I was inspired to start this website by Hazel Mills's excellent and comprehensive Tribal Pages  website which includes many Burtons, Woods and Farmers and with her permission I have taken some  data from there. I have also taken some Hammersley data from Barbara Longley's website, again with  her permission. I remain on the lookout for any new information about any of the names in this  website, but particularly about the Woods, Burtons, Hammersleys and Farmers.

Thanks to DNA testing in the National Geographic Genographic study, into which Andrew enrolled both  Alison and me, we have established that the deep ancestors on both of our male lines were living in  north-east Africa, Ethiopia, Kenya or Tanzania, about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago when the total world  population was about 10,000 people. They moved into the Middle East because climate change reasons. The climate in East Africa around that time alternated between drought and short periods of a wetter climate which encouraged movement of the population.  They gradually migrated, probably between the Black and Caspian Seas, into the area of the Asian Steppes. The Genographic study also identified that both my and Alison's father (we tested him rather than her) had haplogroup R-M269 associated with our male Y chromosome which is the most common haplogroup in Europe and UK. The technology has moved on since the Genographic study and thanks to my involvement in a U3A Group it seems that our male line was in the Steppes 5000 years ago and were part of the Yamnaya people (who were predominantly haplogroup R-M269)  who moved west and dominated north and Central Europe. Mainly led by the men who were either extremely attractive to the local females and outbred  the local males, or killed them off.  My male ancestors almost certainly came to the UK in one of the 'Anglo Saxon migrations.

Coming much more up to date the main families that I have been able to identify in my direct line  are Wood, Burton, Farmer, Hammersley, Hodgkinson,  Holmes, Williamson, Hough, Hackett, Stevenson,  Jackson, Horn, Alcock, Mycock, Elks, Sutton. These are all fairly common names around the areas of  east Staffordshire and west Derbyshire. On my mother’s side the ancestry is based around Alton,  Uttoxeter and Cauldon Low in Staffordshire and Winster and Doveholes in Derbyshire. My father’s  ancestors come from Mayfield and Ellastone  in Staffordshire and Clifton, Ashbourne, Kniveton and  Carsington in Derbyshire.  However the main villages that I have always associated with my family  are Mayfield on my father’s side and where I lived for the first 18 years of my life, and Alton on  my mother’s side. Before about 1730 in Ellastone, which must have been a small village, there were  lots of Woods going back to a Margerye, daughter of Rauffe Wood born in 1547, but I have so far been  unable to make any definite connections.

Alison's father did a huge amount of research of the Craw, Romanes, Grant and Rennie families of the  Borders, Edinburgh and further north. His notes record:

'The earliest records of the Berwickshire family of Craw date from about 1200 AD, when the name is  variously spelled as Aldencraw, Aldengrave, Auchencraw, and from about 1500 as Craw. The senior  branch owned lands at the village now known as Auchencrow near Reston, and over the years Craws were  in possession of much of the Eye Valley from Reston down to Eyemouth. Landowners in those days were  generally distinguished by the name of their residence, for example Laured Robert about 1200 AD was  'Robert de Aldengrave'. This place-name is believed to be a corruption of the Gaelic "Alld an  Craoibhe", "the Burn with the Trees". In the Scottish Borders many names of natural features such as  this are derived from the Gaelic. 
 There is however a legend that the family is descended from a Danish chief named Alden, who settled  in the area centuries earlier and cut a ditch to drain the Billie Mire, this being called Alden's  ditch - Aldengrav - from which the family name is derived. But it would be most unusual for a family  to acquire its name in this way.'

The Romanes ancestors are primarily from the Borders (particularly Lauder) and Edinburgh. The  Rennies are from Aberdeenshire and Bill Craw's notes say that the tradition is that the family  changed its name after the 1745 Rebellion from Forbes to Rainey(Rennie).