Woodbury

1604–1788

The line in brief

John Woodbury came out of Somersetshire with the Dorchester Company men who settled Cape Ann in 1624, and in 1626 he was one of the four “honest and prudent men,” with Roger Conant, John Balch and Peter Palfrey, who moved what was left of that colony to Naumkeag, now Salem. In the autumn of 1627 he went back to England “to explain to those interested, financially and otherwise, the condition, needs and prospects of the settlement,” the first envoy from the colony to the mother country, and in June 1628, three months before Endecott, he came back with his son Humphrey. He had one of the Old Planters’ farms at the head of Bass River, sat in the General Court, and was a selectman of Salem from 1636, “present for every selectmen’s meeting until death interrupted him in mid-stride in the winter of 1641.” Humphrey, whose deposition of 1680/1 is the chief account of that first settlement, was a founder of the church at Beverly in 1667 and its deacon, and his son Peter was killed with the “Flower of Essex” at Bloody Brook in 1675.

In 1661 Humphrey’s son Thomas, it seems, married Hannah Dodge, the young widow of Samuel Porter, a mariner, and they lived on the Capt. Thomas Lowthrop farm. Her father, William Dodge, had come in the Lion’s Whelp in 1629, commended to Endecott as “a skilful and painful husbandman” to have the charge of a team of horses, and was granted land next to John Woodbury’s; her brother Josiah, probably, fell at Bloody Brook beside Peter Woodbury. Their eldest son, William, born at Salem in 1662, married “Joanna Wheler of Concord” at Beverly in 1689, a daughter of John Wheeler and Sarah Larkin of Concord. Their daughter Sarah, born at Beverly on 14 December 1690, married Ralph Ellinwood III, a mariner on the Jamaica run, in 1712, and was the mother of Israel Ellingwood, later a mariner of Boston. Widowed when Ralph was lost at sea, probably in the winter of 1728/9, she married Zebulon Allen of Salem in 1730.

Where it went

  1. With the Dorchester CompanySomersetshire, EnglandJohn Woodbury
  2. 1624Cape AnnJohn Woodbury
  3. 1626Salem, MassachusettsJohn Woodbury
  4. 1643/4Concord, MassachusettsJohn Wheeler
  5. 1667Beverly, MassachusettsHumphrey Woodbury

Five generations

The Woodbury name, five generations

  1. 4John Woodbury d. 1641The Old Planter of Salem, Massachusetts, who came from Somersetshire with the Dorchester Company men to Cape Ann in 1624 and in 1626 was one of the four who moved that colony to Naumkeag, now Salem.
  2. 3Humphrey Woodbury c. 1608–1685Deacon of Beverly, Massachusetts, born about 1608 in Somersetshire, son of John Woodbury the Old Planter, with whom he came to Salem in June 1628; his deposition of 1680/1 is the chief account of that settlement.
  3. 2Thomas Woodbury d. bef. 1719Of Salem and Beverly, Massachusetts, where he owned large estates, probably a son of Deacon Humphrey Woodbury and grandson of John Woodbury the Old Planter.
  4. 1William Woodbury 1662–1725Born at Salem, Massachusetts, in 1662, probably the eldest son of Thomas Woodbury and Hannah (Dodge) Porter.
  5. 0Sarah Woodbury 1690–1788Wife of Ralph Ellinwood III, married at Beverly in 1712, and mother of eight or nine children, Israel the second.

The line down the left is drawn as the tree draws it: solid where a record shows the link to the parent above, dashed where it rests on compiled accounts, dotted where it is reasoned from the evidence, grey where it is only possible. A bar fades where a birth or death year isn't known.

Everyone in the line, 11 people

Notable ancestors and small world

1 notable ancestor in the line

  • John Woodbury

    Old Planter of Salem, at Cape Ann in 1624 and Naumkeag in 1626, and the settlers' first envoy to England, 1627-28

With the famous kin, on Notable connections →

1 small-world story

Still being worked on

Research thread

Open questions

  • William Woodbury’s will (Essex, 6 Nov 1725), which should name “daughter Sarah.”
  • Thomas Woodbury’s birth, about 1638-40, and his probate (Essex docket 30516, 1719).
  • Humphrey Woodbury’s will (Suffolk Probate vol. 11), for his son Thomas.
  • John Wheeler’s probate (Middlesex, 1713), which should name his daughter Joanna Woodbury.
  • John Woodbury’s birth, and his first wife, Humphrey’s mother.
  • Sarah (Woodbury) Allen’s death.
  • Who “Eliner Elinwood,” wife of Sarah’s uncle Jonathan Woodbury, was.
For the record: the line at a glance and how sure it is

The line at a glance

The Woodburys: John Woodbury (d. 1641), the Old Planter of Salem > Humphrey Woodbury (c. 1608-1686), deacon of Beverly = Elizabeth Hunter (d. 1689) > Thomas Woodbury (d. bef. 1719), of Salem and Beverly = Hannah Dodge (1642-1688/9), daughter of William Dodge (c. 1604-aft. 1685) of the Lion’s Whelp > William Woodbury (1662-1725) = Joanna Wheeler (1671-1748) > Sarah Woodbury (b. 1690) = Ralph Ellinwood III (1694-1728/9) > Israel Ellingwood (1714-1785), mariner of Boston.

The Wheelers: John Wheeler (1643/4-1713), of Concord = Sarah Larkin (b. 1647) > Joanna Wheeler = William Woodbury, above.

The scope walks every ancestor of Sarah Woodbury. Her husband’s side is the Ellingwood line, which stops at her.

How sure it is

  • Sarah to William Woodbury and Joanna Wheeler (documented, probable): “Sarah, d. William and Joanna, Dec. 14, 1690,” at Beverly. Her marriage intention names no parents, and Beverly had other Sarah Woodburys of her age (a daughter of Joseph and Elizabeth, baptized in 1689, and one of Ebenezer and Hannah, 1696); but she named her first son Israel, for her brother, and her Allen daughter Joanna, for her mother, and every compiled account agrees. William’s will (Essex, 1725) should name “daughter Sarah.”
  • William to Thomas Woodbury and Hannah Dodge (documented, probable): the birth of 1662 names Thomas and Hannah. That he is the William who married Joanna Wheeler is the Porter Pedigree’s (1907), and it fits the records: he was “William, jr.” in 1694, beside his uncle William, and “sr.” by 1705, and he named sons Israel and Thomas. The other William of Beverly, born in 1665 to William and Judith, has nothing to link him.
  • Joanna to John Wheeler and Sarah Larkin (documented, probable): she married as “of Concord,” and the Concord births have one Joanna Wheeler of the right age, whose age at death fits exactly. The Wheeler Family in America (1914) has that Joanna “d. young,” without a source; the Beverly records contradict it. John’s father George Wheeler and Sarah’s father Edward Larkin are possible, from the Wheeler genealogy alone, and the Concord death of 1725 may not be Sarah’s.
  • Thomas to Humphrey Woodbury (compiled, probable): Savage and the Porter Pedigree; Humphrey’s will of 1686 names a son Thomas, and his son Richard’s will of 1690 his “brs. Thomas and William.” Thomas was born before Humphrey joined the Salem church in 1643, so there is no baptism, and Elizabeth (Hunter) as his mother is inferred from the dates.
  • Humphrey to John Woodbury (documented, proven): Humphrey’s deposition of 1680/1, “my father, John Woodbury … brought me with him.”
  • Hannah Dodge to William Dodge (documented, proven): her death record names “William and Elizebeth Dodg.”

Sarah does not descend from William Woodbury, the Old Planter’s brother, as some trees have it. Leonard Ellinwood (1963) made her the third wife of Ralph Ellinwood II, her father-in-law; Ralph II’s will of 1741 disproves it (research/decisions.md, 4 October 2026). Joanna Wheeler is not of the Salisbury Wheelers elsewhere in the archive. The trees’ death for Sarah, November 1788, “aged 98,” has no source and may be her brother William’s, who was buried at Beverly on 18 Oct 1788, aged 91. The surname “Haskell” for Elizabeth Dodge belongs to the wife of a namesake, “Coker William” Dodge. Savage’s “d. Feb. 1681” for Humphrey is contradicted by his will of 1686; and Anderson and the Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines disagree whether John Woodbury was the man who married Joanna Humphrey at Burlescombe, Devon, in 1596. The research is in research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Woodbury_Rand.md, section 1A.

Their families and the files

+ 9 husbands, wives and children

Research filesresearch/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Woodbury_Rand.md

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