Week 7 2022: Landed #52Ancestors — Making Sense of it All

Michael J. McDonough immigrated to the United States from Ireland in about 1846. Try as I might, I have yet to definitively determine where in Ireland he came from (maybe Co. Clare) nor have I found the passenger list showing when he landed in the U.S. Ditto for his wife, Bridget (aka Delia) Dunigan. The records I have thus far located begin with the 1850 U.S. census which tells me that Michael and Bridget were both born in Ireland, he in 1824, she in 1825, twere recently married, lived in Clinton, New Jersey, and he was a gardener.

It is likely that Michael and Bridget came to the U.S. to escape the famine that devastated Ireland in the 1840’s and onward. It is also likely that neither one of them were land-owners in Ireland. Even though the 1850 census says he was a gardener, it wasn’t until the next year that he bought about ten acres in Clinton, Essex County, New Jersey, for $1,225.00.[1] Two years later, Michael acquired additional property in Clinton consisting of almost two acres.[2]

Because I have done smuch research on my husband’s family here in the Mid-West, I am spoiled by land descriptions that are basically either a square or rectangle. When Kansas was opened for non-native settlement in 1854, the surveyors laid out townships consisting of thirty-six sections that were one-mile square using the “Rectangular Survey System.”[3] As an example, my husband’s second great-grandfather owned the west-half of the NW quarter of Section 28 in Township 28: an eighty-acre rectangle.[4] Easy-peasy to figure out. Michaels farms were described by degrees and minutes, chains and links, and pre-existing landmarks. Not so easy-peasy.

Thirty Connecticut families purchased what became Essex County from the Lenni Leanpe Tribe in 1666.[5] One of the four original counties of present-day New Jersey, Essex County was established by the “East Jersey Legislature” in 1682.[6] The system of measuring land in the original thirteen colonies and most of the Eastern states is called “Metes and Bounds.” Each element of the description of the property usually consists of three parts: and object or location, a compass direction, and a distance.[7]

For Michael’s first farm the land description starts:

Beginning at a state in the East Corner of Crowel Wilkensons lot from thence running along the line of said Porters land North fifty degrees and ten minutes East six chains and seventeen links to a stake in a spring along the side of Lighting Brook thence still along this line North sixty one and a quarter degrees east two changes and twelve links hence….[8]

Doubt I will find the stake in the middle of Lighting Brook if I looked today.

In 1860, Michael (now calling himself a “Horticulturist”) reported his real estate was worth $2,000. A 1859 map of Clinton shows an “M Donehue” as a landowner.[9] I believe this is actually Michael because it is where Michael’s farm was laid out in later maps and there is no “M. Donehue” in the deed index for Clinton.

A short word about where Michael (and later his sons) had his farms. I grew up in the town of Maplewood, New Jersey, which in the 1800’s was sometimes called Clinton. However, the history of this little community is a bit complicated and involves multiple names and numerous boundary changes. From the late-eighteenth century, it was called alternatively Jefferson Village, Newark Farms, Camptown, North Farms, Clinton, Middleville,[10] Hilton, South Orange Township, and, lastly Maplewood (where Michael’s farm was located is still called the “Hilton” section).[11] These various town names are important to keep in mind to make sure I am researching in the right community at the right time.

By the 1860’s, Michael and most every other farmer grew “Hilton Strawberries.”[12] Initially developed by the inventor Seth Boyden, many farmers in the area grew these ginormous and apparently delicious strawberries to great acclaim.[13] My grandmother (Michael’s granddaughter) was proud of her family’s green thumbs. And also, of her Irish heritage (she told me she voted for JFK because he was Irish, Catholic, and very handsome).

Bridget and Michael had six children and all three of their sons worked on the farm. Eventually, two sons went on to other occupations later in life. My great-grandfather (also named Michael) stayed working as a farmer/gardener and farm laborer until his sixties. My grandmother, Mae, was born on the farm in 1883 and lived in and around Maplewood her entire life and in an apartment on my same block when I was a kid.

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[1] Essex County, New Jersey, Deed Book T7: 574-576, Eleazer Porter and wife to Michael McDonough, 13 October 1851; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSYH-LSGT-B?cat=215486 : accessed 12 February 2022).

[2] Essex County, New Jersey, Deed Book P8: 330-332, Charles M. Wilkinson and wife to Michael McDonough, 10 August 1853; digital image, FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSYH-C3MP-J?cat=215486 : accessed 12 February 2022).

[3] Kansas Historical Society, “Kansas Civil Townships and Independent Cities” (https://www.kshs.org/p/kansas-civil-townships-and-independent-cities/11308 : accessed 12 February 2017). The “Rectangular Survey System” of land measurement was authorized by the Congressional Land Act of 1785 and the Federal Land Act of 1796. “Research Tip – Measuring Land,” St. Louis Genealogical Society (https://stlgs.org/research-2/publications/guides-to-research/genealogy-research-tips/research-tip-measuring-land : accessed 2 February 2022).

[4] Neosho County, Kansas, Deed Book J: 614, Jacob Plyborn and wife to G.W. Baty, 17 May 1875; Office of the Register of Deeds, Erie, Kansas.

[5] “History of Essex County, NJ,” The County of Essex, NJ (https://essexcountynj.org/history/ : accessed 22 Feb 2022).

[6] Ibid.

[7] “Research Tip – Measuring Land,” St. Louis Genealogical Society.

[8] Essex County, New Jersey, Deed Book T7: 574-576, Eleazer Porter and wife to Michael McDonough, 13 October 1851.

[9] Henry Francis Walling, Baker & Tilden, and H.F. Walling’s Map Establishment, Map of Essex County, New Jersey: from surveys (New York: Baker & Tilden, 1859); digital image, Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3813e.la000447/ : accessed 20 February 2022).

[10] Called “Middleville” because it was midway between Morristown and Newark on the Newark-Springfield Turnpike, a toll-road for stage coaches. “The Hilton Section: Many Names, One Identity,” Durand-Hedden House & Garden Association (https://www.durandhedden.org/archives/articles/the_hilton_section_many_names_one_identity : accessed 19 February 2022).

[11] “A Short History of Maplewood,” Maplewood Historic Preservation Commission (https://www.historicmaplewood.com/maplewood/developmental-history-of-maplewood/#_ftn9 : accessed 20 February 2022).

[12] Mary Oakley Dawson, “Seth Boyden & The Strawberry Era” in “The Hilton Section,” Helen B. Bates, ed., Maplewood Past and Present: A Miscellany(Maplewood, NJ: Friends of the Maplewood Library, 1948), 106.

[13] “Hilton Strawberries: Always Sold at Tip-Top Prices,” The Rural New-Yorker: A Journal for the Suburban and Country Home, vol. LXI, no. 2738 (19 July 1902): 496; digital images, Google Books (https://www.google.com/books/edition/Moore_s_Rural_New_Yorker/LblGAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Hilton+Strawberries%22&pg=PA496&printsec=frontcover : accessed 20 February 2022).