There are a number of stories regarding the possible origin of the Woolverton family in England, and of how the family moved from one part of North America to others. These will be posted here as they are made available.
The name Wolverton or Woolverton occurs a number of times in England as a placename, and also as a baronetcy. There was also a historical Norman family named de Wolverton. Attempts have been made by a number of family researchers to connect these to the current family, but these have not proven out. The family that holds the barony is actually named Glyn, and the connection with Wolverton is through the family bank's holdings in railroad development in the mid 1800s.
Who was Charles Woolverton?
What is known and provable is that Charles Woolverton first appears in legal records in North America in 1693, and that he had sufficient means to purchase property in West Jersey. He wrote and published Quaker religious documents, and attended Friends meetings, so there are assumptions made that he emigrated from England with that group, and that he was acquainted with its leaders, George Fox and William Penn. Passenger lists for all of the ships known to be involved in the migration of Quakers to the Penn colony have been scoured and none contain any mention of the name Woolverton or any close analogues. This raises the following possibilities:
Migrating from England
Where did the story that Charles came from England arise? According to Alfred N. Wolverton, Charles's great-granddaughter, Elizabeth Wolverton (1774-1863), repeatedly told a narrative that Charles had two brothers, Gabriel and John, who sailed with him on the Welcome from Dorsetshire in 1682 with William Penn, but that they had died of smallpox on the voyage. In his book, David Macdonald has declaimed the story of the "three brothers" as well as another story that Elizabeth told about serving George Washington. Was Elizabeth the originator of this story? Unfortunately we cannot be sure. No record has yet been found of Charles, Gabriel or John Woolverton either in England or as ship's passengers, and the Welcome actually set sail from Deal in Kent instead of from any of the Dorsetshire ports.
It is probable that some of the passengers of the ships that carried colonists to Pennsylvania/Maryland/West Jersey were not listed in the ships' manifests. Since this was over 300 years ago, it may be difficult to ever prove this conclusively. Could Charles have been a crew member? Possible, but not likely. Ships' officers were named and known; and not likely to have left a ship. Crew members would not likely have been paid well enough to accumulate the amount of money that Charles required to purchase the property he did (at least some were indentured).
It is known that some English Quakers sought respite in Holland before migrating to North America, but the ships that transported them were again, all English. In the lists of Dutch and German names that comprise passenger manifests for these trips, there are no Woolvertons either
The allegation is that Charles was born in Staffordshire c.1660, but no records have yet been found to confirm this. The logical assumption is that the family would have been from Wolverhampton, but again, this cannot yet be proven. Other researchers have tried to follow this up, but records they were searching for had been lost to fire. As of yet, no record of Charles' birth has been found, and he apparently did not write his birthdate in the Breeches bible that contains records of the rest of his immediate family.
There were also trips made by ships carrying Quakers to North America prior to the Penn expedition. The Kent landed in western New Jersey in 1675, and it and the Shield that followed in 1678 do not have proven-out passenger lists.
It is possible that as one researcher has theorized, Charles may have converted to Quakerism after his arrival in North America. This would potentially expand the number of ships he may have travelled on.
Family stories and research
Linus Woolverton, a Canadian family researcher in the period from 1860-1912, gathered information from a number of other family lines and collected versions of the information presented above. An annotated version of an essay he wrote on this is provided here.
There is a theory that Charles was a member of a Woolverton family from Barbados. Glenn Gohr mentioned records of the family there in Wolvertons Unlimited Vol. 5 Number 5, and Robert H. Schomburgk's "History of Barbados" mentions "Charles Wolferstone" who was sent by "a society of London merchants with sixty-four settlers to Barbados, who landed on the 5th of July 1628." Wolferstone was given a commission by the Earl of Carlisle to act as governor over the settlement which under his auspices a company of merchants proposed to effect in Barbados. More detail can be found here.