Cornelia Brokaw

Life

References for this account: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]

Where they lived

• 1850: Franklin Township, Somerset County, New Jersey
• 1850: Franklin Township, Somerset County, New Jersey
• 1870:
• 1885:
• 1900: New Brunswick, Middlesex County, New Jersey
• 1895:

Use the place list first. The map below is optional.

The pins show approximate places. The line only joins them in time order; it does not prove the route travelled. 1 of the places listed above are recorded only as a county or country, so they are not pinned. Cemetery and burial places have red pins.

Historical context

These background articles explain the places, work, and events in this entry.

What we still don't know

• [THE PLOT, AND THE THREE-GENERATION QUESTION IT COULD ANSWER] She lies in Elmwood Cemetery, North Brunswick, Section E, Lot 33. This archive has long wanted to know whether three generations of women share that ground — Cornelia, her daughters Alice (buried at New Brunswick, 22 January 1906) and Leah Adelaine (buried there 1 February 1889) — since both daughters' burials are recorded only as "New Brunswick" with no cemetery named. Find a Grave cannot answer it. Searched 9 August 2026: no memorial for Leah Mayer (d. 1889), none for Alice White (d. 1906) in New Jersey, and not one Mayer of any kind in Elmwood Cemetery. The seven Stillwells and eight Brokaws who are there belong to other households. What would settle it is the cemetery's own interment card for Section E, Lot 33 — a family lot usually holds more than one burial, and if Alice and Leah are in it they will be on that card. Elmwood Cemetery at North Brunswick is still operating and its office holds the records.
• [THE FIRST WIFE WAS NEVER THERE] For a day this archive carried a Catherine Brokaw as Henry's first wife, on the strength of an index entry for a marriage at Somerset County on 18 March 1830. There is only one such marriage in the series, and Cornelia's memorial biography gives that exact date and place for her own marriage to Henry. Everything else agrees with her and nothing at all with a Catherine: Cornelia is Henry's wife in 1850, her maiden name is Brokaw on two independent records, every known child postdates 1830, and no Catherine Stilwell appears anywhere. The likeliest account is that the index misread the bride's given name and there was one marriage, not two. Catherine's page now redirects here. If the original register ever shows Catherine, this must be reopened — and the consequence would be that Nicholas is a half-brother to Leah.
• [THREE GENERATIONS IN ONE GROUND] The women of this family were buried within a mile of each other over eighteen years, at the Brunswicks in Middlesex County: Leah Adelaine Stillwell at New Brunswick in February 1889, brought back from Manhattan where she died; her sister Alice at New Brunswick in January 1906, brought back from Manhattan too; and their mother Cornelia at Elmwood Cemetery, North Brunswick, in July 1907. Two daughters came home from New York to be buried and their mother followed eighteen months after the second. Whether all three are in Elmwood is not established — the two daughters' records say only 'New Brunswick' — and if they are, it is one plot holding three generations of this line.
• [THE LAST FORTY YEARS, NOW LARGELY ON RECORD] This page once called the years after 1860 'forty-seven years and nothing found in them'. The memorial biography filled them, and four of its five censuses have now been checked and every one held: 1870, keeping house for William McGrath, 41, of Ireland, at New Brunswick; 1885, at Perth Amboy in George and Jane Liddell's house with young George S Liddell; 1900, at New Brunswick with her widowed daughter Sarah Danbury. She died in Sarah's house at 78 Lee Avenue, New Brunswick, New Jersey in 1907. 1895, at Perth Amboy with the Liddells again, in household 70. Only the 1905 entry is still unread.
• [A CURIOSITY, AND A USEFUL ONE] A Geni chart makes Gina Cacace and the actress Monica Potter fifth cousins once removed, through Abraham Caleb Brokaw and his wife Maria. The arithmetic checks: Gina is seven generations below Abraham and Monica six, which is fifth cousins with one remove. The connection rests on a user-built tree and is not evidence of anything. What is worth having is the corroboration. That chart was built by strangers, for another purpose, and independently of the Find a Grave biography this archive used — and the two agree on Abraham Brokaw, on his death in 1826, on Cornelia's dates of 1809 to 1907, and on a son named John. Two independent secondary sources agreeing is not proof, but it is a great deal better than one.
• [PARENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY, NOT A RECORD] Abraham C. Brokaw and Mariah Stryker, married in a Dutch Reformed church in Somerset County on 8 January 1792, come from the volunteer biography on her memorial and from nothing this archive has verified. That marriage record, if it exists in the Somerset series or a Dutch Reformed register, is the single document that would confirm her descent — and it would explain the Stryker in her name as her mother's.
• [UNVERIFIED] The same biography gives her a twin sister, Elizabeth Polhemus Brokaw, also born 15 March 1809. Twins would be an unusual thing for a volunteer to invent, and it is entirely unverified.
• [RESOLVED] The 1860 census entry is hers after all. The biography explains the difficulty that made it only probable here: the enumerator wrote her name 'Carmelia', and the household holds her son Simon, 9, her daughter Jane, 24, and Peter Vroom. The age of 44 remains wrong for a woman born in 1809 and is simply an error on the sheet.
• Where she was between 1870 and her death in 1907, and her 1907 obituary, which the biography quotes and which would be a real record naming five surviving children.
• Her grave has no headstone photograph.
• This is a New Netherland Dutch family, and the surnames say so on their own. Brokaw is the anglicised Bourgeois of a Huguenot family long settled among the Dutch of Somerset County; Stryker is Strycker; and the names standing around this household in the records — Polhemus, Vroom, Van Dyck, Van Deventer, Ditmars — are all New Netherland families. The marriage of Cornelia's parents in 1792 was in a Dutch Reformed church. Franklin Township in Somerset County was one of the densest Dutch settlements in New Jersey. That is worth stating plainly, because it is the only non-British, non-Irish, non-Italian, non-German strand anywhere in this side of the family, and it is easy to miss behind a name as English-looking as Stilwell.
• Independently corroborated. An autosomal DNA test taken by a living descendant returns a small Dutch component — which is what this line, and only this line, predicts. Henry and Cornelia sit far enough back that their contribution should be a few per cent, and that is what the test shows. It confirms nothing about any individual here; it confirms that a Dutch strand of about the right size exists where the paper says it should.
• [FOUR READINGS OF HER BIRTH] 15 March 1809 on her memorial; 1810 by her age of 60 in 1870; March 1811 in 1900; about 1816 by her age of 44 in 1860. The month is March wherever a month is given. The memorial is preferred here as the only one offering a day, and the spread is left visible.

References

1. [1] Henry Stilwell household, 1850 census, Franklin Township, Somerset County, New JerseyBack to citation 1
2. [2] Death of Alice M. White, Manhattan, 19 January 1906Back to citation 2
3. [3] Find a Grave memorial for Cornelia Stryker Brokaw Stilwell, Elmwood Cemetery, North BrunswickBack to citation 3
4. [4] Cornelia Stillwell in the Peter Vroom household, 1860 census, Franklin Township, Somerset CountyBack to citation 4
5. [5] Death of Leah A. Mayer, Manhattan, 30 January 1889Back to citation 5
6. [6] Marriage of Alice Stilwell Wilson and William White, Manhattan, 23 November 1876Back to citation 6
7. [7] Biography on the Find a Grave memorial for Cornelia Stryker Brokaw Stilwell (memorial 295247056)Back to citation 7
8. [8] Marriage of Henry Stilwell and Catherine Brokaw, Somerset County, 18 March 1830Back to citation 8
9. [9] Geni relationship chart: Gina D. Leahey and Monica Potter, fifth cousins once removed (created 3 March 2025)Back to citation 9
10. [10] Cornelia Stillwell in the Danberry household, 1900 census, New Brunswick Ward 2Back to citation 10
11. [11] George Liddell household, 1885 New Jersey state census, Perth Amboy Ward 1Back to citation 11
12. [12] Cornelia Stillwell in the McGrath household, 1870 census, New BrunswickBack to citation 12
13. [13] George Liddle household, 1895 New Jersey state census, Perth AmboyBack to citation 13
14. [14] Find a Grave memorial 295247056 — Cornelia Stryker Brokaw Stilwell, Elmwood Cemetery, Section E, Lot 33Back to citation 14

See also

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