Mariah Stryker

Life

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

Where they lived

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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

• [HER PARENTS ARE NAMED: PETER STRYKER AND MARIA VAN NORTWICK] Both from the memorial biography of her husband. They are not yet added as people — one compiled source naming two ancestors is not enough on the standard this archive holds itself to, and the same book that names them is the one that got her husband's county of death wrong. Her baptism at the Hillsborough Dutch Reformed Church is the way in: that register would name her parents outright, and it is the same congregation whose burying ground holds Daniel Stilwell and Elcey Stryker.
• [HER FATHER SOLD LAND TO HER FATHER-IN-LAW] Caleb Brokaw's will disposes of "that farm or plantation which I purchased of Peter Stryker containing about two hundred and twenty five acres", left jointly to the children of his sons Isaac and Abraham. If that Peter Stryker is her father, then the two families were dealing in land before the marriage, and Abraham's children inherited ground their maternal grandfather once owned. Suggestive, not proved.
• Her marriage record of 1792, her birth, and her death after returning from Ohio.
• That her daughter's middle name is Stryker is the one piece of this that the archive can see for itself — it appears on Cornelia's memorial — and it is consistent with a Stryker mother without proving one.
• 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.

References

1. [1] Biography on the Find a Grave memorial for Cornelia Stryker Brokaw Stilwell (memorial 295247056)Back to citation 1
2. [2] Geni relationship chart: Gina D. Leahey and Monica Potter, fifth cousins once removed (created 3 March 2025)Back to citation 2
3. [3] Find a Grave memorial 32870964 — Maria Polly Stryker Brokaw (1775–1856), Old Somerville CemeteryBack to citation 3
4. [4] Find a Grave memorial 32870741 — Abraham C. Brokaw (1773–1826)Back to citation 4
5. [5] FamilySearch Family Tree — Abraham Caleb Brokaw, LB7F-3MTBack to citation 5

See also

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