William was born 28 May 1788 in Spencer, Worcester County, Massachusetts to Noah and Elizabeth Jackson Woodard. Noah served in the Revolutionary War as a fifer. He accompanied eighteen soldiers on a five-day march on an alarm to the Northward at Hadley and was discharged from service 23 Aug 1777. Son William volunteered at Hague, Warren County, New York, to serve as a private in Captain Uriah Balcom’s 23rd Regiment of New York Militia. He participated in the invasion of Plattsburgh 9 Sep 1814 and was discharged less than a week later. William married Jane Ackerman 20 Feb 1819. William is enumerated on the 1820 census in Warren County, New York, village of Hague on Lake George in eastern upstate New York.
In family records, William is referred to as “Uncle Billy” and is mentioned in the History of Hague as holding road commission offices. Following the death of his wife, he sold his property in Hague in the mid-l850s and migrated westward with his adult children, settling in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
According to military service files archived at the National Records Administration in Washington, DC, affidavits provide additional information on his service in the War of 1812:
Dane County, Wisconsin, 20 Jul 1855
“…on the 8th day of September 1814…the company to which Woodard belonged was ordered to rendezvous at Warrensborough in the county of Warren and proceed to Platsborough in the State of New York…under the command of Captain Uriah Balcom and Colonel William Cook…and remained in the service of the United States until the 24th day of September 1814…about seventeen days and was honorably discharged. He makes this declaration for the purpose of obtaining the bounty land to which he may be entitled approved March Third 1855…sworn before Justice of the Peace, George M. Gere, 5 Jan 1856, Chatfield, Fillmore County, Minnesota Territory.”
This affidavit of William Woodard was filed for renewal of an original land warrant of 160 acres that had been lost in the mails:
“William Woodard, being sworn that in the year 1855 he applied for a land warrant to the department at Washington and that in pursuance of law land warrant # 54.858 for 160 acres was issued to him as he has been informed and believes was sent to his address, Carimona Post office in said county by mistake…that a letter came to the Carimona Post Office, in the year 1855 as he has been informed by the Post Master at Carimona and returned to the Dead Letter Office at Washington…that he never received said letter or the warrant and that he has never sold, assigned nor voluntarily parted with his right to the warrant in question…that in the first application made for a land warrant the papers were sent from Carimona Post Office because there were no regular mails from and to the town of Chatfield near where he resides and that he never has received any letters from the Carimona Post Office and never goes there for his mail and there were no directions given in the first papers sent to Washington to have his letter directed to Chatfield. He resides about 15 miles from the Carimona Post Office and within three miles of the town of Chatfield and he wishes another warrant issued to him in place of the first issue.”
Signed, WilliamWoodard and subscribed and sworn on 30 Aug 1858 before H. D. Bristol, Notary Public
After submitting a series of such affidavits which were duly published in the Chatfield Democrat, a military land warrant for 160 acres was at last issued to William in section 17 of Chatfield Township on 10 Dec 1862. While the wheels of bureaucracy ran slowly, William had died 26 May 1861. A Petition for Letters of Administration, in the State of Minnesota, County of Fillmore, by son Orrin Woodard on September 6, 1861, after William’s death stated that he died intestate. William lies buried in Chatfield Cemetery under a marble marker long since separated from its base and cemented into the ground.
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