Ancestors

David Woodruff

David Woodruff was born about 1740 at Westfield, New Jersey. Westfield was then the western farm country of Elizabethtown, in Essex County. It did not become a township of its own until 1794. His parents are not known.

The Woodruffs of Westfield were a large family. Many of them descended from Joseph Woodruff, who came from Southampton on Long Island and was buried at Westfield in 1742. Joseph was a grandson of John Woodruffe, baptized in 1604 at Canterbury in Kent, who settled at Southampton about 1640. Whether David belonged to this branch, and through which son, no record says.

On 11 June 1765 he married Sabra Clark at the Presbyterian church in Westfield. The church had kept a register of marriages since 1759. They had a daughter, Elizabeth, who later married Joseph Miller. When Sabra died is not recorded.

The Revolution came when David was in his thirties. In 1776 a David Woodruff signed a petition about the appointment of militia officers, preserved among the early records of Morris County. The Daughters of the American Revolution accept that signature as his patriotic service. They also note that several men of the same name lived in New Jersey at the time.

On 4 December 1786 David married again, at the same church. The register calls the bride Johanna Tucker. She was Joanna Cory, the widow of Isaac Tucker. She was thirty five, and he was about forty six. A son, John C. Woodruff, was born in June 1789. A second son was born on 25 March 1791. He was named Parkhurst, which was the name of Joanna's brother. He was known all his life as Parkis.

The family moved west to Boardman Township in Trumbull County, Ohio. Boardman lay in the Connecticut Western Reserve. That was the strip of northeastern Ohio that Connecticut kept when it gave up its other western lands, and it was sold to settlers through Connecticut proprietors. The township was named for one of them, Elijah Boardman of New Milford, Connecticut. The Woodruffs were there by the summer of 1812, when Parkis served as a sergeant in a company of local militia. In 1815 Elijah Boardman sold sixty four acres to the two brothers, John C. and Parkis.

In May 1813 the Rev. John Field, a missionary from Connecticut, gathered the Church of Christ in Boardman. Its members promised to keep daily worship in their families and to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. The roll of members lists the family of David Woodruff with Joanna Woodruff. Beside it stands the family of their son Parkis.

David Woodruff died on 1 March 1825 in Boardman Township, aged about eighty four. He was buried in Cornersburg Cemetery, just over the line in Canfield Township. His stone is a tall plain slab, and only his name can still be read on it. Two of his grandchildren were buried in the same ground, John Shields Woodruff in 1834 and Nancy Ann Woodruff in 1838. Joanna outlived him by sixteen years.

If David Woodruff is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "David Woodruff (1740-1825)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/david-woodruff-1740-1825-2e3abb.