What's In a Name - Bits and Pieces

It is interesting to me how I get tricked into the rabbit hole of family history from time to time, and what better time than a rainy afternoon while doing the laundry and after walking the dog.

Let me see if i can remember what I was doing before I walked through the Looking Glass of the Farm Directory of Gloucester County. Nope, I can't remember. Anyhow, I got seduced by the gorgeous photographs of old farms - Oh, WAIT - I remember now! I was looking for information on Platt's Form in Clarksboro after looking at the Mickleton Friends' Meeting web site. My sister lives in a bungalow on Platt's form with her son, my nephew, and I thought since I was down that way on the internet, I would look up history on the Platt's farm. Instead, I found myself going through page after page after page on the Farm Journal. May the Gods look with favor upon whatever volunteer took the time to digitize that Farm Journal Directory! What a treasure trove to anyone interested in New Jersey History! (Weavers and Tinsmiths!) As always when I get into anything with a directory, I began to look for my family names: Cheeseman, (Rachel Cheesemean) Garwood, (William C. Garwood married Rachel Cheeseman in the early 1800's in Turnersville), Goldy (Levi Goldy married Sarah Garwood) and I always look for Wrights though there are so many it is like looking for a stalk of hay in a haystack.

I found lots of information on the Cheeseman family because Major Peter Cheeseman was an early pioneer of Turnersville, New Jersey. At the time that he lived there, as did my other ancestor, William C. Garwood, in the early 1800;s, there were about 150 to 200 people living there, and there were two saw mills owned by Cheeseman millers, a grist mill (First one built by Peter Cheeseman prior to 1800) a store or two owned by the Turner family and a school where my ancestor William C. Garwood was teacher. All of this was the first half and middle of the 1800's. Rachel and William had two children and Rachel died very young. The Garwood trail eventually led to my Grandmother Sarah and her sister Lavinia. But back to William C. Garwood: I haven't been able to find out much about him before his busy days in the mid 1800's, but he was township assessor from 1849 to 1851 and Town clerk from 1857-1859 and he was trustee in 1855 of the Methodist Episcopal church established in 1780. His middle initial stands for Collins and I wonder if he has some connection with Isaac Collins who built the earliest local saw mill about the same time that Peter Cheeseman built his grist mill, prior to 1800. Since to a large extent women lost their identities early on when they married, they often gave their sons their maiden names for a middle name. I wonder if a Collins female descendant married William Collins Garwood's father?

Speaking of names and tracing family history, on one photo of the Farm Journal, there was a big farmhouse with five people standing out in front, three men, a woman and a child. They named the famer father and his farmer son, both farmers who subscribed to the Journal but not the woman or the farm worker. When I gazed at all the lists of people, mostly male names unless a wife appeared in (parenthesis) I couldn't help but think ALL of those listed had been born to a woman who had become more or less invisible. It is very hard to find your female ancestors. I named my daughter after five of her famale ancestors who live on becasue their first names were used again in subsequent generations. The first Lavinia came from Ireland in the early 1800's, to Philadelphia. My daughter was born in Philadelphia in 1983.

Anyhow, hours went by and I was lost in the world of the past, wondering as I always do about those blood relations of mine, forgotten by everyone else in the family and scattered and buried hither and yon in graveyards I don't know about and graveyards that may be paved over by malls or overgrown by weeds and saplings somewhere. Some of the cemeteries I have found, like that of Sarah Garwood Goldy, and the graves of my German ancestors on my faather's side, the Sandman family, all in Philadelphia. I have a cat sleeping beside me on the sofa who came from the cemetery where the Germans are buried. He walked over to the graves where they were buried, New Cathedral Cemetery in northern Philadelphia, and the grounds keeper said the cat needed a home so I took him with me and he is my favorite cat. I named him after my German Uncle, Joseph Frederick Young, know to one and all as Uncle Yock. Since the cat is much smaller than that formidable old Uncle, I call him "Little Yock."

I always look for these names whenever I slide down the rabbit hole into New Jersey history or family history: Cheeseman, Garwood, Goldy, and sometimes Jaggard and Wright. My Gloucester County ancestors married into the Jaggard family (Randall and Mary Cheeseman Jaggard for example, and later the Jaggard who ran the Gloucester County almshouse married a female ancestor of mine). Wrights abound. The most interesting Wright I found so far was on a Revolutionary soldier veterans role at a historic church site in Salem, South Jersey. He was listed with soldiers who had been paid for their service with land grants in Indiana. That was interesting because the earliest Wright I had been able to find before that was listed by the LDS as crossing the Ohio River into Indiana in 1810 with his wife Edna Crow. My father's male ancestor came to Philadelphia from Franklin, Indiana, his father, Franklin Allen Wright, to join the Merchant Marines.

Well, back to the laundry!

Happy Trails wherever your wanderlust may be taking you! Jo Ann

Post Script: I had to return to add this name piece. Throughout my wanderings in South Jersey history and my own South Jersey family history, I came to understand that most of the early families became connected to one another due to proximity and small populations. I remember when Megan Geordano, the brilliant historian anc one-time curator of the Whitall HOuse who was an inspiration to me and so many other volunteers, asked if Anne Whitall was related to the Coopers of Camden. I had come across a family history essay about the Cooprs when I worked as a volunteer for the Camden Historical Society as a suitcase school visitor, and sure enough, Anne Cooper Whitall was sister to John Cooper the Woodbury Committee of Correspondence Revolutionary War activist and early Continental Congreessman who was a descendant from the branch of the Camden Coopers who had migrated south to mingle with the Clarke family. Turns out, we, too are related to the Coopers through:

When Jemima Roe Cooper was born on May 8, 1712, in Gloucester, New Jersey, her father, John, was 40, and her mother, Grace, was 29. She married Richard Cheesman on October 27, 1727, in her hometown. They had ten children in 21 years. She died on July 20, 1798, in Gloucester, New Jersey, having lived a long life of 86 years.

Which is a clue I found today in ancestry.com where I have a family tree and dna record. I often think of Anne Whitall and what it must have been like for her. She gave birth to nine children. Childbirth wa without doubt the most traumatic thing that ever happened to my body, I can assure you, and most of the women I know who had babies would say the same thing. I can't imagine what it must have been like for poor Anne with no pain medication, and nothing but just powering through and enduring. True, she was a well-to-do woman with servants and household help and could afford to take many hours off to go to meeting and sit in silent worship, what a great luxury that must have been. But still - nine children! Yikes! Well that's it for me. I think since I am in the family history mood I will watch some FINDING YOUR ROOTS!