Sunday, February 17, 2013

New Jersey Research

Maybe if I write this down in my blog, I will eventually get it into my thick skull.

1790, 1800, 1810, 1820

Unfortunately, these censuses in New Jersey were not saved for posterity. Before the counties were required to submit their census schedules, one supposes that they were locally processed to produce raw statistical output, were otherwise unappreciated, and were destroyed. The only thing that has survived is the 1800 Census for Cumberland County.

So maybe I will stop looking and looking and looking for something not there, and then when I do remember, maybe I can stop refusing to believe such a thing could be true.

Mann Families in New Jersey

Today I was going through trying to fill in some of the several gaps I have for the children of Ernest Mann and Maria Sommer.  I decided to start with Peter Mann, for whom I have no birth or death, two marriages, no children, and tons of questions.  So this lead me to some investigation which can be summarized here:

There is documentation on familysearch of two marriages for Peter Mann, one in 1810 to Mary Hummer, and one in 1813 to Mary Kerr.  There are two documents pertaining to the marriage of Peter and Mary Kerr, one stating that Peter was from Hardwick.  Other family trees claim this couple subsequently moved to Lawrence, IL.  And meanwhile, I believe the Peter Mann marriage to Mary Hummer is the one I'm looking for because the HUMMER surname has appeared in some of the land records pertaining to my Ernest Mann.  Thus, I believe there were TWO Peter Mann's in the Sussex area in this time frame, and I am looking for the Peter Mann who married Mary Hummer.

But this exercise brings to mind some important research that I've done in the past but my conclusions for which have remained only inside my own head!  When I first started doing Mann research in New Jersey, I acquired a copy of a book called Descendants and Ancestors of Adam Overpeck and Elizabeth Mann of Sussex & Warren, New Jersey, Bucks, Northampton, Pike & Bedford Counties in PA by Norris Philip Wood.  The pages related to Mann are few, but it describes descendants of Phillip Mann born about 1748 in Bucks County, PA.  Phillip purchased land in Knowlton, Sussex, NJ in 1757 and he also had a tavern license from 1777-1779.  Phillip's children were, apparently, Phillip Jr., Jacob, John, and George, some of whom moved to Hardwick twp.  George of Hardwick twp and his wife Anna had several children, the oldest being Peter Mann, born 30 Aug 1793.  So here is, I believe, the Peter Mann who married Mary Kerr in 1813. Whether this couple eventually moved to Illinois is yet to be determined.

My point is that I have studied this book until I am blue in the face (!) and have never been able to make a  clear connection to my Ernest Mann line.  This is not to say there isn't one.  It might be considered that our Ernest Mann came to America because he already knew family that had arrived earlier, and potentially that was Phillip Mann, although I must say I have not seen the name Phillip in any of the lineage of the Menge family from Soedel.  If there is a link between the the two families, it's not obvious.  More research could be done on this topic, but to be honest, I haven't made it a priority.

But I do want to share and acknowledge that there were most definitely more than one Mann family group in the Sussex area in the late 1700's and early 1800's, probably both of German origins and associated with Lutheran churches.  For my research, however, they are so far separate families.