John Adams wrote, “Posterity! you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it.”
Our goal is to ensure that the sacrifices of our patriot ancestors are never forgotten. By remembering what they did, and recalling why they did it, we can understand and appreciate our founding documents all the more. We also begin to understand our obligations to protect and defend what they gave us. We have an obligation to, as President Ronald Reagan stated, “preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children’s children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done.”
Below are the stories, as far as they are known, of the ancestors of the members of the Thomas Jefferson Chapter who sacrificed to create the United States of America. They risked all so that we might be free. We honor their memories.
The Woodson family comes from England. The immigrant ancestor was Dr. John Woodson of Devonshire, who came to Jamestown on the George in April 1619. He was a surgeon with a company of soldiers sent to defend the colony against Indian attacks.
John Woodson was born about 1730 in Goochland County, Virginia, the son of Josiah Woodson and Mary Royall. John Woodson married Dorothea Randolph, the daughter of Colonel Isham Randolph of Dungeness, on October 1751. They had twelve children:
Amos Woodworth was born on May 4, 1741 in Salisbury, Litchfield, Connecticut. He was the son of Jane Munger (1705-1774) and Caleb Woodworth (1704-1780). On April 12, 1764, he married Eunice Newland (1748-1820) in Salisbury, Connecticut. Eunice was the daughter of Abigail Babbit and Joseph Newland.
Amos served as a private in the Revolutionary War under his brother, Captain Ephraim Woodworth, Colonel Cornelius Van Veghten's 4th Company, 13th Regiment, Albany County, New York. He took part in the capture of Burgoyne at Saratoga in the Battle of Bemis Heights.
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