Ancestors

John Woodruffe

John Woodruffe was born about 1650 and grew up at Southampton, on the east end of Long Island. His father, also John Woodruffe, had come from Fordwich in Kent and was one of the founders of the town in 1640. He was the younger of his father's two sons named John. The elder John, baptized in England in 1637, settled at Elizabeth Town in New Jersey.

From childhood the boy lived with John Gosmer, gentleman, a former mayor of Fordwich and another of Southampton's founders. Gosmer was his step-grandfather. He had married the widowed mother of John's father in Kent. In 1659, when John was about nine, Gosmer gave him by deed everything he owned, calling him "my adopted sone."

He married Hannah, perhaps not until 1670 or later. The 1909 genealogy of the family takes her to be a Newton. Its reason is that Benoni Newton called John "brother" in a deed of 1682, and Benoni had not married either of John's sisters. The Southampton census of 1698 shows the household with sons John and Joseph among the children.

He made his will on 14 January 1701. It named his sons, among them Joseph, Nathaniel, Isaac and Jonathan. It left "my son Joseph Woodruffe ye sum of twenty pounds current money of sd Province." Joseph had by then gone to Elizabethtown in New Jersey. The will was proved on 1 April 1703, so John had died by then.

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Cite: Heirology, "John Woodruffe (b. 1650)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-woodruffe-1650-112e5c.