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| Notes for John "Tub" WOODSON Jr. | ||||||||||
| Dr. John Woodson was the emigrant ancestor of this large and influential family which has produced so many worthy citizens. He came over to Virginia in the ship George in 1619, as surgeon to a company of British soldiers, and became one of the founders of the Virginia Colony. This progenitor of a distinguished family was of English origin, the name in Old England being spelled Woodeson, possibly a corruption of the Saxon name of Wodeson. The arms, as preserved in the family, indicate they belonged to the Woodesons seated in Devonshire. Dr. John Woodson was a native of Dorsetshire. He brought his wife with him to America. Her name is not known. They settled at "Fleur de Hundred," where probably their two sons, John and Robert, were born. She was a typical woman of the frontier, of heroic mold. Thrilling battles in the wilderness are related wherein she played the stellar role. One day, during an absence of her husband, assisted by one Robert Ligon (probably an ancestor of the Ligons of Lincoln county, Missouri, and Pike county, Illinois), she resisted an attack by Indians, killing nine. She loaded the gun while Ligon fired. Hearing a noise up the chimney of her cabin, she threw her bed upon the coals in the fireplace. The stifling smoke brought down two Indians. She killed both of them. Her sons, hidden in the potato hole, were saved. The two sons, John and Robert, whose lives were thus preserved, married early, and their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren married into the families of the leading colonists of the day, the Lewises, Porters, Tuckers, Cannons, Randolphs, Jeffersons, Cabells, Turpins, Venables and others. John, eldest of the two sons, married and had a son John, who married Mary, daughter of Captain Samuel Tucker, master of the ship, Pine Tree. These Tuckers, whose kin two centuries later began settling in the west, some of them in Pike county, descended from the emigrant, Andrew Tucker, who pioneered in the Massachusetts colony. - [1] According to Woodson family tradition, the two Woodson sons, John and Robert, were twelve and ten years old in 1644 when the Indian chief, Opechacanogh, led an uprising against the settlement. John Woodson, returning home after visiting a patient, was killed in sight of his house. The Indians then began attacking the cabin which was barred against them.It was defended by Sarah and Ligon, a friend who was visiting at the time. Using an old musket, Ligon managed to kill nine of the Indians. Two others attempted to enter the house by the chimney, but Sarah scalded one to death with boiling water then seized the iron roasting spit with both hands and brained the other. The boys had been hidden away: one under a wash tub and the other in a pit used for storing potatoes. For several generations descendants of these boys were called either Tub Woodsons or Potato Hole Woodsons. - [2] [1] - http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~glendasubyak/ch176.html [2] - http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~aihbt/profiles/woodson.html | ||||||||||
| Last Modified 22 Apr 2006 | Created 26 Nov 2008 using Reunion for Macintosh |