So Catharine's parents were Peter Fox and Mary Thomas.
And Capt. John's parents were Joseph Fox and Jane "Jennie" Wilson.
So Catharine and John were NOT siblings, but Catharine's father and John's father WERE brothers.
That's right. Peter and Joseph had one other brother--Phillip.
Phillip was born in 1760.
JOSEPH in 1753.
And PETER in 1755.
According to some "ancestral file" information on familysearch.org these were the children of JOHN PETER & ELISTATE FOX. And all three boys were born in New Jersey. That part of New Jersey which was the winter camp site of the Continental Army in 1779 and again in 1779/80. That part of New Jersey was named Morris County on the 15th of March 1739 and then in 1753 Sussex County was created out of Morris County land.
A little more research clarified that John Peter married Elsie Tate, so she became Mrs. Elsie (Tate) Fox.
John Peter Fox was born in 1720 in "German Valley" later Morris County, New Jersey. And the file tells us that Elsie Tate was born the same year. And since their first child Joseph was born in 1753 we can figure that John Peter and Elsie Tate probably got married around that time or at least probably before 1753.
We haven't had the chance yet to do much history reading directly pertaining to "German Valley." Although we were as terrified as everybody else reading about the brutal "Hessians" in the general Revolutionary War history. But that was war and all sides exhibited brutality not just the German soldiers.
The ancestral file gives us the names of the parents of John Peter:
Johannes Pieter FUCHS (FOX, born around 1679)
Anna Margartha Maria FUCHS (FOX), born prior to 1713
This couple had three children.
Elizabeth, born 14 Feb 1713
Fox Hill, Morris, New Jersey
George, born 1700, Palatinate, Germany
DEATH 27 Apr 1751, Hunterdon Co., New Jersey
JOHN PETER, born 4 Mar 1720
German Valley, Morris Co, N.J.
DEATH 17 Mar 1783, Sussex, NJ
BURIAL 10 Mar 1783
The file says Anna Margartha Maria Fox died after 1720 which is the year that JOHN PETER was born.
JOHN PETER died the 17th of MARCH 1783 in then Sussex County, New Jersey. But at least two of his sons, JOSEPH and PETER moved to and eventually died in Perry Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania.
JOSEPH married Emily Sac about 1778/80 and they had a child named Elizabeth Bettie Fox. This child was born in New Jersey in 1779/80 but died on the 11th of November 1875 in Perry Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania.
JOSEPH married again in 1789 to Miss Jane "Jennie" Wilson in what would become Morgantown, West Virginia. JOSEPH and Jane had eleven children...
We pick up more of that story in Grandmother Matilda's web place!
Looks like Martin came first on the 2nd of August 1790 in Perry Township.
And Isaac came second in 1793.
Rebecca came along third in 1794.
Then there was a period of no babies again until 1800 when came our JOHN on the 15th of JUNE.
In '02 came another son.
And October of 1803 James Wilson Fox joined the family.
Charity was born in 1805 two years before Mary (in 1807).
Elizabeth was next--the NINTH in 1809.
And from afar it seems that neither the son nor the daughter born in 1811 survived, but that may not be the whole story, there are many pieces of the puzzle we're still working on here.
Of these children it was JOHN who grew up in Perry Township to become Captain John Fox. But a cousin reminds of doing genealogy work that just because we find a lot of people in the same household on a Census doesn't necessarily mean that they were "family."
The file information tells us that Captain John was married twice in his eighty-two years of life.
He married Clarissa Jones DYE of Greene County who was also born in the new century year 1800.
But he also married his cousin Catharine, 20 years his senior.
While the ancestral file tells us that he and Catharine had one child:
James FOX born 25 Feb 1836 Greene Co, PA
We find them with a house full more in the census of 1850! And I believe that is where we find OUR Henry Fox. It took us quite a long time to check his age and place with all the other facts about his life we could find, so we don't put him in Captain John's household lightly.
There they've got...
An 18 year old HENRY, and
Fifteen year old Eti.
James is 14.
Luerettia, twelve.
Maryann is ten.
Malissa only six.
And Lady Mary is recorded as being 22 but she's written down as "idiotic" and we'll wonder if this is (somehow?) the child Mary from Catharine's father's first marriage to an unknown spouse (who'd also been married to Frederick Gump) in the ancestral files whose name was MARY (but she was born in 1787, so...guess not). I know it gets a little confusing. We have a hard time sticking to direct line research and have to resist being pulled too far into other family story.
The 1850 Census does not show us relationship to head of household so we shouldn't assume that the seven young people are the children of JOHN & CATHARINE.
But we did receive word from the people at Cornerstone Genealogical Society that OUR HENRY was the child of Captain John and Catharine.
And then we did realize that John and Catharine were cousins.
While Captain John's father was Joseph Fox, Catharine's was PETER FOX (born 1755 to John Peter and Elistate FOX). Peter married Mary Thomas.
PETER & MARY had seven children.
Margaret, Elizabeth, William, Mary, Peter, CATHARINE (born 5 MAY 1801, died 30 APRIL 1858), and Henry (born in April of 1803, NOT our Henry who married Clarissa).
If Catharine was born in MAY of 1801 and Captain John was born in JUNE of 1800, well that makes them almost the same age! So...maybe we're reading the US CENSUS 1850 wrong.
Have a look...
Isn't that simply astonishing? Being able to look so far back in time using the tools we've got these days.
We'll have to do some more comparison of census information to get a clearer picture.
From Edmund Drake Halsey's book HISTORY OF MORRIS COUNTY, NEW JERSEY (published in 1882 by WW Munsell & Co. of NY) we get that there were Evangelical Lutherans at German Valley who erected a church in 1745 at Sucasanna near Basking Ridge. So we find ourselves again piecing together Way Back story by looking at military and church involvement. De ja vous.
Out to a pancake breakfast the other day Aunt Lara sure had fun filling in her parents about their relatives ALL coming from New Jersey. Hers did? His did? They pointed at each other as the syrup smoothed out over the short stack.
Is that why you and Eddie are always talking about Hesh-yans?
Well yeah, that and we do connect on talking Revolutionary War, COLONIALS, you said you weren't into it!
Daddy's people were Hesh-yans?
Daddy's people, Nana's people, were PRUSSIANS. HESHANS was a pretty generic term for any German around during the American Revolutionary War.
Her people were from New Jersey? I thought you said they were from Oxford? Where we went for ice cream?!
Jersey too and then Pennsylvania and then West Virginia and upstate New York and Michigan and then Mama came back around to Connecticut WITH YOU.
Seriously? From Jersey?
And so were Daddy's Prussians! Although as usual in our family story, Mama's folks were everywhere that Daddy's folks were BEFORE Daddy's over here in America. Daddy's mother was Althea Elizabeth Bartling and her father was Earl Francis Bartling and it turns out that Earl Francis came from a long line of Prussians including ones that settled in New Jersey.
Okay, so you want the short story which is a long list of Bartlings who came before Earl Francis.
Earl Francis Bartling was born on the 18th of JUNE 1896 in Oaklyn, Camden County, New Jersey.
1896 Earl Francis was born to the parents:
August John Henry Bartling and Hannah Elizabeth Duffield.
1868 August John Henry Bartling was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
to the parents:
Heinrich Conrad Bartling and Caroline Eggers
1820 Heinrich Conrad Bartling was born in Friedrichsburg 5, Hessen, Prussia
to the parents:
Conrad Friedrich Wilhelm Bartling and Henriette Catharine Leiss
1796 Conrad Friedrich Wilhem Bartling was born in Friedrichsburg, Hessen, Prussia
to the parents:
Johann Conrad Bartling and Anna Maria Elisabeth Meyer
1764 Johann Conrad Bartling was born in Fuhlen, Hessen-Nassau, Prussia
to the parents:
Johann Hermann Bartling and Catharine Elisabeth Rese
1736 Johann Hermann Bartling was born in Reine, Prussia
to the parents:
Johann Toennies Bartling and Anna Sidonia Rsichmoeller
1694 Johann Toennies Bartling was born in Fuhlen, Hessen, Prussia
to the parents:
Johann Barthold Bartling and Anna Margaret Grawe
Johann Barthold Bartling was born in Fuhlen, Hessen-Nassau, Prussia
to the parents:
Toennies Bartling and Elisabeth Busch
Toennies Bartling was born in Fuhlen, Hannover, Prussia
to the parents:
HANS BARTLING and ILSABE GRAWER
HANS was probably born in 1585 in Fuhlen, Hannover, Prussia.
He married Ilsabe and they had EIGHT children:
Barthel Bartling
Christen Bartling
Churtt Bartling
Elisabeth Bartling
Henrich Bartling
Ilsabe Bartling
Johann Bartling
TOENNIES BARTLING (whose wife Elisabeth Busch was born in 1620)
This all comes to us from familysearch.org and obviously some serious research for which we are so grateful!
So far the only thing older than Hans that we're finding to connect into this research (trying to expand just genealogical facts) is the old news that...
On the 23rd of January 1579 there was a historic agreement. This was called the Treaty of Utrecht or the Union of Utrecht. And not unlike what we found in early America when the colonies united there were deputies from six different provinces who met at the talking tables and pledged they would act together as allies in the event of war.
Apparently the agreement also provided that each province of the Hapsburg Netherlands should be able to govern itself in its own way suggesting further similarity between old Europe and early America. In the United States it took the fevered for workable governance people a few years to accomplish individual constitutions for each state and each one was slightly different than the next.
Here's a little bit more about the Union of Utrecht.
Mama's bored by colonials but not by religion and faith.
Relating more with the Calverts than the Bartlings in this part of the story Mama says of Christianity divided into denominations...Why have pork chops when you can have steak?
Nothing against Lutherans, Mama points out, except they just share a loaf of bread.
Admittedly, I was confused about Mama's point of view until she explained that one major difference between Lutheran loaves of bread and Catholic Communion is that wafers are consecrated in Catholicism and as such BECOME the body and blood of Christ. I could tell from the details that when it comes to rituals of religion, the finer points ARE IMPORTANT to people. Being blocked from Mass meant more than having to worship in secret in the old days, it meant that something, some avowed, worldly, "power" was coming between the people and their beliefs. To not be allowed to receive Communion, consecrated by Priests, was an outrage to the sacred! And only one outrage in a series of actions taken to separate people from their freedom to BE who they were in religious terms and so in very human terms.
Daddy likens 21st century United States laws on care-giving and medical procedure by institutions to the troubles of the 1600's in England because it was then that principles were compromised by the development of frictional institutions and by factions WITHIN the same institutions. THAT turmoil is actually older than the 1600's and we're slowly making our way back in time and seeing where and why as we work on this Quilt.
As a researcher I have some academic freedom to mull over everything found on history and religion and it is this neutrality of query that makes me sound like I'm an alien to the human race without any passions and beliefs of my own. Yeah, I sound "academic" sometimes when I talk tree and history. Other times I sound like a kid being rather little compared to the relatives who came before, those are soaring tall through the tree tops with feet planted in ground. Mythologically ancestors are the giants in the humble-admitting phrase, We are standing on the shoulders of giants!
Anyway...we'll have to find our way into German ancestry to figure out more about all these differences in Germanic Americanism. But we can already phonetically hear the similarity in ladies' names like Anna Marghartha Maria Fuchs and Henriette Catharine Leiss Bartling.
