A Female Revolutionary War Ancestor is the One I Would Most Like to Meet

 

This blog is for a prompt from Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks genealogy workshop.   This week’s prompt is “Oldest.”

 Do you have some ancestors who are your “favorites?”   I do, and sometimes it is hard to explain why they are my favorites.   And then there are some ancestors that I know exactly why they are a favorite.   Abigail Jewell Woodward (1714 – 1777) is from the latter category and is my 5th great-grandmother.  

 

 This is the best photo I took of the 1777 headstone on a brisk autumn afternoon in New Hampshire that I remember so well. 

  

Abigail is the oldest ancestor for whom I have a meaningful photo, albeit of her tombstone in Grafton County, New Hampshire.    Abigail was born on 3 November 1714 in Plainfield, Windham County, Connecticut to Nathaniel Jewell and Sarah Whitney.  At the age of 22, she married Deliverance Woodward in 1737 with whom she had 8 children, all born in Connecticut.  Sometime after 1762, they moved to Hanover, Grafton County, New Hampshire, where she lived for the rest of her life. 

Abigail’s tombstone has an inscription that resonated with me.   The tombstone is also still standing, in contrast to her husband’s stone, which is gone.    Although the last time I saw her tombstone was over 10 years ago, I still have a vivid recollection of the cool, crisp autumn afternoon in Hanover with leaves falling down like fat raindrops. 

The inscription reads, “Stop friends dry your tears.  I must lie here til Christ appears.”  

 

Another photo, plus transcription, sent to me by another of Abigail's descendants.

 

There is a second reason Abigail is a favorite ancestor.  The later years in Hanover must have been tumultuous as the American Revolution intruded on the Woodward family.   Deliverance served as an Ensign in the army and her son Jonathan Woodward was a private, enlisting six different times, fighting primarily in New York.   I can imagine Abigail keeping the home going as both her husband and one of her grown sons goes off to war.  She was 62 years old and facing an uncertain future, not just for herself, but for her family, her community and her fledgling nation.   But Abigail was not to see the war to its conclusion.   She died in May 1777 in Hanover.  

This is the second reason Abigail is a favorite; she is the ancestor I would most like to talk with and learn how she viewed the effort for American Independence in her lifetime.