Henry Stillwell

Life

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

Work and occupation

• Farmer

Where they lived

• 1850: franklin-township-somerset-nj
• 1855: 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 MARRIAGE, AND THE WIFE WHO WAS NOT THERE] He married at Somerset County on **18 March 1830**. The index names the bride **Catherine Brokaw**; his wife's own memorial biography gives that same date for her marriage, and she is **Cornelia Brokaw**. One marriage, misindexed, is far the likeliest reading — see Cornelia's page. If the register really says Catherine, then Nicholas, born about 1833, is a half-brother to Leah Adeline.
• [THE DROWNING — NOW WORTH CHASING] His widow's 1907 obituary said he died about fifty years before, and his mother's memorial gives his death year outright as **1856**. The biography on Cornelia's memorial flags a notice in **The Daily Telegraph of Jersey City for 1 September 1856** of a **Henry Stillwell drowned in the Delaware and Raritan Canal** — the canal that forms the western boundary of the Franklin Township where this family farmed. Two independent sources put his death in that year and the notice is in that year. It is not proof and the paper is not in Chronicling America, but this has gone from a curiosity to the most likely account of how he died, and the single document most worth finding on this line.
• His three siblings, from his mother's memorial: **Elizabeth (1807–1832), Leah (1810–1851) and Peter**. Note that he named his own daughter **Leah** Adeline, which is what a man does after a sister.
• [PARENTS FROM A BIOGRAPHY] **Daniel Stilwell (about 1771–1840) and Elcey Stryker Stilwell (1788–1833)** come from the same volunteer biography and are unverified here. Note that an Elcey born in 1788 would have been about eighteen at his birth, which is possible and worth checking rather than assuming.
• His occupation as a farmer, which only the obituary-at-second-hand supports.
• Whether the spelling is Stilwell or Stillwell. The 1850 census writes one L; his daughter's 1875 marriage writes two.
• **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.
• **Where this family sits among the American Stillwells is not established.** The standard published genealogy traces most of them from **Lieutenant Nicholas Stillwell**, who settled at Gravesend on Long Island in the seventeenth century, and follows that line into Hunterdon, Sussex and Monmouth counties. **Our people are in Somerset County** — Bedminster and Franklin Township — and the 1931 volumes were read in full and do not contain them. So this branch either descends from Nicholas by a path the book does not trace, or it does not descend from him at all. The book cited on Jeremiah's memorial, *The History of Lieutenant Nicholas Stillwell*, is a different work and is not online; it is the obvious next place to look.
• [ASKED AND ANSWERED: NO] **Lester Stillwell**, the eleven-year-old killed by a shark in **Matawan Creek on 12 July 1916** — one of the Jersey Shore attacks that Peter Benchley later drew on for *Jaws* — was a New Jersey Stillwell of the same era, and the question of a connection is a fair one. **Nothing connects him to this family.** He was of **Matawan in Monmouth County**; ours are of **Somerset**, some thirty miles off. The 1931 Stillwell genealogy, which does cover Monmouth, contains **neither Lester nor this family**. A shared descent from Lieutenant Nicholas Stillwell is likely enough for any two New Jersey Stillwells and would put them many generations apart, but it is a guess about a surname and not a finding. Written down because it is the kind of question that gets asked twice.
• [CONTROLLED NEGATIVE — THIS LINE IS AT THE LIMIT OF WHAT IS INDEXED] Three searches on 8 August 2026 all returned nothing: **no marriage of a Daniel Stilwell to an Elcey** anywhere; **no baptism or birth for a Henry Stilwell in Somerset County 1804–1809**; and Henry's own indexed records are only the four this archive already holds — the 1850 census, the 1830 marriage, the 1855 state census and his daughter Alice's death. The Dutch Reformed registers of Somerset County are not indexed, and everything further back on this line is behind them.
• [CONTROLLED NEGATIVE] Chronicling America was searched for the 1856 canal drowning. It holds **no Jersey City newspaper**, so *The Daily Telegraph* is not there. The one New York paper of the right week that mentions a Stillwell — the *New-York Dispatch* of 31 August 1856 — is reporting a U.S. Commissioner Stillwell in a bail case, not a drowning. The notice must be read on paper or on microfilm.

References

1. [1] Henry Stilwell household, 1850 census, Franklin Township, Somerset County, New JerseyBack to citation 1
2. [2] Henry Stilwell, 1855 New Jersey state census, Franklin Township, Somerset CountyBack to citation 2
3. [3] Death of Alice M. White, Manhattan, 19 January 1906Back to citation 3
4. [4] Marriage of Henry Stilwell and Catherine Brokaw, Somerset County, 18 March 1830Back to citation 4
5. [5] Find a Grave memorial for Cornelia Stryker Brokaw Stilwell, Elmwood Cemetery, North BrunswickBack to citation 5
6. [6] Cornelia Stillwell in the Peter Vroom household, 1860 census, Franklin Township, Somerset CountyBack 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] Find a Grave memorial for Elcey Stryker Stilwell (1788–1833), Hillsborough Reformed Church CemeteryBack to citation 8
9. [9] Find a Grave memorial for Jeremiah Stilwell, born Bedminster, Somerset County, 1768Back to citation 9
10. [10] Stillwell genealogy (1931), volumes 2 and 3 — searched, and this family is not in themBack to citation 10

See also

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