The father of Susannah was George Wiggins. He was my sixth great grandfather. I have found very little on this man. He is mentioned in books about the Cook and Peer families of Morris County.
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| Book by Louisa Caroline Freeman Hickerson about Cook family of Morris County, New Jersey. Available at the Morristown and Morris Township Library. |
In 1807, George Wiggins sold land in Hanover, Morris County to John Hinchman. This deed explained how George acquired the property. He purchased it from his father, Stephen Wiggins, and this deed was recorded in 1788. This document is a great example of defining family relationships in records other than birth, marriage, and death certificates.
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| Deed conveying land in Hanover, Morris County, New Jersey from George Wiggins to John Hinchman dated March 1807. See picture below for the enlargement of the relevant portion. |
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| George Wiggins purchased this property in Hanover from his father, Stephen Wiggins. That deed was recorded in 1788. |
Online trees can lead to records, or they can be entirely wrong. The latter has been my finding so far concerning George Wiggins.
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| Suspect family tree of George Wiggins |
Most trees have George's death in the year 1848. Their sources are other trees. This is not helpful.
After digging through many trees, I found two sources for this date.
The first source is a gravestone.
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| Picture of a blurry gravestone attributed to George Wiggins of Morris County, New Jersey |
Over at Find A Grave, I found this memorial page. This stone marks the burial place in New Hampshire for a child named George A Wiggin. In other words, not a grown man named George Wiggins who lived in New Jersey.
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| Find A Grave memorial page George A Wiggin died September 4, 1848, age 1 year, 9 months, 21 days. |
The other source for the year of death 1848 is this entry in the Ancestry database called "New Jersey, U.S., Deaths and Burials Index, 1798-1971."
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| Entry for George Wiggins, died November 1848 Database at Ancestry |
This is an older database that existed prior to the publication of ledger books of deaths; as such, they do not link to the relevant page in the ledger book. But- these entries trace back to a variety of sources, not only the official ledger books.
To obtain the exact book and page number for this death in the ledger books, I searched for George Wiggins in the index at the website of the New Jersey State Archives. Nothing.
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| Index of deaths for New Jersey 1848-1878 at the website of the New Jersey State Archives |
Remembering that the title of this database indicates that the records begin in 1798, prior to the 1848 start date of New Jersey's death ledgers, I looked at the entry again. A film number was included, 542528. This film number appears in the catalog of FamilySearch for an index of events recorded in newspapers from Trenton, Mercer County, New Jersey.
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| FamilySearch catalog for film 542528 Vital statistics index from Trenton newspapers, 1800-1900 |
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| Newspaper article about the murder of George Wiggins of Salem, New Jersey in November 1848 |
These two hints at Ancestry were blindly accepted by many family tree creators without examining the underlying records. This has resulted in numerous trees with the unsubstantiated year of death as 1848 for the George Wiggins of Morris County.
At this point in my research, I can only determine that George Wiggins died sometime after conveying property in 1807.
Question: Where can I find this earlier deed dated 1788? The collection of deeds at FamilySearch (New Jersey, Wills and Deeds, ca. 1700s-2017) starts around 1790 for Morris County. I searched without success for this deed at the website of the New Jersey State Archives in their database of Early Land Records, 1650-1900s.
If only people would take the time to check these records instead of blinding accepting and/or copying and pasting wrong information. Excellent sleuthing!
ReplyDeleteThank you for the mention on your blog, Linda.
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