John Woodbury

The Old Planter of Salem, father of Humphrey Woodbury. He came from Somersetshire with the Dorchester Company men who settled Cape Ann in 1624, and was one of the four "honest and prudent men" (Conant, Woodbury, Balch and Palfrey) who in 1626 moved the remnant of that colony to Naumkeag, now Salem. In the autumn of 1627 he went back to England, in Anderson's words "to explain to those interested, financially and otherwise, the condition, needs and prospects of the settlement"; Mary Walton Ferris called him "the first envoy from this colony to the mother country" (source). His son told the story in a deposition of 16 Feb 1680/1: "my father, John Woodbury, since deceased, did about 56 years ago remove to New E[ngland] ... After about 3 years absence my said father returned to England & made us acquainted with what settlement they had made in N.E. ... after about ½ a year's stay in England my father returned to N.E. and brought me with him. We arrived at the place now called Salem in or about the month of June, 1628" (source). Endecott landed three months later. A tradition that Ferris prints in a footnote has Woodbury and another man carrying Endecott ashore on their shoulders, "to save Endicott's dignity and clothing."

He was sworn constable of Salem on 28 Sept 1630 and admitted freeman on 18 May 1631. On 25 Jan 1635/6 the town granted the five Old Planters, Capt. Trask, John Woodbury, Mr. Conant, Peter Palfrey and John Balch, two-hundred-acre farms at the head of Bass River, now Beverly; Ferris adds that his farm "had no other title than the original grant" as late as 1878. He was deputy to the General Court in 1635 and 1638-9, a colony assessor, foreman of the Essex petit jury in 1638, and a selectman of Salem from 1636 until he died. Anderson's verdict: "John Woodbury was a conscientious man, who in his few short years as a part of Salem government, did more than others accomplished in much longer lives. He was present for every selectmen's meeting until death interrupted him in mid-stride in the winter of 1641." His will was proved on 27 June 1643 but never recorded.

His children: Humphrey, by his first wife; and by Agnes, John, Hannah (bp. 1636, m. Cornelius Baker), Abigail (bp. 1637, m. John Hill) and Peter (bp. 19 Sept 1640), Sergeant and Deacon Peter Woodbury of Beverly, from whom Levi Woodbury, Charles G. Dawes and Henry Adams descend. His brother William Woodbury, from South Petherton, also settled at Salem; he is not an ancestor of this family.

Anderson rejects the marriage of a John Woodbury and Joanna Humphrey at Burlescombe, Devon, in 1596 (she was buried in 1601) as too early for the immigrant; Dawes-Gates accepts it. Nothing is known of his birth.

Research: Woodbury, Rand–Cheever–Ivory and Slater lines behind the Ellingwoods.