Walter Woodworth

The first of the Woodworths of Scituate, in Plymouth Colony, and the forefather of Nancy (Woodworth) Fairchild’s line. “To WALTER WOODWORTH in 1635 was assigned the third lot on Kent street, which runs along the ocean front, at the corner of Meeting-house lane, and there he built his house” (source). Deane places him “amongst the men of Kent,” with other land “on the first Herring brook 30 rods below Stockbridge’s mill” and on Walnut Tree Hill (source); the Herring Brook land is where “afterward stood the residence of the poet, SAMUEL WOODWORTH,” and the hill was long called Walter Woodworth’s Hill. He was assessed 9s “for the public use” in 1640, admitted a freeman on 2 March 1641 (Deane: 1640), made surveyor of highways in 1645, 1646 and 1656, and in 1654 was a member of the First Church when it ordained Charles Chauncy; in 1666 he bought 60 acres at Weymouth. “When his next door neighbor, Japhet Turner, in 1661 pulled down WALTER’S fence and obliterated his boundary lines, WALTER promptly sued him and obtained a verdict for £5 and costs” (source).

His daughter Mehitable, born 15 Aug 1662 by the Woodworth Records, was at the centre of a witchcraft case. At the court of 6 March 1676/7 Mary Ingham, wife of Thomas Ingham of Scituate, was indicted for that she had, “by the healp of the diuill, in a way of witchcraft or sorcery, malliciously procured much hurt, mischeiffe, and paine vnto the body of Mehittable Woodworth, the daughter of Walter Woodworth, of Scittuate aforsaid, and some others, and pticularly causing her, the said Mehittable, to fall into violent fitts … soe as shee, the said Mehittable Woodworth, hath bin almost bereaued of her sences, and hath greatly languished, to her much suffering therby, and the procuring of great greiffe, sorrow, and charge to her parents.” A jury of twelve, among them John Howland and Joseph Bartlett, “brought in not guilty” (source). Deane found only two witchcraft cases in the colony’s records, both from Scituate; the other, against the wife of William Holmes in 1660, ended with her accuser acknowledging “maliciously accusing the woman,” so Mehitable’s was the only one tried before a jury (source). Deane calls her one “who was unfortunate in regard to her health.”

His eldest son Benjamin was killed in King Philip’s War. “Lands were assigned for his services, to Charles Stockbridge, for the use of Benjamin Woodworth’s family 1676”: the Plymouth list of 22 July 1676 has “Charles Stockbridge for Benj. Woodworth” a few lines below “Lieut. Isaac Buck.” Charles Stockbridge, who kept the mill and its garrison house, was the half-brother of Benjamin’s sister-in-law Sarah (source). Benjamin’s descendant in the fifth generation, by either the Woodworth Records’ or Deane’s reckoning, was the poet Samuel Woodworth (1784-1842), author of “The Old Oaken Bucket.”

Walter left no will, and his wife’s name is not known. His children, from “incidental records” (Deane) and the town records (the Woodworth Records): Benjamin; Walter, born 1645; Thomas; Joseph; Mary, born 10 March 1650, who married Aaron Symonds in 1677; Martha, who married Lieut. Zachary Damon in 1679; Isaac; Elizabeth; and Mehitable. The indictment’s “her parents” suggests that he and his wife were living in March 1677.

Research: research/mcmillan/Fairchild_Raymond_Woodworth.md.

Open questions

• His English origin (the Woodworth Records guess Kent) and his wife’s name.
• When he died. Deane also lists a Mehitable, born 1662, among the children of Walter Jr., born 1645, which cannot be right; the Woodworth Records place her with Walter Sr.