This is the 400th article I have published on this website. Nice round numbers feel like milestones; they inspire us to reflect and to look forward, so that is what I will do today.
Hezekiah Bonham, born 1667 to Nicholas Bonham and Hannah Fuller of Barnstable, Mass., moved to Maidenhead Township in New Jersey when it was still a part of Hunterdon County. Some of his descendants settled in Kingwood Township, others in Clinton Township, others in Amwell Township. Hezekiah died in Maidenhead in 1739 at the age of 71. One of the distinctive things about this family is the naming pattern—it’s very biblical.
Samuel Green, an English immigrant and a surveyor in Gloucester county, was married three times. His first wife, Margaret Kemp died before Green moved to Amwell Township in Hunterdon County. His second wife Sarah Bull was a member of the Bull family of Gloucester County. She died before Green moved to Sussex (Warren) County. His third wife, Hannah Wright, was the daughter of a Dutch couple who moved to Amwell Township from Bergen County.
Here’s a special article by Egbert T. Bush in celebration of Easter. As usual, Mr. Bush manages to include some genealogy—this time the Case and Hewitt families.
The Hammond Maps of Hunterdon County proprietary tracts are a wonderful resource for county historians. Many of the property owners shown on these maps drawn by D. Stanton Hammond in 1963 were the first Europeans to claim title to this part of the state of New Jersey. What happened to those properties in succeeding years has always fascinated me and provided wonderful material for my articles.
For the final installment of my study of the Haddon Tract,1 I am turning to the remainder of the property that was left to Nicholas Sine. As a reminder, Nicholas Signe/Sayn/Sine was a partner with another German immigrant, Jacob Sniter, in the 1748 purchase of 1300 acres of the Haddon Tract, a 2,000-acre plot that was surveyed for John Haddon in 1711. Daniel Robins had purchased the other 700 acres.
An interesting view of 19th century rural cooking from the perspective of one who grew up on it, and was able to compare it to the food available in the 1930s, when food processing had begun to be modernized. Commercial food production was just coming into its own back then. If Mr. Bush could take a stroll down the aisles of today’s supermarkets, he would be astonished, and probably dismayed. In many ways things have gotten worse.
But they have also gotten better, especially in Hunterdon County. We have access to wonderful locally grown produce and natural ingredients, especially in our many local farmers’ markets. And today there are many creative cooks who have figured out how to make better use of some of these ancient cooking techniques, as well as new ones.
Not long ago I published some articles about properties located in what was once known as The Haddon Tract (The Haddon Tract, part one). Today’s article by Egbert T. Bush concerns a very large farm located in that tract that I have not yet written about. It was sold by Jacob Sniter and Nicholas Sayn to John Peter Foxe of Amwell, who subsequently sold it to Jost Hoppock in 1749.
