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.

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). His children: Capt. John (b. 1636), Capt. William (1640-1720), who served with distinction in the Narragansett campaign, Hannah (b. 1642), and very probably Josiah, killed with Capt. Lathrop at Bloody Brook in 1675.

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/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Woodbury_Rand.md, section 3).

Research: research/ellingwood/Ellingwood_Woodbury_Rand.md.