001
Direct Line
Mathew Voudy & Lydia
Mathew: b. 1705, Isles of Shoals
The earliest Voudy ancestor currently in the pedigree database — a Huguenot-descended
family on the Isles of Shoals, the island fishing settlement off York and Kittery where the
Voudy, Varrell, Booker, Ellingwood, and Sadler families all have roots. The surname is a
research challenge in its own right: records spell it almost every way a clerk could hear it
— Voudy, Voudey, Vowdy, Vowdey, Vondy, Vodery, Voodry, Vaudy — and the full-text
search that finally reopened this line only returned results under the “Vondy”
spelling. No death date is yet recorded for Mathew, and neither his own origins nor his wife
Lydia’s are traced further back; the line is a documented wall at this generation.
002
Direct Line
Edward Voudy & Sarah Varrell
Edward: 7 Jan 1738 – abt 24 Apr 1819
Sarah: 14 Sep 1740 – 29 Dec 1811
Mathew and Lydia’s son Edward married Sarah (“Sally”) Varrell, daughter of
John Varrel and Rachel Sadler of the Isles of Shoals — her own family is covered on the
Varrell Line. Their marriage is recorded at the Isles
themselves: “Dec’r 1st 1760. Edward Voudey & Sarah Varrell were Joyned in
Marriage” (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 66, p. 146). Edward is
styled a fisherman in an 1798 deed of gift from Sarah’s widowed mother, and a York
overseers-of-the-poor disbursement from 1812 shows him paid for “coffathing” —
coffin-making and laying-out — suggesting he also did carpentry and informal undertaking
work in the community. On 10 May 1803 he conveyed land to their son William, with Sarah joining
the deed to release her dower right. Edward died at York on 24 April 1819, per the First Parish
necrology; Sarah had died eight years earlier, on 29 December 1811.
Polly/Mary (Voudy) Stover
b. 1761
Rachel (Voudy) Tomas
b. 1766
Lydia (Voudy) Crawford
dates not yet on file
003
Tier: Open
William Voudy & Dorcas Booker
William: b. abt 1778
m. intention 6 Oct 1803, York, Maine
Edward and Sarah’s son William married Dorcas Booker — daughter of Aaron Booker,
whose own line is covered on the Booker Line (which itself flags
an unproven link one generation further up). The marriage itself is solidly documented: the York
town clerk’s record reads “William Voudy and Dorcas Booker both of York intend
marriage entered Octo. 6th 1803,” confirmed against two independently produced published
transcripts — 1934 and 1962 — that agree word for word. William and Dorcas
nonetheless both carry an “open” tier in the pedigree database, not because the
marriage is in doubt, but because William’s own identification as Edward and Sarah’s
son (the dashed link above) is not yet fully settled, separate from the Booker page’s own
flagged link to Dorcas’s parentage. William is independently documented as a mariner —
called so in his own deeds, and consistent with crew-list entries for a “William
Vondy” of York serving as mate of the schooner Alert in 1826 and 1828. In an 1816
deed he named his own grandmother and mother outright: the land, he wrote, was “purchased
by my grandmother Rachel Varrill… and left me by will of my mother Sally Voudy,”
closing the Voudy–Varrell–Sadler chain in the family’s own words, not a
researcher’s reconstruction.
Rachael (Voudy) Trafton
1826–1916 · m. Timothy Trafton · her 1916 death record names Wm. Voudy & Dorcas Booker as parents
William Voudy Jr.
1808–1892 · sailor · his 1892 death record also names Wm. Voudy & Dorcas Booker as parents (sibling status marked uncertain in the pedigree)
Paulina M. (Voudy) Whittier
d. 1853
George & Elias Voudy
named as brothers in sworn 1835 court testimony — not yet reconciled with the pedigree’s own sibling list
004
Direct Line
Lydia Jane Voudy
b. 1819 – d. 24 Sep 1894
m. John H. Dudley
William and Dorcas’s daughter, Lydia Jane, married John H. Dudley — their daughter
Mary Catherine Dudley married into the Schmidt family. Lydia Jane died at Lynn, Massachusetts, on
24 September 1894; full detail on her marriage and life, including the Massachusetts death
return, is on the Dudley Line.
