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Note: John Woodman was listed as a farmer in Madison, Wisconsin on the 1820 Census. He and Esther lived with his father at that time on the Woodman homestead. John Woodman, the 6th child of Sylvester and Merebah (Brownell) Woodman, was born 18 March 1797 at Madison, Madison County, New York. He no doubt grew up on his father's farm in a house that still stands on the west side of Lake Moraine. Very little else is known of John except that he married Esther McIntyre of Palmyra, Wayne County, New York and that he died in Madison, on 1 Mar. 1835. In 1851, his widow Esther applied for federal bounty lands based on John's military service, evidently in the Mexican American War. It is possible that John died from wounds or disease contracted in the service. Esther made her application for bounty lands while on a visit back to Palmyra from Wisconsin. Her attorney helping her to prepare the necessary applications and affidavits was S. B. McIntyre of Palmyra, no doubt a relative. Esther McIntyre, a daughter of Alexander and Elizabeth (Robinson) McIntyre, was born 22 August 1800 in New York state. She was probably born near the town of Palmyra where several of her Robinson aunts and uncles had settled shortly before the turn of the century. It is not known where Esther grew up but her mother supposedly died in 1811 in Niagara County, New York. It is not known how she met John Woodman or where they were married. However, in her letters to her brother-in-law Brownell Woodman in the 1850's, it is apparent that she had at some point spent some time with the Woodman clan in Madison County. John's early death at the age of 38 left Esther with five young children, including an infant daughter Lucy. It appears that Esther gave her next youngest child Harriet Ludentia to a family by the name of Hackley, as family records from her descendants list her has Harriet L. Hackley, not Harriet Woodman. Esther regretted this action the rest of her life, expressing remorse for her separation from Harriet in her letters to Brownell Woodman in 1850: "What about my dear daughter? Have you seen her? Has she been to see you? I want to know all about her. I wish Thomas this fall, tell Thomas to go and see her before he comes west. I want to sent her a present if I could with safety. I will not undertake to describe my feelings on the subject. It is better felt than told." In an 1850 letter to Brownell she again mentioned Harriet Ludentia: "When I look on the past, Oh, the anguish of my heart when I think that the strongest ties in this world is broken...She is my child and I am her true mother." In 1839 Esther married Jeremiah Hurlbut, the son of John and Hannah (Millet) Hurlbut, III and the widower of Cynthia (Harris) Hurlbut. Jeremiah and Cynthia had three children: Mary Ann, George Washington, and Hiram, who may have been young enough to be raised by his new stepmother. About 1842 Jeremiah and Esther moved to Brighton, Wisconsin, bringing with them her daughters Sophia and Lucy, his son Hiram, and their son Delos. Esther's son Thomas apparently did not go to Wisconsin with this mother in 1842, as she begged Brownell Woodman in 1850 to try to convince Thomas to join her out west: "I want Thomas to come west without fail so tell him to write me a letter so I may know about it. Tell him if he comes to come by the way of the railroad. Tell him to take no private walks with no one and take care of his own trunk and money and there will be no danger. Take a packet or a line boat to Buffalo. There he can see the agent. Pay his fair. Take a ticket clear through to Southport the last of Sept. or the first of Oct. is as good as any time in the season...See Thomas and advise him I do think that he can do a great deal better here than he can there. There is chances here that will make any poor man rich...Tell him to come to Wisconsin without fail. He an go to school as well here as there." Jeremiah Hurlbut died 15 August 1850 at Brighton and on 31 Dec. 1852 at Yorkville, Wisconsin, Esther married Ruben North, the son of Ruben and Sarah North, Ruben, born about 1800 in England, was a shoemaker and later a minister. In an 1850 letter to Brownell Woodman she described their life together: "We have been out three years on the circuit. We came home last June. My husband is out all the time pretty much, a holding protracted meetings. It is a time of reviving all around, far and near. Where Mr. North has been holding protracted meetings. It is a time of reviving all around, far and near. Where Mr. North has been holding meeting, there is about thirty added to the church...How are you all getting along in Madison? I want to see you very much indeed. I would give all my old shoes and a pair of new ones if I could see you all tonight." Sometime during the 1860's Esther and Ruben moved to Newton County, Missouri, possibly along with her son Delos Hurlbut. Esther wrote her last will and testament in Grandby, Newton County, Missouri on 6 Nov. 1868. Esther (McIntyre) North died of pleurisy on 26 December 1872 at the home of her daughter Sophia near DeWitt, Nebraska. She had been visiting in Nebraska since that October. Esther was buried three miles east of DeWitt in a small cemetery. Her obituary noted that she had been a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church for forty years.
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