Cornelia Brokaw

Life

References for this account: [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

Where they lived

• 1850: franklin-township-somerset-nj

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 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.
• [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.

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

See also

• Browse the list of names
• See this family in the full tree
• Browse all original records