Leah Adelaine Stillwell

Life

References for this account: [1][2][3][4][5]

Where they lived

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. 2 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

• Dates, places, occupations and relationships imported from the 1 August 2026 Geni export require verification against original records.
• Her birth, her parents and her death are all unrecorded. The New Jersey marriage index of 1875 gives no ages and no parents, so the marriage return itself, or a census of the Essex County household, is the next step.
• [CONFLICT] Her age. The 1850 census makes her **4**, so born about **1846**; her death record in 1889 makes her **36**, so born about **1853**. Seven years, and the two cannot both be right. The census is the earlier and the more nearly contemporary with the birth, and is preferred here — but a death age is given by whoever was in the room, and 1853 would still leave her the youngest child in 1850, unborn. Her birth or baptism record would end it. **A Geni chart independently gives 1846**, agreeing with the census against the death record. That is a tree and not a record, but it is a second voice for 1846 and the reading is kept.
• What she died of, and why at 42. The certificate carries a cause the index does not.
• **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.

References

1. [1] Michael Mayer and L. Adeline Stillwell marriage, Essex County, New Jersey, 9 June 1875Back to citation 1
2. [2] Henry Stilwell household, 1850 census, Franklin Township, Somerset County, New JerseyBack to citation 2
3. [3] Death of Leah A. Mayer, Manhattan, 30 January 1889Back to citation 3
4. [4] Stillwell genealogy (1931), volumes 2 and 3 — searched, and this family is not in themBack to citation 4
5. [5] Geni relationship chart: Gina D. Leahey and Monica Potter, fifth cousins once removed (created 3 March 2025)Back to citation 5

See also

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