Woodruff Family Collection

Woodruff's law career is extensively represented in his business correspondence with clients concerning suits in progress and with other law professionals, his law school notebooks, and his notes on pending lawsuits. Materials documenting his postal service include letters sent to Woodruff in his capacity as postmaster such as correspondence with other postmasters concerning mail schedules and misdirected letters, correspondence with individuals from other towns seeking information about Litchfield residents, reporting suspicious activities, and asking for assistance. Woodruff's extensive family correspondence reflects his personal life, especially in letters to and from brothers Lewis B. Woodruff, a lawyer in New York and Reuben M. Woodruff, a physician, recording their efforts to establish their careers, travels, and family and social news. Collection also includes Woodruff's personal papers, tracing his interest in genealogical research, the history of Litchfield, and his autobiographical efforts. Includes newspaper clippings and his own handwritten records of local and national election results; business ventures, including investments in railroads, canals, banks, and his involvement in Litchfield Mutual Fire Insurance Company. Collection also includes papers of numerous Woodruff relatives, documenting the extensive land transactions of Woodruff's father, Morris Woodruff, especially in his partnership with Simeon Harrison; the law career of his son George M. Woodruff; and the law and political career of grandson James P. Woodruff. Also includes many personal and business papers from members of the Seymour and Wolcott families, as well as from the family of Henry E. Gates, a physician during the Civil War, and from Grant Wickwire, a prosperous Litchfield farmer. Other persons represented include George C. Woodruff's wife, Henrietta Sophronia (Seymour) Woodruff, his sister, Lucy Morris (Woodruff) Seymour, and Tapping Reeve, founder of Litchfield Law School.

Materials relating to the Woodruff family of Litchfield, Conn., including currency of First National Bank of Litchfield; carte-de-visites of George C. Woodruff (ca. 1868), U.S. representative; Candace Catlin Woodruff; and George M. Woodruff and George C. Woodruff, Jr., both photographed by Litchfield photographer J.L. Judd; photographs of the Woodruff family plot in East Cemetery, Litchfield; bookplate of George Catlin Woodruff; and other materials.

William Woodruff had the sort of childhood satirised in the famous Monty Python Yorkshireman sketch. The son of a weaver, he was born on a pallet of straw at the back of the mill and two days later his mother was back at work. Life was extrememly tough for the family in 1920's Blackburn -- a treat was sheep's head or cow heel soup -- and got worse when his father lost his job when the cotton industry started its terminal decline. Woodruff had to find his childhood fun in the little free time he had available between his delivery job and school, but he never writes self-pityingly, leaving the reader to shed the tears on his behalf. At ten his mother takes him on his one and only holiday -- to Blackpool. He never wonders where they get the money to do so, only where she disappears to with strange men in the afternoons, before taking him to the funfair, pockets jingling an hour or two later. NAB END is certainly not all grime and gloom however, there's a cast of great minor characters from an unfrocked vicar to William's indomitable grandmother Bridget who lend some colour and humour -- and all against the strongly rendered social backdrop of the 1920s and 1930s.

On the heels of her acclaimed book In an Instant, the #1 New York Times bestseller she wrote with her husband, ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff, and with the same candor and charm, Lee Woodruff now chronicles her life as wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend. Woodruff’s deeply personal and, at times, uproariously funny stories highlight such universal topics as family, marriage, friends, and how life never seems to go as planned. From raising teenagers (“Now with a boy and girl on the precipice of serious adolescence, the bathroom door is sealed tighter than a government nuclear testing ground”) to how she copes with tragedy (“Swimming surrounds me in the velvet wet of a bluish green world where I can dive deep down and sob with no trace”), Perfectly Imperfect: A Life in Progress is the testimonial of a woman who embraces the chaos of her surroundings, discovers the splendor of life’s flaws, and accepts that perfection is as impossible to achieve as a spotless kitchen floor.

A bright June day. A split-second distraction. A family forever changed. Life is good for Maura Corrigan. Married to her college sweetheart, Pete, raising three young kids with her parents nearby in her peaceful Chicago suburb, her world is secure. Then one day, in a single turn of fate, that entire world comes crashing down and everything that she thought she knew changes. Maura must learn to move forward with the weight of grief and the crushing guilt of an unforgivable secret. Pete senses a gap growing between him and his wife but finds it easier to escape to the bar with his friends than face the flaws in his marriage. Meanwhile, Maura's parents are dealing with the fault lines in their own marriage. Charismatic Roger, who at sixty-five, is still chasing the next business deal and Margaret, a pragmatic and proud homemaker, have been married for four decades, seemingly happily. But the truth is more complicated. Like Maura, Roger has secrets of his own and when his deceptions and weaknesses are exposed, Margaret's love and loyalty face the ultimate test. Those We Love Most chronicles how these unforgettable characters confront their choices, examine their mistakes, fight for their most valuable relationships, and ultimately find their way back to each other. It takes us deep into the heart of what makes families and marriages tick and explores a fundamental question: when the ties that bind us to those we love are strained or broken, how do we pick up the pieces? Deeply penetrating and brimming with emotional insight, this engrossing family drama heralds the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary fiction.

In one of the most anticipated books of the year, Lee Woodruff, along with her husband, Bob Woodruff, share their never-before-told story of romance, resilience, and survival following the tragedy that transformed their lives and gripped a nation. In January 2006, the Woodruffs seemed to have it all–a happy marriage and four beautiful children. Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him. In an Instant is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee’s lives came together, were blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again–and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor, through intense trauma and fear. Here are Lee’s heartfelt memories of their courtship, their travels as Bob left a law practice behind and pursued his news career and Lee her freelance business, the glorious births of her children and the challenges of motherhood. Bob in turn recalls the moment he caught the journalism “bug” while covering Tiananmen Square for CBS News, his love of overseas assignments and his guilt about long separations from his family, and his pride at attaining the brass ring of television news–being chosen to fill the seat of the late Peter Jennings. And, for the first time, the Woodruffs reveal the agonizing details of Bob’s terrible injuries and his remarkable recovery. We learn that Bob’s return home was not an end to the journey but the first step into a future they have learned not to fear but to be grateful for. In an Instant is much more than the dual memoir of love and courage. It is an important, wise, and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy–and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation. A percentage of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury.

Mathew Woodruff immigrated to Hartford, Connecticut, probably in the 1640's, and settled in Farmington in 1653. He died in 1682.