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From: "Doug Gordon" <>
Subject: [NJHUNTER] Research trip report
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2003 17:32:41 -0400


Well, I spent 4 days last week in and about Hunterdon Co. visiting
libraries, historical societies, and the state archives. In those 4 days, I
learned almost nothing new, but that in itself at least lets me know where I
stand: there is not much else that I can learn about my particular
ancestors. The problem is that I'm dealing with pre-1800 events, and I think
that everything that is known about that era has already been dug up,
summarized, and published.

On Thursday, I spent from 1-3PM and 7-8PM at the Hunterdon Co. Historical
Society in Flemington. This is a very nice facility with helpful volunteers
on duty, but that's where I began to see what I was running into. I was
mainly interested in a family that lived near Hopewell, so started going
through the tax lists from about 1780. In 1785, my ancestor finally showed
up on the list and I was pretty excited to find it (I had seen his name
elsewhere as being on the list, but had never seen the actual record). So I
advanced to the next list on the film only to find that it was from 1802,
and he was long gone to Kentucky by then. I had hoped to trace more of his
stay in Hopewell, but the records from 1786 to 1802 simply do not exist.
This is true of a lot of records from the 1700's. In today's world we always
expect that someone will have "made a backup" or "xeroxed" just about
everything, but of course in those days copies were a much bigger deal and
there was not much reason for making them. The county "Hall of Records" had
all their deed book listings available, but again there was little from the
pre-1800 years and none was applicable for my family.

The next day I went to the state archives in Trenton. Another nice facility,
but instead of spending the entire day that I had planned, I was pretty much
tapped out after only two hours. A common problem is that most of these
libraries and archives have very complete collections of books and records,
but they are 90% the same books from one place to the other. What looked
like several shelves of books to browse turned out to be all the same ones
that I had seen in Hunterdon Co., Monmouth Co., and even at the main Detroit
Library near where I live. Same for the microfilm -- I could have looked up
the same tax lists here as well as in Flemington. At least I was able to
walk down to the old First Presbyterian Church on State St. and find a
family-related grave that I knew was there.

On Saturday I travelled over to Freehold and visited the Monmouth Co.
Historical Society. I had been there before and there was nothing new, but
at least there are some cemeteries in the area with family-related graves
that I revisited. In general, the most interesting thing to look at in the
historical society libraries were the folders devoted to particular
surnames. At least those had some interesting material from other
researchers, but a lot of it was pretty dated. You read a letter from
someone researching the same people as you, but then you look at the date on
the letter and it is from 1962 or something -- not much chance of contacting
them! I think that in the interest of helping others, I will print off a
descendancy report for my proven line and send copies to the historical
libraries in Hunterdon, Monmouth and Mason Co. (KY).

So the outcome of the trip was that I learned almost nothing new, but I can
now convince myself that anything that I do not currently know about my
family in New Jersey is truly unknowable, and I can close up my research
to-do list in that state. So I at least came to one firm conclusion from an
otherwise uneventful trip. At least there was baseball on the TV to watch in
the evenings :-).

Doug Gordon
Rochester Hills, MI


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