Ancestors

Joseph Woodruff

Joseph Woodruff was born at Southampton, on the east end of Long Island, in 1676. His father was John Woodruffe of Southampton. His grandfather, also John Woodruffe, had come from Fordwich in Kent and helped found the town in 1640. The census of Southampton taken in 1698 lists a Joseph as the second son in his father's household. His father's will, made in January 1701, left "my son Joseph Woodruffe ye sum of twenty pounds current money of sd Province."

About 1700 Joseph moved to Elizabethtown, New Jersey, where his father's elder brother John had settled by 1670. In 1701 he took possession of a hundred-acre lot, No. 149, "a Cros Raway River." It lay at a great bend of the Rahway River a mile below Cranford, in the country that later became Westfield. He held it under a "Clinker Lot Right" from the division of land the Elizabethtown Associates made in 1699 and 1700. In 1714 he signed his name "Joseph Woodruffe," with the final e of the Southampton family. The genealogist of the New Jersey Woodruffs concluded in 1909 that "without reasonable doubt, he was neither son nor grandson of any Woodruff on record as living at that time in New Jersey."

His title was not safe. Two parties claimed the land around Elizabethtown. The Associates were the town's first settlers and their heirs, who held their land by a purchase from the Lenape in 1664. The East Jersey Proprietors claimed the same ground under the Duke of York's grant of the province, made the same year. In 1714 the Proprietors' side sued Joseph in ejectment for the land he farmed. He lost in the Supreme Court in 1718 and appealed to the Governor and Council. The case hung over the family for the rest of his life.

His wife was Hannah, whose maiden name is not known. They had thirteen children: John, Jonathan, William, Samuel, Abigail, Thomas, Hezekiah, Joseph, Nathaniel, Isaac, Benjamin, Sarah and Joanna. Abigail married John Gold. John and Samuel were deacons of the Westfield church.

Joseph made his will on 15 January 1742, "sickly and weakly in Body." He left Hannah the best room in the house and a third of the income of his lands. He divided his farms among the sons not yet provided for. He died on 2 February 1741/2, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. His stone gives the year as 1741, by the old reckoning in which the year began on 25 March. By the modern calendar it was 1742. Hannah died that August.

They were buried in the Presbyterian burying ground at Westfield. Their stones stood at the end of a row that also held their sons Deacon John, Deacon Samuel, Jonathan and Thomas, and the plot of their son Isaac's family.

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

Cite: Heirology, "Joseph Woodruff (1676-1741)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/joseph-woodruff-1676-1741-26a1c3.