♀Jane Woodward

Jane Woodward (died 2 February 1615) was the second wife of William Williams, a yeoman of Synwell, part of the town of Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire, England, and the mother of Richard Williams, who settled at Taunton in Plymouth Colony^W. She was the eleventh great-grandmother of Nancy Jane Blanchard (1929–2006), through her son Richard Williams (about 1606 – before 1693).

Life

She is said to have been born in December 1583 at Cam, a village near Dursley a few miles north of Wotton-under-Edge, a daughter of John Woodward and his wife Jane. William had been married before, and had at least one child by his first wife. William and Jane were married on 4 December 1603.

Their first child, Richard, was born about 1606; Douglas Richardson’s Plantagenet Ancestry gives his baptism at Wotton-under-Edge as 28 January 1607/8^W. Jane died on 2 February 1615 (an 1897 account gives the year as 1614), while Richard was still a small boy. William died in 1618, probably on 29 September, and Richard was named in his will.

Notes

Where she is known from

Jane is known only from printed genealogies. Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd ed. (2011), vol. 1, p. 635, in the account of Frances Deighton (Dighton), calls her husband Richard Williams “son of William Williams, of Synwell (in Wotton under Edge), Gloucestershire, yeoman, by his 2nd wife, Jane Woodward”, gives Richard’s baptism at Wotton under Edge on 28 January 1607/8, and says that Richard “was a legatee in the 1618 will of his father”. Richardson cites studies of the family in The American Genealogist, vols. 9 (1932–33) and 10 (1933–34). The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 51 (April 1897), pp. 211–212, gives the marriage of William Williams and Jane Woodward on 4 December 1603, her death, “February 2, 1614”, and his “in 1618”, and calls Richard, “born in January, 1606”, the first child of the marriage; it names William’s first wife as Jane Shepherd, married in 1585, “a child of hers having been baptized December 2, 1599”. Richard’s age agrees with his own will of 5 May 1686, which calls him “aged about Eighty”.

Date of death

In the Old Style calendar the year began on 25 March, so a death in February 1614 by that reckoning is probably the same day as the 2 February 1615 used here.

Birth and parents

Her birth on 12 December 1583 at Cam, her death at Wotton-under-Edge, her parents John Woodward and Jane, and the day of William’s death, 29 September 1618, come from WikiTree. Neither Richardson nor the 1897 article names her parents.