Surname: Woodward

The Woodward surname comes to me via my grandpa Rosmer Kerr. His seventh great-grandfather is said to be:

• Henry Woodward, who came from England in 1635. His wife was Elizabeth Mather. He was killed in an accident at the corn mill in Northampton, Massachusetts, on 7 April 1685. Henry and Elizabeth were my ninth great-grandparents.
  
• Freedom Woodward, born in July 1642 at Dorchester, Massachusetts. She married Jedediah Strong on 18 November 1662. She died at Northampton 17 May 1681, a week after the birth of her thirteenth child. Freedom and Jedediah were my eighth great-grandparents.
  

Dorchester Antiquarian and Historical Society (Dorchester, Mass.), and Ebenezer Clapp. History of the Town of Dorchester, Massachusetts. Boston: Ebenezer Clapp, Jr., 1859. From this book, the following notes were taken:

Henry Woodward came over in the ship James, Capt. Taylor, in the summer of 1635. He was a physician. He removed to Northampton about 1658, and was accidentally killed there by a mill wheel. (p. 141)

"At a meeting of the Selectmen, 12: 4: 1657, Thos. Bird brought a note from Henry Woodward, Constable, and demanded twenty shillings for a wolf that his son Samuel Greenway killed within our bounds the 5: 1: 57, which we do order that they shall be paid the next town rate." It was a common thing to pay for several wolves killed in one year. Anthony Fisher, Jr., received pay for three in 1665. (p. 186)

On the 14th of November [1659], the selectmen of Dorchester "impowered William Clarke and Henry Woodward to serch and stake out a Farme of a 1000 acres of land granted vnto the town of Dorchester for the vse of a scoole by the gerierall Court held at Boston the 18th of October, 1659." (p. 434) [Reader, something happened to delay this process, not once but several times over the years. It would be almost sixty years before the land was finally selected!]

The 18th of June, of this year [1661], Mr. Eleazer Mather, son of the pastor of this church, was ordained minister of Northampton; and Dea. Edward Clap, Mr. Peletiah Glover and Thomas Tileston were chosen as messengers from the church to attend the ordination—a journey of nearly as much importance as would now be one to New Orleans, and much more dangerous. Several persons removed from this town [Dorchester] to Northampton, and formed the church there ; among them, William Clarke and Sarah his wife, Henry Woodward and Elizabeth his wife, and Henry Cunliffe and his wife Susanna. (p. 192)

Savage, James, John Farmer, and O. P. Dexter. A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, Showing Three Generations of Those Who Came Before May, 1692, on the Basis of Farmer's Register. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1860-1862. From Volume IV, p. 644:

Woodward, Henry, Dorchester 1639, came, says Clapp, in his careful Hist. of Dorchester, p. 141, in the James, Capt. Taylor, in the summer of 1635, with Richard Mather, and he calls him a physician. He had there, Experience; Freedom, bapt. 1642; Thankful; and John; rem. 1659 to Northampton, with those ch. and the mo. Eliz. there was one of the founders of the first ch. and had been an early mem. at D. He was k. by accid. at the grist-mill. 7 Apr. 1685 ; and next mo. the wid. made her will, tho. she d. not bef. 13 Aug. 1690. Of her s. she says "has been a dutif. and well carriaged s. to me all my life." Experience m. 21 Nov. 1661, Medad Pomeroy; Freedom m. 18 Nov. 1662, Jedediah Strong; and Thankful m. 18 Dec. 1662, John Taylor; all of Northampton.