At age twelve he and his friend Tom Jacobs ran away to cross the continent, but relatives living north of the city apprehended them in the Catskills.

[2] Morrell explored islands in the Bismark Sea and established trading relations with previously uncontacted native inhabitants.

[6][7] Although Woodworth was associated with the disastrous and piratical Margaret Oakley expedition, he was not held culpable and his father worked to have him enlisted into the Navy.

Appointed a midshipman on June 16, 1838, Woodworth was ordered to join the Wilkes Exploring Expedition because of the Polynesian language ability he had acquired in the Pacific.

[8] While serving on Falmouth, he learned of his father's death and returned to New York where he was assigned to the receiving ship North Carolina.

[9] In 1846, with the United States on the brink of war with Mexico, Woodworth was assigned to carry dispatches about the Navy's participation overland to the Pacific Squadron in Oregon.

Woodworth reported to naval authorities at the mouth of the Columbia River, where he remained until January 18, 1847, when he left for San Francisco.

There he volunteered for the rescue efforts on behalf of the Donner Party, a group of overland emigrants that was trapped and starving in the Sierra Nevada.

[10] Woodworth arrived back in San Francisco on April 1, 1847, and reported on board sloop-of-war Warren at Monterey Bay, California, on May 17, 1847.

In November 1849, a year before California became a state, Woodworth was elected to the legislature as a senator representing Monterey[11] and immediately resigned his Navy commission.

[9] Woodworth and his brother built the first house in San Francisco situated on a water lot, which later became the Clay Street Market.

[12][13][14] After the outbreak of the American Civil War, Woodworth returned to the east coast and reentered the Navy on September 10, 1861, as an acting lieutenant.

After Woodworth's death in 1871, Lisette married Erasmus Dennison, son of Ohio Governor William Dennison Jr.[16] Lisette Woodworth testified in the state civil rights case Pleasant v. North Beach & Mission Railroad Company on behalf of Mary Ellen Pleasant, who had been refused service on a San Francisco streetcar in 1866.