1633 John Moody came to New England by August of 1633. Rev. John Eliot of Roxbury, in his record of church members of Roxbury, Massachusetts, names John Moody and his wife Sarah, and provides the following account of John Moody's time in Roxbury: [1]
John Moody. he came to the Land in the yeare 1633: he had no children he had 2 men servants, yt were vngodly, especially one of them; who in his passion would wish himselfe in hell: & vse desperate words. yet had a good measure of knowledg, these 3 servants would goe to the oister bank in a boate, & did, against the counsell of their governor where they lay all night; & in the morning early when the tide was out, they gathering oysters, did vnskillfully leave theire boate afloate In the verges of the channell, & quickly the tide caryed it away so far into the channell yt they could not come neare it, wch made them cry out & hollow, but being very early & remove were not heard, till the water had risen very high vpon them to the armehols as its thought, & then a man from Rockbrough meeting house hill heard them cray & call, & he cryed & ran wth all speed, & seing theire boate swam to it & hasted to them, but they were both so drowned before any help could possibly come. a dreadfull example of Gods displeasure against obstinate servants.
Winthrop describes the drowning, [2]
August 6.] Two men servants to one Moodye, of Roxbury, returning in a boat from the windmill, struck upon the oyster bank. They went out to gather oysters, and, not making fast their boat, when the flood came, it floated away, and they were both drowned, although they might have waded out on either side; but it was an evident judgment of God upon them, for they were wicked persons. One of them, a little before, being reproved for his lewdness, and put in mind of hell, answered, that if hell were ten times hotter, he had rather be there than he would serve his master, etc. The occasion was, because he had bound himself for divers years, and saw that, if he had been at liberty, he might have had greater wages, though otherwise his master used him very well.
Redstone mentions the record written by Rev. John Eliot and states that Winthrop gives 6 Aug. 1633 as the date of the drowning. She provides the following summary of the life of John Moody in New England: [3]
"Mr." John Moody was admitted a freeman 5 Nov. 1633 and was a deputy in 1635. He soon removed to Hartford, Conn., and died not earlier than 25 July 1655. He had a son Samuel, born in New England, who finally settled at Hadley, Mass., where his mother, the Widow Sarah Moody, died in 1671.
[1] William B. Trask, transcriber, "The Rev. John Eliot's Record of Church Members, Roxbury, Mass.," 35 (1881), 21-24 and 241-247 at 242, [HathiTrust].
[2] James Savage, ed., The History of New England from 1630 to 1649 by John Winthrop, from his original manuscripts, with notes to illustrate the civil and ecclesiastical concerns, the geography, settlement, and institutions of the country, and the lives and manners of the principal planters, Vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1853), 126, [HathiTrust].
[3] Lilian J. Redstone, "Moody," New England Historical and Genealogical Register 80 (1926), 313-327 at 314, [AmericanAncestors].