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Subject: Newark,NJ [New Netherlands to Enfgland 1664 ]colony of 1666,from Branford,Ct
Date: Sat, 4 Mar 2006 08:25:17 EST
Robert and Samuel Kitchel and Obadiah Bruen were among the forty-one
men from Guilford, Milford and New London to sign the Agreements as
was Rev. Abraham Pierson and twenty-three men from Branford. These
families were to move to Newark, New Jersey in 1666.
Samuel had grown up in the Puritan Plantation, taking the oath as a
Fidelity to conform himself as a freeman with full civil rights as a citizen,
having civil and private rights of Guilford. Samuel married Elizabeth,
daughter of John Wakeman and Elizabeth Hopkins, on 11 March 1656 in
New Haven. They made their home in New Haven where Samuel farmed.
They had four children while they lived in New Haven: Sarah born 1657, died
1657/8; Elizabeth born 1659, married first Seth Thopkins and second John
Bruen; Abigail born 1661, married John Ward; and Samuel Jr. about 1662
and died about 1693. In 1662 Samuel moved his family to Guilford and
became active in the plantation, serving as town agent and clerk. Born to
Samuel and Elizabeth in Guilford were Mary Allis in 1663, married Josiah
Ward, died in 1684 and Susanna born about 1665, married Jonathan
Baldwin and died after 1709. As result of the Royal Charter of
1662, the General Court at Hartford designated Samuel ensign of Guilford
until
his departure in 1667. Samuel's wife Elizabeth Wakeman died in 1665 at
Guilford.
After the death of Elizabeth, Samuel married Grace, born 13 July 1650,
daughter of Rev. Abraham Pierson Sr. and Abigail Mitchell, in 1666 at
Guilford. (Her brother Abraham Jr. was the first president of Yale.) The
family left that year to settle in Newark, New Jersey and had children Grace
born 1666, Newark, married Jonathan Bell, died 1694; Bethial born about
1669, probably died young and Abraham born 1679 Newark.
The family were among the second group of settlers to land at the bay
of Newark in May 1667. The bill of sale between the representatives of the
Puritan group and a number of Hakinsack Indians for the tract of land was
executed in July 1667. Signers representing the Puritans in this
transaction
were Samuel Kitchel, Obadiah Bruen, Michael Tomkins, John Browne and
Robert Denison. (A copy of the deed has been found in East Jersey Records.)
The settlers
of Newark escaped serious Indian troubles that plagued other settlements. It
has been a
proud boast of New Jersey that every acre of land was purchased from the
Indians.
The Newark Puritans sought only self-government and the right to a protestant
doctrine, but to achieve those aims there was a constant struggle between
the townspeople
and the regimes of the English and Dutch who had control over the area at
alternate
times. The records of the town of Newark until 1688 reflect that Samuel
Kitchel was
active in the affairs of the plantation. He was elected to positions of
arbitrator,
supervisor of working teams, town accountant, constable, grand juror,
magistrate and townsman
(equivalent to current city councilman) and others.
Robert Kitchel lived until 1672 and died in Newark, having lived to see some
of his
dreams of a New World where man could be free, come true. In April 1682,
Margaret
Sheafe Kitchel died at the home of her daughter, Joannna Peck, in Greenwich,
Connecticut. Samuel and Grace Pierson Kitchel both died in the year 1690 in
Newark.
The eldest son, Samuel Jr., was alive in 1684 but there was no further trace
of him
or any of hisdescendants found. The family was easy to trace in the early
years in the New World
because there was only one male surviving that produced heirs.
Samuel Kitchel's youngest child, Abraham, was born in Newark and lived there
until he was thirty-one years of age then removed to Hanover Township, Morris
County,
New Jersey. In 1703, Samuel married Sarah daughter of John Bruen, at Newark.
Their
children born in Newark were: Samuel born 6 January 1705, died 19 November
1732;
Grace born 10 March 1708, married Daniel Lindsley and died 12 September 1777
in
Morris County; and Joseph (later Judge) born 25 January 1712, married 1734
Rachel
daughter of Thomas Bates and Abigail or Elizabeth (blank) in Hanover and died
22
March 1779 in Parsippany, Morris County. Children born in Morris County were:
John
born 2 February 1714, married three times and died 9 January 1777; Mary
Allis born
July 1715, married Paul Leonard and died 29 March 1762 in Parsippany;
Abigail born
November 1717, married first in 1734 Edmund Crane and second in 1762 Paul
Leonard, the widowed husband of her sister Mary Allis, and died 20 August
1801 in Whippany;
and David born 7 November 1723, married 1745 Ruth Tuttle and died 28 December
1753 in Whippany. There were 5,455 decendants of Joseph, 2,641 descendants
of John
and 205 descendants of David that had been found by 1991.
During the Revolutionary War, the Kitchel family were strong patriots,
serving the
United States with honor in militia groups. When asked by the army if she
needed
protection the wife of a Kitchel said "Why do I need protection? My husband,
his brothers and their cousins are all in the militia."
The one blot on the Kitchel family record is that Grace, daughter of Joseph
Kitchel and Rachel Bates, married Samuel Ford. Samuel Ford was the son of
outstanding
family in Morristown, hosts to George Washington when he spent the winter in
Morristown. The son was quite a clever forger and did a good job of
disabling
the new Republic by creating the Panic of 1793 with his printed money. When
he
was found out, he skipped to Ireland and married (without benefit of a
divorce)
and had 3 children. He returned again in the later days of the war and
continued
his currency deals and again was at the point of being caught. So taking his
mother's maiden name Baldwin, he retired to the wilds of Virginia where he
married
again (without divorce) and became the patriarch of some prominent families
of
Virginia. Samuel Ford's line is also the line whose descendants include the
wife
of a president and the mother of the current president of the United States. "
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