Isaac Woodruff
Isaac Woodruff was born about 1715, before birth records were kept at Westfield. He was a son of Joseph Woodruff and his wife Hannah. Joseph had come from Southampton on Long Island about 1700. He farmed a hundred-acre lot on the Rahway River, at a great bend a mile below Cranford, in the western farm country of Elizabethtown, New Jersey. A family genealogy of 1967, the Woodruff Chronicles, places Isaac at Cranford, on the river below the Westfield church.
His father made his will on 15 January 1742, two and a half weeks before he died. Most of the land went to Isaac's brothers. Isaac was left "my piece of Salt Meadow Lying and Being by Murthes Creek," and his brother Nathaniel was to pay him thirty pounds. A salt meadow was tidal marsh, mown for hay. Isaac was then probably a young married man.
His wife was named Mary. Her maiden name is not known. She was born about 1717 and died on 15 December 1760, aged forty three. Her stone in the Westfield burying ground calls her "Mary, wife of Isaac." Because it does not call her his widow, the Woodruff Chronicles take Isaac to have been alive when she died. On 19 November 1761 the Westfield church recorded the marriage of "Isaac, to Mary Little." That was very probably Isaac marrying again, eleven months after Mary's death.
The Chronicles give him three sons. Isaac Jr., the eldest, was born about 1740. His daughter Lydia was baptized at Westfield on 19 June 1763, and afterwards he left Essex County. His family turns up later in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania. David, the second son, was born in 1741 or 1742. He married Sabra Clark in 1765 and died in Ohio in 1825. Daniel, "the third known child," was born about 1745 and married Mary Pierson at Westfield on 23 September 1770.
No record names David or Daniel as Isaac's sons. The Chronicles found them in the burying ground. There Isaac's wife Mary lay in one plot with David's wife Sabra, David's infant son Abner, and Daniel's wife Mary. The compilers wrote that the stones, "supported by the Westfield Church records, are the key to the identity of his known children."
When and where Isaac died is not known. A genealogy of 1909, The Woodruffs of New Jersey, knew "nothing more" of him. It warned that he had been confused with Isaac Woodruff of Elizabethtown, who died in 1803 and was a different man.
Sources
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Cite: Heirology, "Isaac Woodruff (b. 1715)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/isaac-woodruff-1715-e51f9c.