Sarah Woodbury

Wife of Ralph Ellinwood III (1694-1728/9), married at Beverly in 1712 and received to full communion there on 20 January 1727/8 (record); mother of eight or nine children, 1712-1726, Israel the second (record). Widowed when her husband was lost at sea in the winter of 1728/9, she married Zebulon Allen of Salem (intentions 31 May 1730) and administered Ralph’s estate as “Sarah Ellinwood alias Allen”. Leonard Ellinwood (1963) made her the third wife of Ralph II, her father-in-law; Ralph II’s will of 1741 disproves it.

Her father William Woodbury (b. Salem 1662) was a son of Thomas Woodbury and Hannah Dodge, and a grandson of Humphrey Woodbury, who deposed in 1680/1 that “my father, John Woodbury … brought me with him. We arrived at the place now called Salem in or about the month of June, 1628.” John Woodbury was one of the Old Planters who settled Salem with Roger Conant. Her mother Joanna Wheeler was “of Concord,” a daughter of John Wheeler and Sarah (Larkin). These steps are probable (proven for Humphrey to John); William’s will of 1725 would settle the first (research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Woodbury_Rand.md). She does not descend from William Woodbury, the Old Planter’s brother, as some trees have it.

Her uncle Jonathan Woodbury married “Eliner Elinwood” in 1708, and their daughter Eleanor (b. 1711/12) was very probably the Eleanor Woodbury who married Sarah’s son Ralph in the 1730s: the bride was a first cousin of the groom’s mother. Who Eliner Elinwood’s parents were is not known; she is not among Ralph II’s recorded children.