Charles Levi Woodbury Notes (1904)

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: [unknown]

John Woodbury (abt.1579-aft.1641)
William Woodbury Sr. (1589-1677)

The following was moved here from the profile of William Woodbury Sr. (1589-1677).

Charles Levi Woodbury, in his Genealogical sketches of the Woodbury family, provides a fair bit of detail on William Woodbury, Sr., William Woodbury, Jr. and members of the early Woodbury family in America. His work is quoted below,^[1]

William Woodbury was the father of Nicolas Woodbury. It is not certain when he came to America, through local historians think about 1631. He married Elizabeth Patch in 1616 in South Petherton, a parish in the southeastern part of Somerset, England. The parish register shows that his sons, Nicholas, William Jr. and Andrews were baptized there. William, Sr., was born about 1589 and died in 1677, aged eighty-eight, at Beverly, Massachusetts.

His children were Hannah (Woodbury) Haskell, wife of Roger 2d, son of Roger Haskell; Nicholas, married Ann Palgrave; Hugh, married Mary Dixie, daughter of William Dixie; Andrew, married Mary ________; Isaac, married Mary Wilkes, William, married _______ Haskell. (See Beverly Town Record for 1657.)

There is also statement of another son, Nathaniel, baptized in 1639. (Essex Historical Collection, page 237).

William, Sr., received two of three small grants of land near the Old Planters. He appears to have had other occupations besides agriculture, from a letter, dated 1648, addressed to him and John Balch from Tristam Dolliber of Stoke Abbas, County Dorset; it shows he was in London on business that or the previous year.

In 1652, Tristam Dolliber confers the power of attorney on William Woodbury and Samuel Dolliber of Marblehead.” These documents are in the New England Hist. Gen. Register, vol. 31, pare 312, July, 1877.

William Woodbury was elected a Freeman of the Bay Company. In 1667, and independent church was formed in Beverley, and William Woodbury, Sr., was one of the original members. He was one of the church at Salem. His wife was also a member. Her brother, Nicholas Patch, emigrated to America and lived in the Bass River settlement; also others of her family.

William Woodbury was one of the five witnesses to the Indian deed (1686) that the grandsons of the old chief Saggamore George made of the lands of Salem to that town. Evidently it was a quit claim deed, and the witness was not this William [i.e., William Woodbury, Sr.] but his son [i.e., William Woodbury, Jr.]. …

John Woodbury and his son Humphrey, William Woodbury and his sons gathered on the Bass River and mackerel cove settlements and formed the root and base of the large families of Woodburys who labored and persevered to create the civilization we enjoy.

Sources

1. ↑ Charles Levi Woodbury, Genealogical sketches of the Woodbury family ... (Manchester, N.H.: Printed by the J.B. Clarke Co., 1904), 162-163 (William Woodbury); digital images, Hathi Trust.