William Dodge

Father of Hannah (Dodge) Woodbury. He came in the Lion's Whelp in 1629, among the forty or so planters from Dorset and Somerset sent by the Rev. John White, and the Massachusetts Bay Company commended him to Endecott in its letter of 28 May 1629: "that you would appoint unto William Dodge, a skilful and painful husbandman, the charge of a team of horses" (source). He settled on the Bass River side of Salem, now Beverly; was made freeman on 17 Apr 1637; was granted sixty acres next to John Woodbury's that September; and in 1644 bought for £40 the two hundred acres "late the property of Peter Palfry," one of the Old Planters' farms. The town records have him on committee after committee, as selectman, grand juryman, and deputy to the General Court in 1682. His children were Capt. John (b. 1636), Capt. William (1640-1720), Hannah (b. 1642), and probably Josiah.

King Philip's War. The war took one son and made another's name. Josiah Dodge, probably his son, was killed with Capt. Thomas Lathrop's Essex company at Bloody Brook on 18 Sept 1675. He is in the list "At Muddy-Brook bridge ye 18 Sept. 71 men slane," with Peter Woodbury, the brother of Hannah's husband, and Treasurer John Hull credited his wages to his estate on 25 Jan 1675/6 (Soldiers in King Philip's War, pp. 136-138).

Capt. William, the Dodge genealogy says, "was engaged against the Narragansetts, and acquired distinction for courage and skill." He was probably the "William Dodge (Jr,)" of the Salem troop's list for the Narragansett expedition, "Troopers belonging to Capt. Curwin," credited as "William Dodg" under Capt. Thomas Prentice, whose troop fought at the fort on 19 Dec 1675 (pp. 82-83). On 21 Jan 1675/6, Hubbard wrote, "one W. Dodge of Salem" rescued a fellow trooper who had been thrown from his horse and killed two Indians: "by that Means he did three good Offices at once, saved the Life of one Friend, and slew two of his Enemies" (Hubbard, 1:163); "Hubbard, in his narrative, gives a particular account of his bravery and success," the genealogy says (p. 18). A William Dodge rode again in Capt. George Corwin's troop, credited in July 1676 (Bodge p. 291); "Wm. Dodds jr." signed the Beverly petition of 4 June 1685 of those who had been "at the Narragansett Fort" (pp. 406-407); and "William Dodge" is among the Beverly grantees of Narragansett No. 3 in the 1730s, his right drawn by his heirs (p. 423). Capt. John, too, the genealogy says, "served against the Narragansetts in 1675" (p. 17).

In 1685 he settled his lands by deed on his son William, who was to pay "to my brother if he come to New England and dwell in this town of Beverly £5 per annum as long as he shall dwell here," and gave his daughter Hannah Woodbury twelve acres at Beverly and the use of half his farm at Wenham for her life (source).

A second, full line to Levi Woodbury runs through him: Capt. William Dodge's daughter Mary married Joseph Herrick, and their daughter Lydia married Josiah Woodbury, Levi's great-grandfather.

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