The Arnwines of Hunterdon County begin with the immigrant, Jacob Arnwine and his son John Arnwine, who emigrated from Holland. The name Arnwine is Dutch for winemaker, but Jacob was a miller and a merchant. Other spellings were Erwine and Irvine.
For more on this family, see “Bridge To The Past,” a four-volume family history, written about 1989, by Aimee Berniece Wilson, which includes “The Arnwine History” by Rev. K.E. Irvin.
The first of the Poulson family to appear in Hunterdon County was Rev. Israel Poulson, born in Somerset County. He must have arrived in Hunterdon by the mid 1790s, for he married a Hunterdon woman, Esther Moore, about 1794.
Rev. Israel Poulson was one of those people with enormous influence on those who lived anywhere near him. He must have been fairly charismatic, considering how many people who were named after him. There are ten that I am aware of, not including his son Israel P. Poulson, Jr.
There are two ways of writing about a cemetery. One is to portray the people buried there, which I attempted to do in my previous article. The other is to relate how the cemetery came to be—in other words, the history of the property where the cemetery is located. It usually makes sense to focus on the place since many of its early owners were buried in the cemetery. At first I thought that in this case, none of them were. But, research has changed my mind.
Some time ago, I published a family tree for the Fishers of Amwell, because they figured in my article on the Hart-Taylor Cemetery. Then I began researching the area that was taken from Delaware Township and given to East Amwell Township in 1896 (A Shrinking Township, parts 1 and 2), and learned that a large part of that area was owned by the Fisher family.
Twice in his career, Egbert T. Bush wrote about a small family burying ground in Delaware Township. The first time was in 1911, in a paper presented to the Hunterdon County Historical Society which was later published in the Hunterdon County Democrat. This was many years before Mr. Bush became a regular contributor to the Democrat.1
The Lambert family was very prominent in old Amwell Township in the 18th and 19th centuries, beginning with John Lambert and Abigail Bumstead who came to Hunterdon County from Stonington, Connecticut about 1745, and settled in Kingwood Township. John Lambert’s ancestor, Francis Lambert, came to Salem, Massachusetts in 1638, but this tree will deal only with John and Abigail’s children and descendants.
Quite some time ago, I wrote an article called “Going-Going- Gone” about houses that are disappearing or have disappeared. One of them was a mystery to me. But finally I have figured out who it belonged to.
The Lawshe family came to America from Rheinland-Pfalz in Germany. Abraham von Laaschet was born in Creyfeldt, Prussia. (The name was Anglicized to Lawshe.) He married Margaret Bechelsheimer, daughter of Elder John Bechelsheimer, minister to the fledging German Baptist congregation in Amwell Township. The Lawshes appear in connection with the church several times in the book A History of East Amwell, 1700-1800.
This is a continuation of my history of the Vandolah family of Sandy Ridge, Delaware township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey. (See The Vandolah Family, Sandy Ridge, part seven.) Cyrus, Jr. was the last of the line.
I have been writing about the neighborhood of Sandy Ridge for several weeks now, but have neglected probably the most important family to live there—the Vandolahs. It is time to remedy that omission.
