Thomas Woodbury is my 5th Great-grand uncle. He was born 9/5/1700 in Beverly, Massachusetts and died 10/3/1757 in Falmouth (now Portland), Maine. I believe this will was written shortly before his death in 1757.You start to get an idea of just how far I am digging into my family ancestry :-)
His last will and testament was the first family will document I was able to uncover. As I have said, Maine is a genealogists dream come true (I wish all my family had lived there). They have done such a thorough job of cataloging historical documents and making them available to the public. I have included a full copy of Thomas Woodbury's will. I was able to find this from searching an online Google e-book titled "Maine wills: 1640-1760 By Maine Historical Society".
If you have relatives that died in Maine in that time period, check this out.
I do recommend searching Google e-books, they can be an effective source of historical information.
In addition, Thomas Woodbury's will is witnessed by my 5th Great-grandfather, John Armstrong.
From the will you can see that Thomas Woodbury was pretty well off by the standards of the time.
Nothing like a cow to remember daddy and show your love.
