Cousin Group on Zoom Uncovers Surprise from the 1630s

 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 7: Unusual Source

 

 An unusual and fun source for information about my Woodward ancestors is a group of cousins that now meet monthly on zoom.   At our last meeting, one of our members shared an exciting discovery from the 1630’s.  

The informal group has 8 members scattered across the country, most in the northeast.  All are Woodward descendants, all descending from Jonathan Woodward (1762-1843) and Rebecca Smith (1764-1824) of Hanover, NH.   Two of the eight members are descended from Jonathan’s son Theodore, whereas six of the members are descended from Jonathan’s daughter Martha.  Martha married Smith Sherman in April 1815 in Barre, Vermont, and it is this other “Sherman line” that figures in this discovery.   

 

In a previous 52 Weeks prompt on January 3 of this year, I shared the story of Richard and Rose Woodward leaving England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634 aboard the ship “Elizabeth” from Ipswich, Suffolk County, England.  They left Ipswich on April 30 and arrived in Boston in July.  The well documented records of this ship tell us that there were 105 passengers on the 2-month journey to the new world.  Richard and Rose, along with their two sons John and George, were amongst them and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts.  

 

In our zoom meeting cousin group, I shared the 52 Weeks article I wrote on Richard and Rose Woodward.   It rang a proverbial bell with one of the cousins, specifically the part about leaving England in the 1630’s.  Thus motivated, she went through her genealogy papers to locate a document, hand-written by her grandmother, entitled, “Sherman Ancestors from England to Theodore Mott Sherman.”

In the middle of the Sherman document, we see “John Sherman” born in Essex County, England, in 1612 and a date of death of 1690 in Watertown, MA.  Essex County is adjacent to Suffolk County where Ipswich is located and also part of the East Anglia Puritan concentration in England so it makes sense that John Sherman wanted to be part of that “Great Migration” of Puritans to the colonies.

Next, the motivated cousin looked up the complete passenger list of the “Elizabeth” for the April 1634 voyage and John Sherman was on the list and the right age.  So, this ship not only carried our Woodward ancestors, it also carried a key Sherman ancestor.   This documentation can be found online via “Great Migration:  Passengers of the Elizabeth, 1634 & 1635.”  

We have no reason to suspect that the Woodwards and John Sherman knew each other prior to the trip, although they both settled in Watertown, MA so they certainly knew each other then.   It would be 181 years later that the Woodwards and Shermans were connected via Martha Woodward’s marriage to Smith Sherman in 1815.

This discovery is the biggest find our online cousin group has made.  Many of our meetings are not as productive but they are fun.  The group is also very helpful for sharing photos.  Collaboration is good, sometimes I think it has a "more than the sum of the parts" feel to it.  If you are thinking about starting a group like this, I encourage you to do it.  

 

 

 

Earliest Woodward Ancestors Came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony to Escape King Charles I in 1634

 

One of the paradoxes of genealogy is that although it may be hard to find information on recent ancestors, it may be easier to find information on much older ancestors because more people are descended from them and have already done research.  Such is the case with my well-documented earliest immigrant ancestors, Richard Woodward and his wife, Rose Stewart Woodward. 

Richard and Rose left England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634, as mature adults with Richard 45 and Rose 50 years old, as seen in the lower half of the book excerpt to the left (The Planters of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by Charles Edward Banks).  Their 13-year-old sons, George and John, accompanied them on the 2-month voyage which left Ipswich, Suffolk County, England on April 30, 1634 aboard the ship “Elizabeth,” undoubtedly named for the famous monarch who died in 1603.  What could have motivated them to undertake such a dramatic move to the colonies at their age?

Richard, my 9^th great grandfather, was probably born in Childwell Parish, Lancashire County, in northwest England, in 1587 or 1589.  He was a miller and married Rose Stewart in Cambridge, East England, in 1614.   Richard already demonstrated a willingness to move to the other side of the county at the age of 25 for his bride. 

Rose was older than Richard, having been born in 1582 in Cambridgeshire County, where the young family started their future.   Cambridgeshire County is just to the west of Suffolk County, where the family departs from in 1634, so it is likely that adjacent Suffolk County and its busy port of Ipswich on the River Orwell were familiar to the couple Richard and Rose.  It is easy to imagine that they could have arranged their ship passage without great effort. 

 

What could have motivated them to make such a move?  While I did not find direct evidence for this couple, looking at Ipswich and the political chaos of the time, it is not hard to deduce a likely scenario. 

Ipswich was a main port in East Anglia (the eastern part of England) and was a key port for imports and exports.  It also had an excellent reputation for printing and books at that time.  In the 1630’s, Ipswich was one of the principal embarkation points for East Anglican Puritans leaving England for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which came to be known as the “Great Migration.”  Puritans opposed Church of England practices that too closely resembled Roman Catholicism.

After his father King James I of England died in 1625 and Charles I became king, England’s religious conflict worsened and political chaos was added to the mix as Charles and Parliament sparred openly over fiscal debt, new unpopular taxes, Charles’ belief in the Divine Right of Kings, and rising tensions with Scotland.   This conflict and chaos accelerated emigration to the New World.   The chaos did not end well for Charles I, as he was tried by Parliament and executed in 1649.

So Richard and Rose likely left England, as many of their contemporaries, for religious and political reasons and to begin afresh in the New World even if they were on the older side.   After the two-month voyage, the “Elizabeth” docked in Boston Harbor in July 1634.  The couple settled in Watertown, MA, about 10 miles to the west of Boston, where they lived until Rose’s death in 1662 at the age of 80.   

The year following their arrival in Watertown, Richard took the “Oath of a Freeman,” with its commonwealth references and no mention of a king in the text, and completed his break with the English monarchy. 

Through their son George’s offspring, the break with the monarchy would be further manifested and it only took four generations.   George’s son John (1649-1732) also had a son John (1675-1767).  The last John had a son Deliverance Woodward (1713-1783) who fought in the American Revolution and was known as “Ensign Woodward” in his Hanover, New Hampshire hometown.   Deliverance’s young son, Jonathan (1762-1843) also fought in the Revolution so there were two patriots from this line, leaving no doubt about the Woodwards’ break with the English monarchy. 

The Slow Erosion of a Brick Wall Yields John Healy as my Newest Ancestor

 

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

 

 Do you have a messy brick wall you are trying to work through?   Here’s an example of using minimal online information, coupled with what I’ve learned in genealogy to make good judgment calls, going back to the hard copy vital records office, and adding in a lot of patience, which eventually brought me to success.  It might inspire you to tackle one of your brick walls.   This story is about the newest ancestor added to my Clark family tree, John E. Healy.    

 

Who was the father of this adorable girl?  My grandmother, Agnes Rose Healy, pictured at about the age of 6.  Photo likely taken in Long Island City, Queens County, New York, circa 1896. 

The search was for my paternal grandmother’s father in New York City and there were plenty of challenges.  Both of Agnes Rose Healy’s parents died at a young age in the early 1890s, but I did not have an exact death year nor a birth year.   Raised by her Grandmother, my Grandmother (Agnes) did not speak about her parents so my father did not know much more than that his grandfather was a stone cutter and died when his mother was a small child.  My research uncovered that Agnes listed her father’s name as John on her 1917 marriage certificate, yet on her 1979 death certificate (completed by others), her father’s name is listed as Edward.   

 

As a 1917 bride in Queens County New York, Agnes listed her deceased father's name as "John" on her marriage certificate.  One month later, on Christmas Eve, her new husband shipped off to WWI in France. 

Complicating research is the complete lack of newspaper articles on this family.  This is not too surprising, considering New York City had a rapidly growing population of 7 million people in 1890, and that his parents were Irish immigrants, likely poor, who immigrated to the US in the mid-1850s, along with millions of other Irish following the potato famine in Ireland.  Newspaper research was no help.  There are several missing vital records in this family also.   My search for Agnes’ birth certificate has never yielded results. 

There was some solid information about his sister, Mary, who married into a well-documented family, and his parents, Lawrence and Rose, were living in Queens County in 1900.   My first strategy was to research these people as much as possible for every potential hint to his identify, in other words research the people surrounding the brick wall person.   Moderate progress over months was made on this group but no break-through. 

Turning to my mystery great grandfather again, I decided to focus on the first name of John rather than Edward, following the genealogy advice that information documented closer in time to the event is probably more accurate.   Agnes indicated her father’s name was John on her 1917 marriage certificate.  My Ancestry searches turned up no good leads for a John Healy or Healey in Queens or Manhattan.  Maybe the computer algorithms were against me.  It was one of Amy’s online classes on breaking brick walls that inspired me to try searching on another service, in this case Family Search, which did provide a potential good lead.  There was a John E. Healey who died in 1892 at the age of 29 from pneumonia, had an occupation of stone cutter, and listed parents of Lawrence and Rose. 

 However, the last name was spelled incorrectly (we know this happens in vital records) and the location was Manhattan, not Queens, but an adjoining county.   The specific address was East Harlem, which was a frequent neighborhood for poor Irish at that time, so that made sense.  Since the time frame and occupation was correct, and we know spelling errors are common, I ordered the certificate in April 2020 from NYC Vital Records.   There might be more information on the certificate itself. 

 

East Harlem in Manhattan circa 1900, on the block where John Healy died in 1892.  At that time, East Harlem was a popular neighborhood for the Irish. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the NYC Vital Records Office was closed for the non-digitized, older records and so I waited patiently.   After a 5-month wait, the certificate arrived on September 2, confirming all the online information but adding nothing new.   In the end, I am satisfied that this person is the missing great grandfather, due primarily to the death date, occupation and parents’ names, and have added him to the Clark family tree as the newest member.  

 

It is still an exciting day when a hard copy certificate arrives in my mailbox from NYC Vital Records Office.  

Reviewing the strategies I used in this case, some were successful and some were not.   Newspaper research produced nothing, likely because they lived in a very large city.  Researching the people around the brick wall person did help, for example it identified his parents’ names.  Choosing the first name that was closer in time to the event, John over Edward in this case, proved correct, as did accepting the mis-spelled last name because we know that happens.   The most successful strategy was Amy’s suggestion to try searching on a different service, Family Search in this case, which provided the record I needed.   Hopefully this article and these strategies can benefit your family tree as well.