His father, Maj. William Woodford, was an Englishman who emigrated to Virginia in the latter part of the seventeenth century; his mother, Anne Cocke, daughter of Dr. William Cocke, secretary of the colony.
On June 26, 1762, he married Mary, daughter of Col. John Thornton; two children were born to them.
From July 17 to Aug. 9, 1775, he sat as alternate to Edmund Pendleton [q. v. ] in the Virginia Convention.
As a consequence, a warm dispute arose between Henry and Woodford regarding the scope of their respective commands.
In the meantime two hundred North Carolina troops under Col. Robert Howe [q. v. ] had arrived.
Upon the recommendation of the Virginia Convention, the Continental Congress on Feb. 13, 1776, appointed Woodford colonel of the 2nd Virginia Regiment.
He fought at Brandywine (where he was wounded), at Germantown, and at Monmouth, and shared the sufferings of the patriots at Valley Forge.
In 1778 and 1779 he was with the Continental army in New Jersey.
On Dec. 13, 1779, Washington ordered him to proceed with a detachment of seven hundred men to the aid of Charleston, S. C. , then besieged by the British.
Going from Morristown, N. J. , to the Elk River, Woodford journeyed by water to Williamsburg, Va. , and thence overland to Charleston, where he arrived on Apr. 17, 1780, having made a march of five hundred miles in twenty-eight days.
In 1789 Woodford County, Ky. , was named in his honor.
Published sources include Royal Gazette (N. Y. ), Nov. 15, 1780; Peter Force, Am.
Archives, 4 ser.
III (1840), IV (1843), VI (1846); R. R. Howison, A Hist.
of Va. , vol.
II (1848); W. C. Ford, The Writings of George Washington, vols.
III (1889), V, VI (1890), and Jours.
of the Continental Congress; F. B. Heitman, Hist.
Reg.
of Officers of the Continental Army (1914); "The Letters of Col. William Woodford to Edmund Pendleton, " Richmond College Papers, vol.
I (1915); E. C. Burnett, Letters of Members of the Continental Congress, vols.
I-III (1921 - 26), V (1931); H. R. McIlwaine, Justices of the Peace of Colonial Virginia (1922); B. P. Willis, Daily Star (Fredericksburg), Apr. 11, 1922; Marshall Wingfield, A Hist.
of Caroline County, Va. (1924); L. G. Tyler, in Tyler's Quart.
Hist.
and Geneal.
Mag. , July, Oct. 1930, Jan. , Apr. 1931; J. C. Fitzpatrick, The Writings of George Washington, vols.
I-XI (1931 - 34); J. W. Jordan in Pa.
Mag.
of Hist.
and Biog. , Jan. 1900. ]
On Aug. 5 he was appointed colonel of the 3rd Regiment, and on Oct. 25 his troops repulsed an attempt on the part of Governor Dunmore's men to burn Hampton.
