I can trace the Woodruff ancestry of Lulu (Woodruff) (Lezenby) Gilday as far as Enos Woodruff (about 1719 to 1795). I can then trace the ancestry of the wife of Enos, Sarah Wheaton, back to her immigrant ancestor, Robert Wheaton. I will begin with Robert Wheaton.

ROBERT WHEATON was born at England about 1606, and died at Rehoboth, Bristol County, Massachusetts, between 2 October 1687 and 24 February 1695/6. He married about 1640 ALICE BOWEN. She was born at Wales about 1620, a daughter of Richard Bowen by his first wife.^[1]

Robert Wheaton was in Salem, Massachusetts, by 6 January 1636/7, when he was not received as an inhabitant of the town.^[2] He married Alice Bowen about 1640, the year in which she arrived in New England with her parents and six younger siblings. It is not clear if this young Wheaton family remained at Salem or moved to Weymouth, Massachusetts, with the rest of the Bowen family.

The Town of Rehoboth was established in 1643, incorporated in 1645. It origionally consisted of a large tract of land to the west of Middleboro, Plymouth Colony, and to the east of Providence. The first settlers, most of whom came from Weymouth, included the Bowen-Wheaton family. Like other New England towns, Rehoboth had a church of the "standing order" (Congregational).

Events in England soon impacted Rehoboth. In 1660 the Commonwealth came to an end, and the Stuart kings were returned to the throne. During the Commonwealth, Puritans of all varieties - Presbyterian, Congregational and Baptist - worked together in a loosely organized Church of England. With the restoration, that cooperation ended and episcopacy was reimposed. John Miles, a Welsh Baptist pastor, had participated in the Commonwealth-era church establishment, and feared persecution with its end. So he fled to Plymouth Colony in 1662/3, settled in Rehoboth, and gathered a Baptist congregation. The Plymouth authorities believed that it was wrong to have two competing churches in the same town, so they set apart the southern part of Rehoboth as the town of Swansea, where Miles' Baptist Church was the "standing order." Robert Wheaton continued to reside in Rehoboth, however much of his family now found themselves in Swansea. Robert's son, Ephraim Wheaton, became the third pastor of the church in Swansea.

Swansea and Rehoboth were the first settlements attacked by the Wampanoags in King Phillip's War, in June of 1675. The settlements were evacuated, then restored after the war.

Robert Wheaton remembered in his will of 1687 eldest son Joseph, the children of his deceased son Samuel, sons Jeremiah, John, Obadiah, Ephraim and Benjamin, daughters Bethiah, Hannah and Mary, and wife Alice.^[3]

Robert Wheaton and his wife Alice Bowen had the following children:^[4]

1. JOSEPH² WHEATON b. at Salem, Massachusetts, about 1641; bur.. at Rehoboth on 15 September 1692.
2. SAMUEL² WHEATON b. at Salem about 1643.
3. JEREMIAH² WHEATON b. at Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, about 1645.
4. OBADIAH² WHEATON b. at Rehoboth, Plymouth Colony, on 20 January 1647/8.
5. JOHN² WHEATON b. at Rehoboth on 20 April 1650; m. ELIZABETH THURBER.
6. BETHIAH² WHEATON b. at Rehoboth on 20 May 1652; m. there on 4 September 1674 WILLIAM BLANDING.
7. HANNAH² WHEATON b. at Rehoboth on 18 September 1654; m. there on 4 September 1674 JOHN BUTTERWORTH, b. on 8 September 1651, d. on 20 March 1731.
8. MARY² WHEATON b. at Rehoboth on 4 November 1656; m. there on 3 July 1676 THOMAS MANN.
9. EPHRAIM² WHEATON b. at Rehoboth on 20 October 1659; d. there on 26 April 1734; m. there on 7 January 1684/5 MARY MASON, d. at Rehoboth on 15 November 1727.
10. BENJAMIN² WHEATON b. at Rehoboth on 28 February 1661; m. MARGARET ________.

SAMUEL² WHEATON (Robert¹) was born at Salem about 1643 a son of Robert Wheaton and his wife Alice Bowen. He died at Swansea, Bristol County, Massachusetts, on 2 February 1683/4. He married at Swansea on 5 December 1678 ELIZABETH WOOD. She was born at Rehoboth on 1658, a daughter of Thomas Wood and his first wife. She died before 21 January 1728/9. Elizabeth married second at Swansea on 26 May 1684 SAMUEL BOWEN. He was born at Rehoboth on 16 July 1659, a son of Obadiah and Mary Bowen. he died at Cohansey, Salem County, New Jersey, on 21 January 1728/9.^[5]

Samuel Wheaton was about thirty-five years old when he married at Swansea the twenty-year-old Elizabeth Wood. Elizabeth was the second of two children of Thomas Wood by his first wife. Elizabeth's mother soon died, and by the time Elizabeth was four years old, she had a step-mother. Four half-siblings soon arrived. This step mother died, and about the time Elizabeth was marrying Samuel Wheaton, her father married his third wife. Elizabeth would haver five more half-siblings, who arrived after she had married.

Within five years of their marriage, Samuel Wheaton died, leaving Elizabeth with three children, ages 4, 2, and six months. Three months later, Elizabth married Samuel Bowen, a cousin of her late husband (both grandchildren of Richard Bowen).

Samuel and Elizabeth (Wood) (Wheaton) Bowen had at least eight children. The first four were born in Rehoboth. The next two were born in Bristol, a town created from the territory of the former Wampanoag principal town. At the time, Bristol was part of Massachusetts (since 1747 it has been part of Rhode Island). The birth dates and places of their last two children are not recorded, but they were probably born in New Jersey.

About 1687 some Baptists from Swansea began settling in the Cohansey Precinct of Salem County (now Cumberland County), West [New] Jersey. Samuel Bowen was associate3 pastor of this new Baptist Church. Samuel and Elizabeth Bowen probably arrived n 1687, certainly before 1701.^[6] Two of Elizabeth's sons by her first marriage, ages 8 and 6 in 1687, probably accompanied them. Her third son by Samuel Wheaton, age 4 in 1687, later lived in Swansea.

Samuel Wheaton and his wife Elizabeth Wood had the following children:^[7]

1. JONATHAN³ WHEATON b. at Swansea on 3 May 1679; d. at New Jersey before 23 October 1713 (probate).
2. NOAH³ WHEATON b. at Swansea on 2 July 1681.
3. SAMUEL³ WHEATON b. at Swansea on 21 July 1683; m. there on 24 October 1709 EXPERIENCE PIERCE.

Elizabeth Wood and her second husband Samuel Bowen had the following children:^[8]

4. SAMUEL BOWEN b. at Rehoboth on 1 January 1687/8; d. at Cohansey, Salem County, New Jersey, before 1 May 1728 (inventory of estate).
5. DAN BOWEN b. at Rehoboth on 1 August 1690; d. at Cohansey before 27 February 1728/9 (inventory of estate); m. MARY ________.
6. ELIJAH BOWEN b. at Rehoboth on 4 August 1695. [This must be in error, as it to too close to the birth of the next child].
7. JOANNA BOWEN b. at Rehoboth on 1 December 1696, d. before 1728 (not mentioned in father's will).
8. MARY BOWEN b. at Bristol, Bristol County, Massachusetts, on 9 February 1698 ; m. ________ PERRY.
9. CLIFTON BOWEN b. at Bristol on 12 February 1700/1.
10. JOHN BOWEN.
11. ELIZABETH BOWEN m. ________ FOGG.

NOAH³ WHEATON (Samuel², Robert¹) was born at Swansea on 2 July 1681 a son of Samuel Wheaton and his wife Elizabeth Wood. He died at Cohansey before 14 April 1716 (inventory of estate). He married SARAH ________, who died after 1715 (mentioned in husband's will).^[9]

The second of three sons, Noah was two years old when his father died and his mother remarried. Born in Swansea, he grew up in Rehoboth in the ever-expanding Samuel Bowen family. In 1703, at the age of 21 or 22, he moved to Cohansey.^[10]

Noah married, had three children, and worked as a blacksmith at Cohansey. He died at the age of 34. His will, written in 1715, mentions his wife Sarah and children Isaac, Noah and Sarah. His estate included land in both New Jersey and New England and one African-American slave.^[11]

Noah and Sarah Wheaton had the following children, all mentioned in his will, therefore born before 20 December 1715:^[12]

1. ISAAC⁴ WHEATON.
2. NOAH⁴ WHEATON.
3. SARAH⁴ WHEATON.

¹Richard LeBaron Bowen Jr., "The Ancestry, Wives, and Children of Richard Bowen of Weymouth and Rehoboth, Massachusetts," The American Genealogist, 76 (2001): 272-73,276.
²Bowen, "The Ancestry, Wives, and Children of Richard Bowen of Weymouth and Rehoboth, Massachusetts," 271.
³Rounds H. L. Peter, editor, Abstracts of Bristol County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, 1687-1745 (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1987), v. 2, p. 22.
⁴Bowen, "The Ancestry, Wives, and Children of Richard Bowen of Weymouth and Rehoboth, Massachusetts," 272-73. Abstracts of Bristol County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, 1687-1745, v. 2, p. 22. James N. Arnold ed., Vital Record of Rehoboth, 1642-1896 (Providence, Providence County, Rhode Island: Narragansett Historical Publishing Co., 1897), pp. 384,768,886. Gene Zubrinski, "Corrections to Genealogies in Print: Wheaton," NEXUS: New England Across the United States, 14 (1997): 121. J. O. Austin, "Three Generations of the Butterworth Family," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 41 (1887): 192-3.
⁵Bowen, "The Ancestry, Wives, and Children of Richard Bowen of Weymouth and Rehoboth, Massachusetts," 273. Zubrinski, "Corrections to Genealogies in Print," 121. H. L. Peter Rounds, Vital Records of Swansea, Massachusetts: to 1850 (Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1992), pp. 24-25,410. Cohansey Baptist Church Cemetery, Roadstown, Stow Creek Township, Cumberland County, New Jersey, Find a Grave, (findagrave.com : database 21 July 2020), Elizabeth Wood Wheaton Bowen; Created by: Our Family History. Arnold, Vital Record of Rehoboth, 1642-1896, p. 545. William B. Saxbe Jr., "Thomas Clifton's Daughters: Proven, Probable, and Proposed," New England Historic Genealogical Register, 172 (2018): 13.
⁶Bertha W. Clark, John Wood of Rhode Island: and His Early Descendants on the Mainland (Crete, Illinois: Books on Demand, 1966), p. 40.
⁷Zubrinski, "Corrections to Genealogies in Print," 121. Rounds, Vital Records of Swansea, Massachusetts, pp. 18,203. New Jersey State Archives, New Jersey, Abstract of Wills, 1670-1817, New Jersey, Published Archives Series, First Series, 23, 30, 32-42 (Trenton, NJ: John L Murphy Publishing Company, n.d.), 23:501.
⁸Arnold, Vital Record of Rehoboth, 1642-1896, p. 545. New Jersey, Abstract of Wills, 1670-1817, 23:48. James N. Arnold, Vital Record of Rhode Island 1636-1850 (Providence, Rhode Island: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1891), v. 6, pt. 1 (Bristol), p. 65.
⁹Zubrinski, "Corrections to Genealogies in Print," 121. Rounds, Vital Records of Swansea, Massachusetts, p. 15. New Jersey, Abstract of Wills, 1670-1817, 23:501.
¹⁰Zubrinski, "Corrections to Genealogies in Print," 121.
¹¹New Jersey, Abstract of Wills, 1670-1817, 23:501.
¹²New Jersey, Abstract of Wills, 1670-1817, 23:501.

Arnold, James N. ed. Vital Record of Rehoboth, 1642-1896. Providence, Providence County, Rhode Island: Narragansett Historical Publishing Co., 1897.

________, ed. Vital Record of Rhode Island 1636-1850. Providence, Rhode Island: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1891.

Austin, J. O. "Three Generations of the Butterworth Family." New England Historical and Genealogical Register 41 (1887): 191-94.

Bowen, Richard LeBaron Jr. "The Ancestry, Wives, and Children of Richard Bowen of Weymouth and Rehoboth, Massachusetts." The American Genealogist 76 (2001): 263-78.

Clark, Bertha W. John Wood of Rhode Island: and His Early Descendants on the Mainland. Crete, Illinois: Books on Demand, 1966.

New Jersey State Archives. New Jersey, Abstract of Wills, 1670-1817. New Jersey, Published Archives Series, First Series, 23, 30, 32-42. Trenton, NJ: John L Murphy Publishing Company, n.d.

Rounds H. L. Peter, editor. Abstracts of Bristol County, Massachusetts, Probate Records, 1687-1745. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1987.

________. Vital Records of Swansea, Massachusetts: to 1850. Boston, Massachusetts: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1992.

Saxbe, William B. Jr. "Thomas Clifton's Daughters: Proven, Probable, and Proposed." New England Historic Genealogical Register 172 (2018): 5-14.

Zubrinski, Gene. "Corrections to Genealogies in Print: Wheaton." NEXUS: New England Across the United States 14 (1997): 121.