the Preston papers (Capt. Preston of the late colonial militia and early Revolution) can be found in the Lyman Draper collection in the Library of Congress and at the University of Wisconsin. [3]
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