What this is. Not one person but a thread: the men of these families who went to sea, from the Isles of Shoals in the 1700s to a Kittery sailmaker's son in the 1800s. Voudys, Varrells, Bookers and Dudleys all appear.
Why it matters. For most of them the only surviving physical description — height, complexion, hair — is on a crew list, a form a customs officer filled in before a voyage in case a man deserted or drowned. It is the closest thing to a photograph this family has of anyone before 1840.
On the tenth of December 1824 a customs officer at York named Thomas Savage took down the crew of the schooner Alert, bound for Martinique. He wanted the same six things about every man: his name, where he was born, where he lived, whose subject he was, his age — and then, because a sworn crew list was also a description in case a man deserted or drowned, his height, his complexion, and the colour of his hair.
Fifth on the list he wrote: Elias Vondy, born York, resident York, eighteen years, four feet eight inches, light complexion.
Four feet eight. He was a boy, and he was going to the West Indies in December.
This is a story about a family that went to sea for the better part of two hundred years. Almost everything we know about them survives for one reason: the sea required paperwork. The church did not write these men down. The customs house did.
Before the names start arriving, it is worth knowing whose they are.
Everything here hangs on one woman — Lydia Jane Voudy, born about May 1819; died at Lynn, Massachusetts on 24 September 1894, at her daughter's house, and carried home to be buried at Orchard Grove in Kittery.
Her daughter was Mary Catherine Dudley, who married Edward Alfred Henry Schmidt at York on 28 August 1861. Their son was William Edward Schmidt, and his son was Kenneth Oswald Schmidt. That is the road down to us, and it is documented at every step.
The road up from Lydia Jane is the sea.
She married John H. Dudley of Kittery, a mariner. Behind her stand the Voudys — her father William Voudy, a mariner; his father Edward Voudy, of the Isles of Shoals; his father Matthew. Beside them the Varrells, the Sadlers, the Bookers, the Moores and the Ellingwoods, all of them within a few miles of York River.
Two honest cautions, said once and then left alone. No document yet found actually states that Lydia Jane was William Voudy's daughter — it rests on town, generation and the family's own memory, and it is the joint everything above her hangs from. The same is true of Dorcas Booker as a daughter of Aaron Booker. Both are almost certainly right. Neither is proved, and this family does not pretend otherwise.
The Voudys did not begin at York. They began nine miles out to sea.
Edward Voudy was baptised at the Isles of Shoals on 7 January 1738/39, son of Matthew Voudey. He married Sarah Varrell — herself baptised out there in 1740 — on the first of December 1760. The Varrells and the Voudys effectively ran the little island town of Gosport on Star Island: Edward was a selectman, and on the eleventh of March 1775 the town meeting appointed him sealer of wood, an office about honest measure in a place where every stick had to be brought in by boat.
That was five weeks before Lexington. Within the year the Isles of Shoals were evacuated, the congregation scattered, and the minister's register — which had faithfully recorded every one of this family's baptisms since 1729 — simply stopped.
William Voudy, Lydia Jane's father, was born into that gap, about 1778. There is no record of his birth. We have searched the York town book under eight spellings and it is not there, and it never was: he was born to a refugee family in the years after an evacuation, when the institution that would have written him down no longer existed.
The family came ashore. They did not leave the water.
Read the York and Kittery deeds in order and the same word keeps arriving after the men's names, the way a trade follows a surname.
William Booker of York, fisherman, selling in December 1760 the whole of the island “on which I now dwell” off the mouth of York Harbour — about eight acres of land and marsh with the buildings — his wife Dorcas signing by mark. ⭐ Read at the master: the signature block is “DORCAS [her mark] BOOKER (Seal)”, the word “mark” written above it. (He had sold land at York thirteen years before that too, in July 1747, though the earlier deed gives him no trade at all.) Solomon Varrell of York, mariner, selling to John Voudy of York, mariner, for a hundred and sixty dollars in 1799. Edward Voudy of York, mariner, conveying to his son William Voudy of York, mariner, for a hundred and forty in 1803.
Down at Kittery it is the same. Moses Amee, mariner (1846). Samuel Amee of Kittery, mariner (1829). James R. Amee of Kittery, mariner (1865).
And William P. Amee, who is the interesting one, because the clerks could not settle on him. In 1816 he buys a house lot as a mariner. In December 1838 he conveys to his son Moses as a yeoman — and on the very same page, in the companion deed, he is a seaman. Three stylings across twenty-two years, two of them on one leaf. Either the words were looser than we assume, or we are watching a man come ashore.
There is exactly one settled farmer in the row. Aaron Booker of York, yeoman, who in 1817 mortgaged his whole nine-acre farm to William Voudy of York, mariner — who had married Dorcas Booker fourteen years earlier, and is his son-in-law on the strongest reading this archive has rather than on any document that says so.
These were not romantic voyages. A mariner in a York deed is a working man who has managed to buy a house lot, and the deeds are mostly the record of him buying it, mortgaging it, or losing it.
On the third of September 1803 the American brig Narcissa was boarded in the West Indies by an armed sloop from the British brig Drake, then lying at Antigua. The boarding party took one man off her: Joseph Ellingwood of York, mariner.
Ellingwood is a family name here — Anne Ellingwood married Aaron Booker at York in February 1779 — but no document says how Joseph stood to her, and he is not attached to her in this project. He is here because he was a York mariner and because what happened to him happened to men of this trade.
Impressment was ordinary. Losing a hand to the Royal Navy was a cost of the trade and most masters sailed on. Nathaniel Derby of Portsmouth, master of the Narcissa, did not. He swore a protest before a justice of the peace at York that December, and his own words are still in the book:
I interceded for his release, and it was refused. I therefore on my arrival made report to the Collector of York concerning his impressment.
It did not stop at York. On 26 September 1803 Joseph Tucker wrote to the Secretary of State of the United States — James Madison — asking him to secure the discharge of Joseph Ellingwood, impressed from the brig Narcissa and taken aboard the British brig Drake; and Madison's office answered that a sworn affidavit would be forwarded to the American agent in Jamaica.
Then the record stops. No discharge, no reply, nothing further. For a great many impressed American seamen that silence is the end of the story.
Not this one. On the first of November 1805, two years and two months after the Drake took him, the York town clerk wrote: Joseph Ellenwood and Rebecca Kerswell both of York intend marriage.
He was home. And he went back to sea: the Court of Common Pleas is still styling him Joseph Ellenwood of York, mariner in 1809 and again in 1812.
Two honest limits on that paragraph. The town book records the intention to marry, not the marriage — the solemnisation is not in that volume, so we know he came home and meant to marry, not that he did. And the 1809 and 1812 court entries are known from search snippets; neither leaf has been opened, so the plaintiffs and the sums are still unread.
Some men appear once. Abraham Booker of York, mariner appears twice, eight years apart, and the two sheets agree with each other.
In February 1816 he shipped aboard the brig Victory out of Portsmouth for Bermuda "or elsewhere, and back to the United States": aged thirty-two, five feet nine, brown complexion, brown hair. In December 1824 he was on the Alert with young Elias: aged forty-one, five feet nine, dark, dark. Two sworn federal returns, taken by different officers eight years apart, independently putting his birth about 1783 and both his birthplace and his home at York.
The land records tell what the crew lists cannot. In September 1812 he bought an acre at the easterly end of Sewall's Bridge for seventy dollars. Thirty-two months later a Portsmouth merchant took him to court for a debt of forty-three dollars, and the officers came and levied on the property — one acre, and the north-easterly half of the house, divided from the middle of the chimney. The return notes, in the flat language of an execution, that the said Abraham Booker refusing to choose any person: a man declining to nominate one of the three appraisers who would put a value on his own home.
And it could have gone worse than losing half a house. The creditor was Jacob Cutter of Portsmouth, merchant; the judgment was forty-three dollars and thirty-two cents damage plus eleven dollars and eighty-one cents costs, fifty-five dollars and thirteen cents in all. The writ carried a capias — the sheriff was commanded to "take the body of the said Booker and commit unto our gaol in York or Alfred… until he pay the full sums." He was one officer's decision away from debtors' prison over fifty-five dollars.
He recovered. He was still at it forty years later, selling a house lot at Sewall's Bridge in 1852 for a hundred and fifty dollars, still Abraham Booker of York, mariner, at nearly seventy — and on that deed he wrote his own name, where Aaron Booker a generation before him had made a cross.
He had a family too. A deed of 1862 recites, in his son's own statement of title, that half the property descended to me as heir at law of the said Abraham Booker, my father and half was bought from my sister, Elizabeth. So: Alvin Booker and Elizabeth Booker, named in a recorded instrument.
How Abraham stands to Dorcas Booker, born about the same time in the same small town, is still not known.
The Alert of York ran to the West Indies — Martinique, St Bartholomew, St Domingo — and her crew lists survive across the 1820s like a series of photographs of the same street corner.
In December 1825 the master crossed out "Martinique" on the face of the form and wrote "St Domingo" above it, because plans changed. The fifth hand on that voyage was William Vondy Junior, born York, seventeen years, four feet ten inches, dark complexion, brown hair — a proved son of William Voudy and Dorcas Booker, and so Lydia Jane's brother.
Three years later, in December 1828, a William Vondy is rated mate of the same schooner. The sheet does not say which one, because officers were not given ages. The clerk who wrote "Junr" in 1825 did not write it in 1828, which is the best reason to think the mate was the father — about fifty, a mariner in his deeds since 1803, and by then the senior man aboard among his own kin.
And in November 1826 the Alert cleared York under John Perkins with six men. When she came home the deputy inspector had to write his certificate carefully, and it is the hardest sentence in any of these papers:
All the above named have returned in said Schooner Alert except Daniel Philbrook Jr who deserted I left him, & William Caswell Jr who died in the island of Martinique.
William Caswell Junior was sixteen years old, five feet three inches, light complexion, brown hair. He is on the outward list in the same ink as everybody else.
Almost every man in this story worked someone else's boat. One of them owned part of one.
On the eighth of August 1842 George Voudy of York mortgaged one fourth part of the schooner William of York, her tackle, apparel and furniture, and fishing gear, as now lies in York harbour — to Rufus Varrell Junior of York, merchant — for seventy-five dollars, to be repaid in seven months.
Read that twice. A Voudy owned a quarter of a fishing schooner; a Varrell had the money to lend against it; and the whole of it — hull, rigging, nets — was worth putting behind a note of seventy-five dollars. That is the trade at its highest point in this family: not a berth, but a share.
How George Voudy stands to the rest of them is not established. He is an adult vessel-owner in 1842, so born before about 1821, and he was new to this project when the deed was found.
In September 1829 a Portsmouth shipbuilder named George Raynes launched a schooner of sixty-eight tons called the Pacific, held in a hundred and twenty shares of fifty dollars each. She was bound for the Cape Verde Islands and from there to the island of South Georgia, in the far South Atlantic, on a sealing voyage.
Fourteen men went. The memorandum book kept aboard names them all, and sixth in the list is John Dudley.
On the inside cover somebody ruled two watch lists and headed one column, simply, Born. Against the men of the larboard watch, in a clear hand:
John Dudley ..... June 15. 1806.
That is more than the whole of official Maine ever gave him. The vessel's owners were Pray & Neal of Portsmouth, and their ledger survives at the Portsmouth Athenaeum, and on 4 September 2026 it was read. Folio 67 of MS132 volume VI is headed Men on Board the Sch.r Pacific and carries one ruled account to each of ten crewmen, John Dudley's among them. His obituary, fifty-two years later, says he was the last survivor but one of the crew of the Pacific, which made the only sealing voyage to the South Atlantic ever undertaken by a Portsmouth vessel, and that she was gone two years.
He came home from the bottom of the world, married Lydia Jane Voudy, and settled at Kittery. Their daughter Mary Catherine was born in 1840.
This is the hinge of the whole story. The sealer married the mariner's daughter, and every strand above — the islands, the Varrells, the Bookers, the boys on the Alert — comes together in their household and then comes down to us.
Solomon Varrell of York, mariner — the Varrells being the family Sarah Varrell came from, who was William Voudy's mother — wrote his will on the twenty-fourth of June 1819, and he was honest about why:
I Solomon Varrell of York … Mariner, being submissive to the will of God under a painful & most distressing complaint which may terminate my life, do make this my last will & testament.
He left everything to his wife Mary, "that in the event of my leaving her, she may the better provide for her own & our childrens wants." Then he named the children — Polly, John, Sally, Abigail, Susanna, Rachel, Eliza, William, George — and left each of them one dollar, to be paid by their mother when they asked for it. He was dead by December.
The trade itself ran out more slowly, the way trades do. William Voudy Junior — the seventeen-year-old on the Alert, four feet ten, brown hair — turns up in the census of 1870 aged sixty-three, described as a fisherman.
He was not alone in the house, and that is the part worth seeing. With him were his wife Mercy, fifty-five, keeping house; Anna, twenty-three, who works in factory; Charles, seventeen; and Edward, fifteen, at school. Five of them, in half a dwelling shared with another family — and where that family's columns show sixteen hundred dollars of real estate and a hundred and fifty of personal property, the Voudy columns are both blank.
A fisherman of sixty-three who owned nothing, with a daughter in a mill and a boy still in school. His father had conveyed the nine acres away in 1848 — though the deed was not put on record until 1868.
He died at York on the twenty-fifth of May 1892, eighty-four years and four months old. Mercy — Mercy Bragdon, born 1815 — died the same year, and they lie together at York under one inscription. The clerk filled in the form. Place of birth, York. Occupation, sailor. Father, William Voudy — occupation, sailor. Mother, Dorcas Booker.
Two lines, one above the other in the same column: the trade written down twice on the day the last of them stopped.
By then his sister's daughter Mary Catherine had been thirty-one years married to a German immigrant named Schmidt, and the family's next hundred years would be spent on land.
Everything above is taken from documents read at the original image. Nothing here rests on family tradition or a published compilation.
Crew lists and shipping papers (National Archives at Boston, Portsmouth district) — the schooner Alert of York in 1824, 1825, 1826, 1828 and 1829; the brig Victory of Portsmouth, 1816; the brig Brutus, 1827; the schooner Polly & Sally, 1836; fishing articles for the schooner Lark, 1835. Register rows M-14 to M-24.
The schooner Pacific memorandum book, 1829–1831, read at 400 dpi — the crew, the watch lists and the birth date. M-12, with the obituary at N-01 and the owners at M-13.
The vessel share — George Voudy to Rufus Varrell Jr, one fourth of the schooner William, 8 August 1842. M-26. William P. Amee of Kittery, seaman, 29 December 1838. G-20.
The Isles of Shoals — the Gosport town records and Rev. John Tucke's church register, 1729–1774; the town meeting of 11 March 1775. V-55, V-57, V-58, V-59, V-60, V-271.
Deeds of York and Kittery, read at the image — William Booker 1747 and 1760 (D-98, D-24); Solomon Varrell to John Voudy 1799 (D-05, D-60); Edward Voudy to his son 1803 (D-06, D-62); William Voudy's recital of his mother and grandmother 1816 (D-07); Aaron Booker's mortgage 1817 (D-146) and the farm sold on in 1848 (D-29); and the Kittery Amees — William P. 1816 and 1838 (D-74, D-73, G-20), Samuel 1829 (D-86, G-14), Moses 1846 (D-67), James R. 1865 (D-85).
Abraham Booker's own papers — the acre bought for seventy dollars, 17 September 1812 (D-143); the execution, the capias and the levy of 13 May 1815 (D-151); the purchase from Joseph P. Junkins (D-142); the sale to Alexander Dennett, 21 May 1852, signed in his own hand (D-152); and his son Alvin's deed of 28 April 1862 naming him as father (D-141).
The impressment of Joseph Ellingwood — Nathaniel Derby's sworn protest in a York justice's record book of 1797–1804 (V-365); Joseph Tucker's letter to James Madison of 26 September 1803 (V-366); the marriage intention of 1 November 1805 (V-141); the Common Pleas actions of 1809 and 1812 (V-364).
⚠ Read the qualifications on these. The York protest survives as a search snippet with its OCR damage; the name of the American brig, the 3 September date and the Jamaica destination come from the editors' abstract in the Madison Papers, and the underlying Tucker letter is itself recorded there as not found. The 1809 and 1812 court leaves are unopened. Nothing here connects Joseph Ellingwood to Anne Ellingwood except the surname and the town, and this project does not claim it.
Solomon Varrell's will, 24 June 1819, read at the image. PR-SOLOMONWILL.
William Voudy Junior — the 1870 census of York with the whole household, read at the image (C-37); the death certificate of 1892 naming both his parents (V-52); and the York gravestones of William Voudy 1808–1892 and Mercy Bragdon his wife 1815–1892 (V-118).
Lydia Jane's death at Lynn, 24 September 1894, with the funeral notice. V-34, N-03.
The Schmidt–Dudley marriage, York, 28 August 1861, read at the image three times. V-11.
But the birthplace half of that block is not empty. It reads “Me.” and “Me.” — both of them. So the informant knew where her mother and father were born, and said so, and could not name them. That excludes any parentage from outside Maine. It fits William Voudy and Dorcas Booker of York exactly, and it fits a great many other people just as well. It is corroboration of place, not an identification, and this document will never give a name. V-34, V-68, V-69, V-70, X-LINEAGE-AUDIT.
- Dorcas Booker's parentage. The same: no document states that she was Aaron Booker's daughter. The case is proximity and dealing. The Booker, Moore and Ellingwood ancestry all hangs from it.
- Elias Vondy of the crew lists is not claimed as a relative. He may be a son of the Elias Voudy baptised at the Isles in 1772, which would make him Lydia Jane's first cousin. Four different men named Elias Voudy are now on file and they must not be merged. X-ELIAS.
- Which William Voudy was mate of the Alert in 1826 and 1828 is a strong inference, not a statement.
- George Voudy's place in the family is not established. He owned a quarter of a York schooner in 1842 and was unknown to this project before that deed was read.
- The Pray & Neal ledger at the Portsmouth Athenaeum has now been read — five leaves of MS132 volume VI, 4 September 2026 — and folio 67 carries John Dudley's own account. What remains unread are the two continuations the ledger itself points to: Morris Ham's By Carried to Page 146 and James Brown's By Transferred to folio 214. M-04, M-13, M-27, M-28, M-29, M-30, M-31.
- The two Solomon Varrells are now definitively separated. Our Solomon was baptised at the Isles of Shoals on 10 April 1757, son of John Varrel and Rachel Sadler — so he cannot be the Solomon Varrell of Rye who bought land at Braveboat Harbour in January 1755, two years before he was born. The 1755 man is an older Varrell, unidentified, and very likely the one ours was named for. Which of them wrote the 1819 will is therefore no longer in doubt on grounds of age — our Solomon would have been sixty-two — but the will itself names no parents, so it is not formally tied. X-2SOLOMONS, X-2SOLOMONS-RESOLVED, V-56, D-63.
- Abraham Booker's kinship to Dorcas Booker is unknown, and the mariner born about 1783 must not be merged with the Abraham Booker born in 1742.
- William Voudy senior's birth was never recorded and probably never can be. X-VOUDYBIRTHGAP.
- Elias Vondy is recorded as four feet eight at eighteen and four feet six at twenty-three. One of the two clerks was careless; we do not know which.
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