Beware of blindly accepting published family trees!
Jacob Vanderhoof (1772-1847) and Ann Hopler (1772-1841) lived and died in Morris County, New Jersey. This couple produced thousands of descendants, myself included. As a consequence, they are found in lots of online family trees. Vanderhoof and variant spellings were common in New York and New Jersey in the 1700s and 1800s, resulting in many different people having similar first and last names living within miles of one another. The few written records that survive lack details that would help distinguish one person from another of the same name.
The result is lots of trees that merge different people into one, or criss-cross the lines.
As of this writing, I have not sorted all of the men named Jacob Vanderhoof. I'll produce articles as I figure out children, record sets, or locations.
A tree appeared with Jacob, Ann, and sixteen children. I explored this tree because I was curious about the sources about their daughter, Elizabeth (1799-1878). The picture for Elizabeth is that of a young woman. Elizabeth was well-past her youth when cameras and photographs were invented, so this cannot be her.
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| Tree of Jacob Vanderhoof, Ann Elizabeth Hopler, and sixteen children |
I looked at the youngest offered child, Mary, born in 1822, when her mother was fifty. The only source is another family tree. This will not suffice.
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| Source for the life of Mary Vanderhoof is another tree |
In 1848, Mary Vanderhoof and J K Odell married in Sussex County, New Jersey. This was just before state-wide registry was required; however, the event was recorded at the county level and can be viewed online. From this record we see that the bride was described as "of Wantage." This is in Sussex County, about thirty miles northwest of Rockaway Valley in Morris County, where Jacob Vanderhoof and and Ann Hopler had resided before their deaths.
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| March 30, 1848. Mr J K Odell of Hardiston to Miss Mary Vanderhoof of Wantage. Sussex County, New Jersey Marriages 1828-1853 |
On October 30, 1861 Mary Odel died in Vernon, Sussex County. This record is also available online. State-wide registration was in the form of ledger books at this time. The cause of death was consumption, or tuberculosis. Her parents were Jacob and Elizabeth Vanderhoof.
Mary Odell has a memorial page at Find A Grave, along with a photograph of the stone. She was buried at Deckertown Union Cemetery in Wantage.
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| Mary Vanderhuff Odell (1823-1861) Memorial page at Find A Grave |
The above-mentioned sources don't help us definitively rule Mary in or out as a daughter of Jacob Vanderhoof and Ann Hopler. Without visiting this cemetery in person, we can check for other Vanderhoofs buried there.
We find Jacob A Vanderhuff (1791-1870) and Elizabeth Swan (1793-1870) listed in the same cemetery as Mary. They seem more likely to be her parents. (Yes, Mary is listed as their daughter at Find A Grave. This is because I requested this change after finding and reviewing documents.)
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| Jacob A Vanderhuff (1791-1870) Memorial page at Find A Grave |
The will of Jacob A Vanderhuff is viewable online. He left his estate to his living children and to three of his grandchildren, "children of John K Odell and my daughter Mary, now deceased."
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| Will of Jacob A Vanderhuff of Vernon, Sussex County, New Jersey. Proved August 17, 1870. |
This helps chip away at one bit of inaccuracy in the Vanderhoof tree. More to come.
