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Gc 974.9 L51g v.1 1136379
M. La
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02246 7150
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
https://archive.org/details/genealogicalmemo01leef_0
Jud" J. Furlinghuy sms
GENEALOGICAL
AND
MEMORIAL HISTORY
OF THE
STATE OF NEW JERSEY
A RECORD OF THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF HER PEOPLE IN THE MAKING OF A COMMONWEALTH AND THE FOUNDING OF A NATION
COMPILED UNDER THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF
FRANCIS BAZLEY LEE
-
VOLUME I
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK LEWIS HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY
-- 1910 ----
COPYRIGHT 1910 BY LEWIS HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
PUBLISHER'S ANNOUNCEMENT.
The present work, "Genealogical and Memorial History of the State of New Jersey," will, it is believed, commend itself to the people of this commonwealth, and not only to them, but to the various Libraries and Historical Socities, and also to many individual inves- tigators throughout the Nation at large, and more particularly in the State of New Jersey.
The pages of these genealogical and personal memoirs have been prepared with all due care from such data as were procurable from the hands of family representatives and from various records, many of which have not been heretofore given to the public. In every case the narrative has been submitted to the immediate subject or to his proper representative, for correction and revision. If in any case the matter is incomplete or faulty, the shortcoming is ascribable to the paucity of data, many families being unable to supply exact information at some point in their ancestral line. In many instances such faults are due to the disappear- ance of church and other records, through fire or other disaster. In some cases, particularly such as concern families of Holland descent, there are variances of orthography in family nomenclature, and it has been deemed proper to respect, in the various lines, the form of name which has been preserved therein.
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It is believed that the present work will prove a substantial addition to the mass of genealogical and personal material relating to the people of the historic region under con- sideration, and that without it, much valuable information contained herein would be irre- trievably lost, owing to the passing away of many custodians of family records, and the disappearance of material which has been utilized in the preparation of this work.
The publishers desire to express their great obligation to those who have rendered special assistance in the preparation of this work, with their labor as writers, as sources of information, and as advisers-Mr. Francis Bazley Lee, of Trenton, an author of ability, in the capacity of supervising editor ; and Hon. Isaac T. Nichols, of Bridgeton; Mr. Alfred M. Heston, of Atlantic City ; Mr. William H. Ketler, of Camden ; Mr. John D. Canfield, of Morristown ; Hon. John S. Applegate, of Red Bank; Mrs. Althea H. Weatherby, of Tren- ton; Mr. Robert Gwynne, of Salem; and Rev. Elias Boudinot Stockton, of Newark, the principal writer. All are well informed with reference to the annals of their respective regions, all have been diligent students of local history for many years past, and all have given their effort with a warm enthusiasm based upon reverence for the pioneers who planted here the institutions of civilization, and a laudable pride in such an ancestry.
THE PUBLISHERS.
1
NEW JERSEY
THE PEOPLING OF THE STATE
T IS NOT within the province of the present work to give a political history of the State of New Jersey. The purpose is to place in preservable form a series of genealogical narratives tracing to their forbears a great number of the active men of the present day-men who have honored their ancestry and themselves by lives of usefulness in private life and honorable service in public station.
Those who brought civilization to the territory now known as New Jersey, were of diverse tongues and habits-Swedes, English and Dutch. Measuring them by the stand- ards of their day, they were a simple, honest, God-fearing people. They builded to them- selves two enduring monuments which testify to that fact: Their behavior toward the Indians, whose lands they sought and acquired; and their strong assertion of their rights as settlers against the arrogant claims of non-resident proprietors, who bartered away their unseen possessions over the gaming table, as they did their own coin. These are indis- putable facts established by authentic records.
In the matter of clearing land titles from all cloud of Indian rights, the governmental history of New Jersey is creditable. If the considerations paid by the Dutch and Swedes and English seem trivial in value to-day, they did not so seem then. Indeed, within the memory of men now living, swamp lands in southern States and timber lands in northern States, passed from one white owner to another at figures which now appear incomprehensibly trifling.
Following the precedents of the Dutch and the Swedes-the first dealers with the Indians-the Pro- prietors of New Jersey made every effort to extinguish Indian titles. In the "Directions" of Berkeley and Carteret, under date of December 7, 1672, it was ordered that the Governor and Council purchase all Indian lands in the name of the Proprietors, and those to whom the Proprietors sold were to reimburse them. After East Jersey became a government, it was enacted, in 1682, that no one should purchase Indian land without a warrant from the Governor or his Deputy. In West Jersey, in 1676, in the "Concessions and Agreements," a most fair and commendable document, it was provided that the commissioners were to meet the natives and agree upon the price of land before it
Monmouth Battlefield Monument.
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INTRODUCTORY.
was surveyed for distribution ; public record of these transactions was made ; and it was later enacted that all titles founded upon purchases not made under these provisions should stand null and void, while the offenders were to be fined and declared enemies to the Province. Under such regulations, practically all the Indian titles to New Jersey were extinguished prior to the Revolution.
The incidental story of the extinguishment of the Indian himself is pathetic. Their tribal relations were recognized by law, yet the Indian was practically reduced to bondage. Repressive legislation in East Jersey forbade trading with them; in West Jersey, while there were no such enactments, there was no effort to turn the natives to industrial pur- suits. They soon suffered decimation through the vices and diseases brought to them by the white man. Missionaries and philanthropists urged remedies, but without avail. At length, in 1758, through the mixed motives of self-protection and charity, was established for the first time within the territory now the United States, an Indian Reservation, in the Burlington county "Pines," where is now the town of Indian Mills. There were seated the remnant of the famous Lenni-Lanape tribe, some two hundred in number, upon a three thousand acre tract of land, and where their decreasing descendants sojourned until 1802, thence removing, by repeated migrations, to the state of New York, to Wisconsin, and finally to the Indian Territory. At length, in 1832, the New Jersey Legislature, listening to the final plea of the Indians, appropriated $2,000 for the extinguishment of all their right, title and interest. In this closing transaction, the Indians had for their representative one of their own race-Bartholomew S. Calvin, whose native name was Shawuskukung, meaning "Wilted Grass." He was a Revolutionary soldier ; he was educated by the Scotch, became a teacher, and taught in white schools, as well as among his own people. Before the legislature which purchased the last of his tribal rights, he said: "Not a drop of our blood have you spilled in battle ; not an acre of our land have you taken but by our consent." And upon the same occasion, the Hon. Samuel L. Southard said: "It is a proud fact in the history of New Jersey that every foot of her soil has been obtained from the Indians by fair and voluntary purchase and transfer-a fact that no other State in the Union, not even the land which bears the name of Penn, can boast of."
And so disappeared the Indian, leaving no perceptible trace of blood admixture upon the people by whom he was supplanted-nothing, save a few local names of places he once occupied, and rapidly disappearing burial mounds.
An interesting but abortive incident of attempted civilization in the New World is written in the history of New Albion. In 1632, an Irish nobleman, Sir Edmund Plowden, with eight associates, asked of King Charles I. a grant of land to be known as "Manitie, or Long Isle" (Long Island), and of thirty miles square of the coast next adjoining, to be erected into a County Palatine called "Syon." The petition being disregarded, it was repeated, with the use of new designations-"Isle Plowden" for Long Island, and "New Albion" for "Syon." Plowden and his associates obligated themselves to settle five hundred inhabitants "for the planting and civilizing thereof," and a patent was granted them for a tract of land embracing New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, as well as Long Island, with Sir Edmund Plowden as first governor. In this connection it is curious to note that two years previously a similar charter had been issued to Lord Baltimore, of the Maryland colony.
In 1634, deaths and abandonments had put the Plowden grant largely into possession of the sons of Sir Edmund, under whom about ten thousand acres near Salem City, New Jersey, were vested in Sir Thomas Danby, with manorial privileges. Meantime, and in the same year (1634) came from England, Captain Thomas Young, with Robert Evelin, his
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nephew, under commission "to discover parts of America not actually in possession of any Christian Prince." They explored the Delaware river (which they named the Charles) as far as Trenton Falls, which they could not pass, therefore descended the stream, and later coasted from Cape May to Manhattan Island.
In 1642, Plowden himself, "Earl Palatine," came to the country and sailed up the Dela- ware, afterward going to Virginia. In 1648 he returned to England. In December of that year was printed there, Beauchamp Plantagenet's "Description of New Albion," dedicated to "The Right Honorable and Mighty Lord Edmund, by Divine Providence, Lord Propri- etor, Earl Palatine, Governour and Captain Generall of the Province of New Albion." It also contained a description of the "Order Medall and Riban of the Albion Knights," with various heraldic devices. Under this pretentious manifesto, preparation was undertaken in 1650 to send to the Delaware a colony of one hundred and fifty souls, but there is no evi- dence that it was ever accomplished. The Plowden claims were practically forgotten until 1784, when Charles Varlo came from England, claiming title as purchaser of one-third of the Plowden charter. His claims failing of substantiation in a chancery court, he returned whence he came. To-day no trace appears of the early occupation thus recorded.
The Swedish occupation dates from 1638, when Peter Minuit, of a Swedish-Dutch com- pany, came up Zuydt Riviere (the Delaware) with two vessels. With his explorations into Virginia and the territory now Delaware, and his creation of New Sweden, we are not now concerned, for his project was but short-lived, giving way before the Dutch occu- pancy. Among the few remaining traces of Swedish occupancy, the town of Swedesboro is the most conspicuous, and a few Swedish names are discernible at various points in the Delaware Valley. The latter, however, are place, not family, names. The Swedes were readily absorbed by both Dutch and English, and particularly by the latter, in this regard forming a marked contrast with the Dutch, who, through intermarriages among themselves, preserved their racial traits, customs and language beyond the Revolutionary period. In the case of the Swedes, as far as shown by church records now extant, the intermarriages among themselves are rare after 1725. After the middle of the century their language had practically disappeared.
The Dutch impression yet remains deep and readily identifiable, and their family nomen- clature is ineradicable. First of the settlements made in Jersey territory was that at what was known as Hobocanhackingh, now Hoboken. In 1630 arose the patroonship of Pavonia, and here appear the names of Van Evertsen Bout and Corneliu Van Vorst, about 1636, and Aert Teunissen Van Patten in 1643. From these settlements, and others growing out from them, and from the Hollandish settlement on Manhattan island, descended vigorous stock THIS STONE MARKS THE SITE OF which to the present time has been a potent FORT NONSENSE. AN EARTH-WORK BUILT BY THE CONTINENTAL ARMY IN THE WINTER OF 1779-80. factor in all the wonderful development of American life. As has been remarked by the present writer at another time (and for which there is still full warrant), "It must not be forgotten that to the Hollander is due the ERECTED BY THE WASHINGTON ASSOCIATION OF NEW JERSEY credit for establishing the principle of pur- chasing Indian title to land; that he planted, 1888. wherever he went, his church and his school; that in spite of a certain intensity of obstinate pride, he respected civil authority, and lent his
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aid to the upbuilding of a moral state. In politics, the Hollander took the side of justice to the oppressed ; in religion, he fought to the end, for the sake of principle. While New Amsterdam was struggling for existence, Old Amsterdam was the centre of a life of culture and refinement, where science, art and music, as well as the learned professions, were joined in a community of interests. While such progress at home found but faint reflection in America, the hardships which the colonists encountered for the commercial glory of the Mother Country must ever be to Holland as great a compensation as their presence to distant generations of America was a gain." And what is here said of the Hollander in New Amsterdam, is to be said with equal force of the Hollander in the Jerseys.
A valuable colonizing force came into the Jerseys about the close of the Seventeenth Century-the French Huguenots, who were of those driven out of their native land by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in 1685. Nearly all were of eminent respectability and strength of character ; many were of the ancient nobility. They brought names which still exist-Pintard, Bard, Conte, Ray, Boudinot, Ballinger, La Rue, Valle, Demarest and others. They did not long retain their identity, but assimilated with the Dutch and English. To them, in the largest degree, is ascribable the introduction upon American soil of those refinements of life, that love for the beautiful, for which their ancestral land has ever been proverbial.
For obvious measures, the chronological sequence of the various immigrations to Amer- ica has not been followed. While Swede and Hollander and Huguenot brought to the New World personal qualities of great worth, and which were all-important in the making of the present-day American, the English, and, somewhat later, the Scotch-Irish, his nearest kins- men, brought equally valuable elements of moral and mental strength, and, besides, those political ideas and institutions which were destined to overshadow and finally supplant those of all other peoples. Out of these have grown our present-day legislative and governmental methods, and our jurisprudence.
Following shortly after the promulgation of "The Conditions for New Planters in the Territories of his Royal Highness, the Duke of York, by his Deputy Governor, Colonel Rich- ard Nicolls," a settlement was made at Elizabethtown under a grant of date December I, 1664. The precise date of occupation is not known, but it is presumable that a few families were already upon the ground. The petitioners are to be briefly noted :
John Strickland, an Englishman, had come to the Massachusetts Bay Colony with Win- throp. He was a patentee of Huntington, Long Island, and was afterward a resident of Hempstead. He appeared at Elizabethtown as agent for "A company of the inglish nasion."
John Balies (Baylie, Baily), probably him of the same name who resided at Guilford, Connecticut, in 1642, does not appear to have been a resident; he sold his interest to Gov- ernor Carteret.
Others were Thomas Benedict (Benydick), who had represented Jamaica, Long Island, in the Hempstead Convention of 1665; John Baker, who had been the principal military officer at Albany, and who became foremost in resisting proprietary aggression in Jersey ; John Ogden, who came from Connecticut to Long Island, and thence to Jersey, and became one of the most influential in the new settlement there ; also David and Nathaniel Denton, sons of the Reverend Richard Denton, who came from England to Massachusetts and thence, in turn, to Connecticut, and to Hempstead, Long Island. Daniel Denton was a man of strong character and great usefulness, and was a school teacher and physician. He soon sold his interest in the Elizabethtown grant to John Baker and John Ogden, and is believed to have returned to England. In 1670 he published in London a volume which is notable as being the first description of the region now known as New York and New Jersey, ever printed in
Nassau Hall.
Old Mercer County Court House.
Friends' Meeting House, Princeton Battlefield; built 1726, rebuilt 1760.
Washington's Headquarters, Washington's Crossing; occupied morning of Battle of Trenton, December 28, 1776.
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INTRODUCTORY.
the English language. The title of this rarely interesting work was "A Brief Description of New York, formerly called New Netherlands, with the places thereunto Adjoining ; Like- wise a Brief Relation of the Customs of the Indians there." This volume was largely instru- mental in promoting immigration.
Luke Watson, the last of the patentees to be mentioned, was the only one who retained his interest in the enterprise, and came to be numbered among the founders of the town. The patentees gathered about them associates to the number of eighty, most of them vigorous men between the ages of twenty-five and forty years, and a majority of them married. The town which they founded, Elizabethtown, is ever to be remembered in American history as the seat of the first English government in what is now New Jersey. The land owned by the Elizabethtown grant extended from the mouth of the Raritan river on the south to the mouth of the Passaic river on the north, a distance of not less than seventeen miles in a direct line, and extending inwardly into the country about thirty-four miles. It embraced the present towns of Woodbridge and Piscataway, the whole of the present Union county, parts of the towns of Newark and Clinton, a small part of Morris county, and a consider- able portion of Somerset county, aggregating about five thousand acres.
Governor Nicolls, on April 8, 1665, issued to twelve patentees the famous "Monmouth Patent," covering a part of Middlesex county, the present county of Monmouth, except Free- hold townships and the western portion of Millstone, and a part of Ocean county. The coast line extended from Sandy Hook to Little Egg Harbor, being more than half of the New Jersey seacoast.
The Monmouth patentees were men of strong character and great enterprise, and the most of them were deeply religious. Mention of their antecedents and traits is necessary to a proper appreciation of their worth as founders of communities and of their influence in their own day and upon their descendants.
William Goulding was one of the Massachusetts Bay Baptists who were banished from that colony on account of their religion. He became a permanent settler, and was one of the founders of the old Baptist Church at Middletown.
Samuel Spicer had previously resided at Gravesend, Long Island. He was a member of the Society of Friends, and had been severely dealt with by Governor Stuyvesant for non-conformity to the established religion.
Richard Gibbons, who is also mentioned as "Sergeant Gybbings," does not appear as prominently as his fellows, but was among the early settlers.
Richard Stout was head of one of the first five families who settled on the Indian pur- chase in 1664. He had previously lived a number of years on Long Island.
James Grover became a permanent settler, and built the first iron works in New Jersey.
Captain John Bowne, a leader in the project of purchasing from the Indian sachems the three Necks of Newasink, Navarumsink and Pootapeck, was one of the company who sailed from Gravesend, Long Island, in December, 1663. He was one of the patentees under the Monmouth grant, and his was one of the first five families who made a permanent settlement on the tract. The place where he located is in the present township of Holmdel, though in the old records he is mentioned as one of the settlers of Middletown-a name which was applied to a large and somewhat vaguely defined region. Until Captain Bowne's death, in the early part of 1684, he seems to have been the most prominent citizen of the county, esteemed for his integrity and ability. He was a deputy to the first Assembly in Governor Carteret's time, which met May 26, 1668, the members of the lower house being then called "burgesses." He was deputy again in 1675; in the first legislature under the twenty-four proprietors, in 1683, he was a member, and the Speaker, and he acted until the December
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following. He held other positions of trust. March 12, 1677, a commission was issued to him as president of the court to hold a term at Middletown. In December, 1683, shortly after his last illness, he was appointed major of the militia of Monmouth county. He died in January, 1683-4, leaving two sons, Obadiah and John, the latter of whom was also a prominent man in the province, and a candidate for the office of Speaker of Assembly under Lord Cornbury's administration.
John Tilton, when he first came from England, located at Lynn, Massachusetts. His wife was a Baptist, and in December, 1642, she was indicted for "holdinge that the baptism of infants is no ordinance of God." They left Massachusetts with Lady Deborah Moody and other Baptists, and settled at Gravesend, Long Island, where again they were made to suffer. In 1658, Tilton was fined by the Dutch authorities for allowing a Quaker woman to stop at his house. In September, 1662, he was fined for "permitting Quakers to quake at his house." In October of the same year himself and wife were summoned before Gov- ernor Stuyvesant and Council, charged with having entertained Quakers and frequently attending their conventions, and they were ordered to leave the province under pain of corporal punishment. They came to Monmouth among the settlers of 1665.
William Reape was a Long Island settler and a Quaker, who had been arrested and imprisoned by the Dutch Governor, Peter Stuyvesant, who was a mild persecutor of Quakers for the reason that his instructions from the States-General required him to discountenance all form of religion but that prescribed by the Synod of Dordrecht. Soon after his libera- tion Reape went to Newport, Rhode Island, where he engaged in mercantile business, and he was living there when he became interested in the Monmouth patent. He was one of the settlers who came to the Navesink Indian purchase in 1665.
Nicholas Davies (or Davis) was living in Massachusetts Bay Colony when the Quakers began preaching there, and he became a member of their society, for which offense he was indicted in April, 1659, and in July of the same year he was sentenced to death. Mary Dyer, whose son Henry was an early Monmouth county settler, William Robinson and Marma- duke Stevenson, were sentenced at the same time, and were hung in Boston. Davies's sen- tence was commuted to banishment, and he removed to Newport, Rhode Island, where he was living when he became interested in the Monmouth Patent. He was drowned about 1672.
The Rev. Obadiah Holmes was living in 1639 at Salem, Massachusetts, where he was engaged with Lawrence Southwick and Ananias Conklin, descendants of both of whom became settlers on the Monmouth purchase. Although he never settled on his Monmouth lands, he made occasional visits there, one of which was upon the organization of the Bap- tist Church at Middletown, which was the first of that denomination in New Jersey and the third or fourth in America. Two of his sons, Obadiah and Jonathan, became settlers in Monmouth.
Acting under the authority conferred upon them, the patentees and their associates began the establishment of settlements at Middletown and Shrewsbury. Later the same year (1665) many settlers came from Long Island and Rhode Island, and during the fol- lowing years the number of families in the present territory of the county of Monmouth had increased to more than one hundred, reaching the limit which had been set by the set- tlers at their general assembly in 1668. The landowners comprised in the settlements, who were for the greater number actual residents and heads of families, were named as follows :
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