The previous post of January 10, 2021, revised the placement of two pairs of grandsons of Hubert Brower. Mentioned in that post is a descendant chart of Hubert Brower's descendants for a few generations that was generated based on what was known in 2017. This new chart available here, revises and now supersedes the 2017 chart. Please refer to the January 10, 2021 post, researched and contributed by David Schuler, for details.
Some Descendants of Hubert Brower (Revised Chart)
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The following is contributed by David Schuler. It was originally posted in the Comments section of the post of May 21, 2017, "Y-DNA Testing Identifies Another Branch of Descendants of Hubert Brower."
David has also provided an Xcel Spreadsheet mentioned below. It is accessible here. David can be contacted through Ancestry.com's internal messaging service. A link to his "tree" at Ancestry.com is provided below. David's work, which now follows, would revise the "Revised Chart of Descendants Expanded to Five Generations," found beginning on page 2 of this document from 2017.
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Being cooped up during the pandemic has permitted me to devote a ridiculous amount of time to Brower family mystery. This time I’ve waded into Coventry Township and made a few discoveries using mostly tax lists and deeds.
This most significant discovery is that John Brower of Randolph County and Henry Brower of Bedford County could not have been the sons of John Brower (son of Hubert). However, Christian Brower (son of Hubert) did have sons John and Henry that were of the right age and much more likely to be the John and Henry that went to Randolph County and Bedford counties. Here is information that support that claim and a few other interesting findings.
· Christian Brower appears in Vincent Township Tax lists in 1734, 1735/6, 1737, 1740. Henry Brower is in the Vincent Township Tax lists in 1740. There is a gap in tax records between 1740 and 1747. All three (Christian, Henry and John) appear in the Coventry township tax list in 1747 and years after.
· A John Brower Jr appears in the Coventry 1756 Tax List as an inmate (i.e. an adult male married or widowed, landless). In 1757 “Christian Brower and John Brower his son” are taxed in Coventry. John Brower Jr appears again in the 1758 Tax List before disappearing. Assuming he is most likely above the age of 21 in 1756. His birth year is project to be 1735 or earlier.
· Manual Brower appears in the Coventry 1763 tax list as an inmate. That puts his birth year at about 1742.
· The Brower Family Circle has this significant clue. I was not able to find this record, but with this much detail, I assume it to be valid.
16 Jan 1773 - The following Legacies paid agreeable to directions of the Will: To
The Widow -30
Mary Bowman, stepdaughter - 15
John Bowman, stepson -20
John Brower, oldest son -169lbs
Abraham Wenger's wife, eldest dau -169lbs
Henry Brower, second son -169lbs
Emart (Emanual) third son -169lbs
Barbara Miller, second dau -169lbs
Christian Brower, 4th son -169lbs
Peter Brower -169lbs
Enoch Brower -169lbs
Susannah Urmy (Urney) 3rd dau -169lbs
David Brower, youngest son -169lbs
· According to findagrave, Abraham Wenger’s wife, Anna, was born Mar 1734. Based on the above, Christian’s second son Henry would have been born between 1735 and 1741. That fits with the notion that Henry Brower of Bedford County had children beginning about 1760.
· Henry Brower is found in the Bedford County tax records (then Cumberland County) in Air Township in 1768-1773 and then in Bethel Township (Bedford County) after that.
· We know John Brower (son of Hubert Brower) owned 161 acres from the 21 Apr 1743 Indenture (Chester County Deed Bk V pg 11). We also know that John and Susannah Brower sell a portion of that land (114a) on 30 May 1770 to son Daniel Brower (Chester County Deed Bk V pg 9). This is reflected in the tax records as John Brower goes from paying taxes on 153a in 1765 to just 40a (average) between 1766 and 1776. Daniel Brower (son of John) begins paying taxes in Coventry in 1766 on 100a (some years 120a).
· 30 May 1777 the inventory of the estate of John Brower indicates the plantation in his possession is worth 300lbs. While looking for a deed for this “plantation” I came across a 7 Oct 1785 Indenture between Daniel and Catherine Grubb of Coventry and John Bach of Coventry (Chester County Deed Bk F2 Pg 100) that referenced the 21 Apr 1743 indenture between Sebastian and Isabella Wagoner and John Brower for 161a. It also indicates John Brower died intestate “leaving issue Daniel Brower, John Brower, Henry Brower and Elizabeth the wife of Christian Holderman to whom the above mention tract of land descended”. It also mentions the following two indentures (neither of which I could find, but no doubt existed).
o 7 Feb 1781 Indenture where Daniel and Mary Brower, Henry and Elizabeth Brower, and Christian and Elizabeth Holderman release their share of the 46a (part of the 161a) to their brother John Brower.
o 3 Sep 1783 Indenture where John and Mary Brower sell the 46a to Daniel and Catherine Grubb
· Henry (son of John Brower) buys 62a next to John and Henry Brauer in a 27 Oct 1773 Deed. He appears in the Coventry tax lists beginning in 1774.
· John (son of John Brower) appears in tax list for Coventry beginning in 1779. He is a Freeman (single) in 1779-1780, but is married to Mary by 3 Sep 1783. Far too late to be the John Brower that had children baptized in York County that eventually went to Randolph County, NC.
· Henry and John (sons of John Brower) are found in Bedford/Franklin County, Virginia tax lists beginning in 1785.
· The children of Christian Brower (son of Hubert) that also went to Franklin County, Virginia include Christian Brower, Barbara (Brower) Miller (wife of Tobias Miller), Enoch Brower, David Brower and stepson John Bowman.
· It’s not clear when Christian Brower married the widow Eve Bowman or which children belong to her. However, her son John Bowman pays tax in 1775 (probably for Eve’s 42a left to her by Christian) which would indicate he was probably born by 1754 and the marriage would have occurred after that.
· The 23 May 1806 deed selling the 44a (Chester County Deed Bk A3 pg 199) that Christian Brower left to his wife, Eve, only mentioned the surviving children of Christian. I find it strange that shares did not go to the heirs of John and Henry.
Hope this helps others. Viewing the sources and family relationships from my tree on Ancestry might help make sense of it all. Attached is a Tax List spreadsheet with 3 tabs (Randolph, Coventry, and Franklin) that I created to help figuring out the families. I was not able to access court records…so there may be some more details waiting to be found for someone with access to those records.
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In effect, what David's work does is switch the two sons (John and Henry) of John Brower (d.1777) and Susannah, of Coventry, Pennsylvania, with the two sons (John and Henry) of Christian Brower (d.1771) who was also of Coventry.
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This morning I received a note from Perry Brewer from up in New Brunswick, Canada, informing me of the passing of William B. Bogardus. You can find his note in the comments on the post of August 15, 2012. Bill died a few weeks ago on December 5th. An obituary can be found online here.
Those who frequent this website would have encountered the mention of Bill's name in many posts. And of course there is the "William B. Bogardus Collection," which bears his name. He didn't give it that name. I did. But I'm sure he didn't mind. Bill very generously gave me physical possession of the very large collection of material he laboriously collected over many years. It consisted of published pieces, notes, and mostly correspondence between Bill and his uncountable "Cousins." His intent was to compile and publish a genealogy of the descendants of Adam Brouwer, of which he was one. However, along about 2008 he came to the realization that he would not be able to complete that quest, and so he passed the material on to me. It was a lot of stuff. In the pages of this blog, somewhere, you might find my comments on just how much. Even with all that, he mentioned to me that it was but a fraction of the material and correspondence that he had collected regarding his foremost mission, a genealogy of the descendants of Anneke Jans through seven generations, which sadly too, he apparently did not get to finally publish.
I spent countless hours over many, many months with this material. Much of it was correspondence, and to put it all in context you have to remember that Bill started this work back in the 1960s, long before there was an internet and email and terabits of digitized documents and publications available online. Everything had to be done the "old fashioned way" through handwritten or typed letters, travel to and from libraries and archives and court houses, spending hours over and money on copy machines. You get the idea. I very often found myself stopping in the middle of whatever it was I was looking at to just think about and marvel at how much time, effort and money Bill had to have spent accumulating it all. The most impressive part was the correspondence with his "Cousins." It started in the late 1960s and went right through to the early 2000. Hand written letters with questions and queries, literally hundreds of them. I can imagine that when his Anneke Jans correspondence was added in he had perhaps a few thousand correspondents sending questions and requests from all over. And as far as I can ascertain, he answered everyone of them! And not just with a short note, but with a letter, sometimes a rather lengthy one, typed out on his stationary. I was amazed. I would just try and imagine the amount of time he spent just answering his mail. I don't know that I could have done it. I don't know that too many people out there could have done it. And sometimes the correspondence would go back and forth over a period of months and even years. He always answered. That's what stuck with me the most. He always answered.
In 1996 Bill published, Dear "Cousin": A Charted Genealogy of the Descendants of Anneke Jans Bogardus (1605-1663) to the 5th Generation. If you are a researcher of Anneke Jans and her descendants it is the place to start (search online and you'll find copies for sale). As mentioned, Bill had hoped to expand this work to seven generations of descendants and to publish it in a traditional journal type format. Bill was also a co-author with Richard Brewer and Scott Kraus on "DNA Analysis: Adam Brouwer Berckhoven, Elias Brouwer of New Jersey and John Brewer of Ohio," which was published in the New York Genealogical and Biographical Record in 2007 (Vol. 138, no. 4). This work was groundbreaking in that, as far as I can tell, it was the first article accepted and published by one of the "major" genealogical journals that focused on using DNA analysis to sort out lines of paternal ancestry. It demonstrated that Adam Brouwer of Gowanus, L. I. and Jan Brouwer of Flatlands, L. I. were not in anyway related and that anyone living today who was uncertain as to which one their Brower or Brewer ancestry would lead, could settle the question with a simple Y-DNA test from a direct male ancestor. The article was there as a seminal part of the early years of the Brewer DNA Project, and I also have to mention that Bill was, unsurprisingly, very generous with his time in helping and answering questions of the earliest participants in the Project. Myself included.
And so, for myself, and I'm sure for many others who have accessed some of Bill's collection through the pages of this website, and who had the chance to correspond or speak to him, I'd just like to thank Bill for all the selfless work and effort he put into solving so many genealogical questions. The fruit of Bill's efforts will hopefully live on.
Merry Christmas Bill.
Merry Christmas everybody.
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I may or may not have previously made this file from the William B. Bogardus Collection available online. I came across it again while working on cleaning up and reorganizing all that I've collected over the past two decades. So, in the event that I haven't done this before, here is a link to a twenty-six page PDF of pages from American Biography: A New Cyclopedia. This is a large multi-volume work spanning many years and you can find a bit more, including links to various volumes, online at Hathi Trust Digital Library. Volumes are also probably available through Google Books and the Internet Archive and perhaps other websites. You'll have to poke around.
William B. Bogardus collected the pages pertaining to men named BROWER and BREWER, and I scanned them all into one PDF document with Bill's index card notes at the forefront. There are eight or nine different profiles here. Some also appear in other late 19th and early 20th century works that are similar in scope to American Biography: A New Cyclopedia, but I don't believe any of the others have as many men profiled. The PDF I created is now online and available here with this link.
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Here is a new page of links to pages and websites that cover varied aspects of the history of New Netherland and early New York. This list was sent to me by Jennifer Fuller who is a history tutor. One of her students, Thomas is his name, came across a webpage with where these (and a few other) links had been posted. That site is a commercial website for a law firm (Parker/Waichman LLP) which also included links for legal services, and because of that fact I'd rather not provide a direct link here (but you, the reader, can certainly search for it if you so desire). At any rate, I looked through and selected many for inclusion on the new page, "History of New Netherland" links. Some pages are more scholarly, more in depth than others. Some are rather basic, and a couple are just fun. Many are pages within larger websites and certainly those websites may be of interest to many as well.
Thank you Jennifer, and Thomas, (and Parker/Waichman LLP).
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The Brouwer Genealogy Database includes a profile of William Goulding/Goulder whose grandson, Joseph Goulder, married Hannah Daws who in turn had previously been the wife of Derck Brouwer, son of Jan Brouwer and Jannetje Jans. Although this correction does not effect the descendants of Derck Brouwer, it should still be addressed as the notion originated with a published account of William Goulder.
The correction is in regards to the possible son of William, named Jacob (or Yacum) by Richard W. Cook in, "The Golder Family," published in the Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey in volumes 29 and 30. In volume 29, at page 51, Cook suggests that Jacob Gouldt who with his wife Jannetje Cousart, had a son, Frans, baptized at the New York Reformed Dutch Church on 29 November 1691, is possibly a son of William Goulder. Further research is conclusive in demonstrating that Jacob "Gouldt" is not a son of William Goulder, but is instead Jacobus Goelet who was a school-master in New York City and later a book-seller and stationer.
Jacobus Gouleth, j.m., Van Buyck Sloot, and Janneken Cocher, j.d., Van N. Yorck, both living there (New York) had marriage banns published 28 December 1687 at the New York Reformed Dutch Church. They were married on 10 January 1688. The couple had ten children baptized at the New York Reformed Dutch Church between 1689 and 1708. In the baptism records, Jacob's surname is variously spelled as Goulet (1689-1696) Gouldt (just once, 1691, the record referred to by Cook, and this may simply be a typo or transcription error with e misunderstood or mistranscribed as d), and Goelet (1699-1708). Janneken's (or Jannetje's) surname varies as Sozard (1689 and just this once), Cousart (1691, 94), Coussaert (1696), Cosaer (1699, 1701), and Cosaar (1700, 02, 04, 08). She has been identified as the daughter of Jacques Casjou whose surname appears in numerous records from this period with varied spellings too numerous to go through here, but among them, Cousart. Her mother was Lydia Willems who appears as a witness for the baptism of Janneken's first child (Jacob) in 1689. I have not looked into Lydia Willems ancestry. All of the ten baptisms include names of witnesses (sponsors) and none are named Goulding/Goulder, nor do any appear to be associated with members of the Goulding family. Many of the witnesses' names do repeat, but they appear to more likely be close friends and associates of Jacob Goelet, rather than relations. That is the impression I get anyway, and perhaps someone with a greater interest in this family would prefer to research this further.
The will of Jacob Goelet of New York City, stationer, shopkeeper, "and now in good health," was written 15 September 1722. It was proved 2 September 1731 and is found in New York Wills 11:167. In his will, Jacob mentions his wife, "Janitie," and five children, Jacob, Jan, Raphael, Aefie and Phillipus. The abstract is found in New York (County) Surrogate's Court. Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York (Vol. III 1730-1744). Collections of the New York Historical Society. New York: Printed for the Society, 1894): 37. Here the editor notes (38-9) that Jacob Goelet's place of business in New York was called the "Sign of the Bible," and also his dwelling place was located at what is now Hanover Square directly opposite 114 Pearl Street. And that "for many years before his death (was) the clerk of the Dutch church, and the records of baptism, etc. are in his handwriting." With this, I would suggest that Jacob's surname is most accurately, Goelet.
In short, Jacob Gouldt, actually, Jacob Goelet, the father of a son Frans who was baptized 26 November 1691, is not a son of William Goulding/Goulder. Whether or not William Goulder did have a son named Jacob (or Yacum) as per Cook, who may be found elsewhere, is something I have not investigated and cannot comment on one way or the other.
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