♀Rebecca Newell

Rebecca Newell (born about 1643) was a woman of Farmington in the Connecticut Colony^W, a daughter of Thomas Newell and the wife of Joseph Woodford (died 1710). She was the seventh great-grandmother of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through her daughter Elizabeth Woodford (1682–1739).

Her father’s estate

Thomas Newell of Farmington died “without any Will” in 1689, and the inventory of his estate was taken on 7 November 1689. The probate record lists his children with their ages, among them “Rebeckah Woodford 46”, which places her birth about 1643. She was baptized at Farmington in January 1657, and the church record abstract names her father, Thomas Newell. She was the oldest of eight living children: John, Thomas and Samuel Newell, and her sisters Mary Bascom, Hester Stanly, Sarah Smith and Hannah North. A ninth child, Joseph, made his will that same month and died before the inventory of his own estate was taken. The account of what each child had received from their father before his death shows £30 paid to her, against £65 for her brother Thomas and £40 each for Mary and Sarah.

In the heirs’ agreement of 8 November 1689, her widowed mother, Rebeckah Newell, and the children set aside a share of the movable estate, to be paid before any other division, for a granddaughter, also named Rebeckah Woodford, who “hath lived several years with her gr. Father & Mother”; she was most likely Rebecca’s own daughter of that name. Her brother Joseph Newell, who made his will on 2 November 1689, left his house and lot to their brother John on condition that John pay 20 shillings apiece to “his five sisters”, Rebeckah first among those named, and he left his cloth coat to her husband. Her brother Samuel remained close to the household: when Joseph Woodford made his will in 1701 he asked “my brother Samuel Newell” to oversee it, and Samuel helped take the inventory of his estate in 1710.

A 1909 family history of Maine gives her mother’s maiden name as Olmstead; it has not been found in a record. An online tree gives Rebecca’s death as 9 May 1711 at Farmington, but the Farmington town book records that date as the death of an infant granddaughter, Rebeckah, daughter of Joseph Woodford; when Rebecca herself died is not known.

Family

Joseph Woodford married Rebecca Newell, a daughter of Thomas Newell of Farmington. Joseph Woodford’s will of 1701 names nine children: eight daughters and a son, Joseph. Elizabeth, through whom the line runs, is the daughter he left £30, and she married Nathaniel Cole at Farmington on 11 June 1707; James Savage’s genealogical dictionary is the source that lists these children as Rebecca’s. The Farmington town records give a marriage for eight of the nine between 1693 and 1710. Two of the daughters were married on the same day: the Farmington town records list the marriages of Rebeckah Woodford to John Porter and of Esther Woodford to Samuel Bird, both on 2 January 1695/6.