Tiger Woods Family History

Eldrick T. Woods, better known as the golfer Tiger Woods, was born on December 30th, 1975 to Earl and Kultida Woods in Cypress, California.  His father Earl was a Vietnam veteran, his mother Kultida was Thai.  The young Woods was nicknamed Tiger after a Vietnamese soldier who was a friend of his father in Vietnam.

Tiger, introduced by his father to golf before he was two, was a child prodigy.  At three he was putting against the comedian Bob Hope in a TV appearance; at eight he won the boys’ event in the World Junior Golf Championships; and at fifteen he became the youngest-ever US Junior Amateur champion.  He participated in his first PGA Major, the 1995 Masters, at the age of nineteen.

Golfing Ups and Downs.  The golfing breakthrough year came two years later when he won the 1997 Masters by a staggering twelve strokes.  For the next twelve years he would come to dominate the world of golf, winning 14 Majors (only Jack Nicklaus numbered more) and 80 PGA tour events (behind only Sam Snead).

However, everything came tumbling down for him after he crashed his car outside his Florida home in November 2009.  There followed numerous accounts of his marital infidelities in the national press (he and his wife Elin were to divorce).  Other driving incidents followed.  In 2017 he was convicted of reckless driving in Florida; and in 2021 he rolled his car over at high speed in Calfornia and incurred serious leg injuries.

The 2010’s turned out to be a barren decade for Tiger in golf.  In addition to his marital and driving problems, he underwent four major back surgeries between 2014 and 2017.  It was thought at one time that he might not play golf again.  But the miracle happened and he won the 2019 Masters.

Tiger’s Ethnicity

Tiger once described his ethnic make-up as “Cablinasian.”  This word is a syllabic abbreviation that he had coined from the words Caucasian, Black, American Indian, and Asian.

His Father’s Side.  His father was an African-American whose heritage was said to have included White, Asian and Native American ancestors.  The skin tone of his siblings ranged from fairly dark to very light.

He remembered that his grandmother Maude Carter, who was of mixed race, was “the prettiest blonde you ever saw.” There was a family joke about an alleged Chinese ancestor who “didn’t stay on his railroad job,” but there is no record of any Chinese ancestry.  However, the family was said to have some Native American ancestry.

His Mother’s Side.  His mother was originally from Thailand where Earl had met her when he was on a tour of duty there in 1968.  She is of mixed Thai, Chinese, and Dutch ancestry.  She once referred to herself as “half-Thai, one-quarter Chinese and one-quarter White.”

Tiger’s African American Line

The early history from the days of slavery had names but no narrative.  John Woods and his wife Hettie came from Mississippi; as did Kate, the mother of his son Miles.

John and Kate.  In 1873 John and Kate were living in St. Joseph parish, Louisiana and she gave birth to Miles.  John is believed to have been his father, although he and Kate were never married.

Instead, two years later, Kate began a relationship with Tom Cruise (not the actor!) whom she later married and with whom she had seven children.  They were recorded in the 1880 census as living at Manhattan in Riley county, Kansas.  Kate died there in 1927.

Her son Miles by John bore the last name of Cruise (not Woods) through much of his childhood.  Miles too moved to Manhattan, Kansas.  There is some uncertainty as to when that happened.  One report has him there by 1880 with Kate and her husband.  Another report has him coming from Louisiana to Manhattan in 1897 at the time of his marriage to his first wife Viola.

John meanwhile remained in Louisiana and died there in 1900.

Miles and Viola had five children together in Manhattan, Kansas before Viola’s early death at twenty-six in 1905.

Miles and Maude.  In 1919 Miles was forty-six when he married again.  His new bride Maude Carter was twenty years younger than he was.  Born in Leavenworth, Kansas she had come to Manhattan to study at Kansas State College.  She graduated there in home economics and married Miles.

She was a striking biracial woman with light brown skin and soft features.  When she and Miles were married, she made him promise that all of their children would be educated.  It was a non-negotiable condition of their matrimony.  She in fact was the disciplinarian of the family.

The marriage brought Miles six more children, of whom Tiger’s father Earl was the youngest.

Miles, an epileptic, worked in lumber yards and as a bricklayer.  In later years he found work as a janitor and street cleaner.  Although he was a devout Baptist, it was said that he also had a reputation for being able to swear for 30 minutes without interruption.

He died in 1943.  The Manhattan Mercury reported his death as follows:

“Miles Woods had been an employee of the city street department for several years.  He died early today at his home at 1015 Yuma.  He was apparently in good health shortly before his death.  He worked all day Friday, then was score-keeper at the Wildcats college game last night.

He was born on July 27, 1873 at Saint Joseph, Louisiana and was 70 years old at the time of his death.  He had been an employee of the city street department for the last five or six years.  He was a member of the Pilgrim Baptist Church.”

When Miles died in 1943, money was tight and Maude had to go out to work as a maid for white families.  This broke her heart.  She died four years later, aged fifty-four, when Earl was fifteen.

Tiger’s Father Earl

After Maude’s death Earl was cared for by his elder sister Hattie.  He played baseball in his youth and in 1954 married his high school sweetheart Barbara in Manhattan.  They had three children.

He later enlisted in the US Army and had two combat tours in the 1960’s during the Vietnam War.  His marriage with Barbara ended at that time and he wed his second wife Kultida from Thailand in 1969.

He retired from active duty in 1974 and he and Kultida settled in California.  Their son Tiger was born in 1975.

In 1972, while stationed in Brooklyn, Earl learned to play golf.  From his first experience with golf, he was captivated by it and played a great deal for the remainder of his life.  In his latter years, he watched his son Tiger rise to golfing greatness.

Earl died of cancer in 2006 and was buried where he was born, in Manhattan, Kansas.

Tiger Woods’ Paternal Family Tree

• John Woods from Mississippi (1820-1900) m. Henrietta (Hettie) Peters (1822-1898) and moved to Louisiana; later with Katherine (Kate) Cruise nee Hickman also originally from Mississippi (1858-1927)
• – Ignatius Woods (1856-1912) m. Sarah Hawkins, born in St. Landry, Louisiana with Hettie
• – Miles Cruise later Woods (1873-1943), born in St. Joseph, Louisiana with Kate

• Miles Woods from Louisiana moved to Manhattan, Kansas and m. Viola Mitchell (1878-1905) in 1897; rem. Maude Carter there in 1919
• – five children (George, Eleanor, Burnard, Miriah and Robert) from 1898 to 1905 with Viola
• – Miles Woods (1920-1976) m. Oletha Eldridge and Dorothy Tucker and moved to Ohio
• – Hattie Woods (1923-1998)
• – Freda Woods (1924-1981)
• – Lillian Woods (1926-1990) m. Dr. Millard Hicks and Oliver DeGrate
• – Mabel Moore nee Woods (1931-2021), moved to Chicago
• – Earl Woods (1932-2006)

• Earl Dennis Woods m. Barbara Hart (b. 1935) in Kansas in 1954, divorced in 1968; rem. Kultida (Tida) Punsawad from Thailand (1944-2025) in Brooklyn in 1969 and moved to California in 1974.  Barbara rem. Donald Gary in 1981.
• – Earl Woods Jr (b. 1955) m. Susan Jacobs in Phoenix (daughter is the golfer Cheyenne Woods), with Barbara
• – Kelvin Woods (b. 1957) in San Jose, with Barbara
• – Royce Renee Woods (b. 1961) m. Mark Minns, WNBA coach in San Jose, with Barbara
• – Eldrick (Tiger) Woods (b. 1975), with Kultida

• Tiger Woods from California m. Elin Nordegren from Sweden (b. 1980) in Barbados in 2004, divorced in 2010
• – Sam Alexis Woods (b. 2007)
• – Charlie Woods (b. 2009)