As noted in the last post, FamilySearch.org thinks that I'm a Mayflower descendant. The suggested connection is through my 3rd great grandmother, Rachel S. Hutchinson.
Rachel has been one of my brick walls for a while now, so finding out that FamilySearch contributors had linked her not only to her own parents but had linked another eight generations further back to a Mayflower passenger was a special treat indeed. As with most trees, the proof is in the records. The problem is that I still can't find any records linking Rachel to her parents.
The records that I have found so far include:
- New Jersey Births and Christenings, 1660-1980; index and database (FamilySearch); Rachel (no maiden name shown) listed as wife of Stephen Ford and mother of Emerson Ford
- 1850 U.S. census, Mercer County, New Jersey; database and images (FamilySearch); Stephen Ford household listing Rachel (aged 23) and Emerson (aged 1) as well as Edward Clarke (aged 11)
- 1837-1854 Marriage Records, Hamilton Square Baptist Church; church records transcription (New Horizons Genealogy); marriage of Stephen Ford and Rachel S. Hutchinson
As far as I can tell, Rachel probably died in the first half of 1860. The 1860 census (taken on 16 June 1860) shows Stephen Ford (aged 34) in Hightstown with Laura A. Ford (aged 4), along with Sarah A. Hutchinson (aged 28) and Caroline Hutchinson (aged 19). The 1870 census shows Laura A. Ford (aged 12) still living in the Stephen Ford (aged 42) household, but with his wife Isabella (aged 42) and two other children, Sarah E. (aged 7) and Robert (aged 6). The 1880 census lists Stephen Ford with wife Isabella, and two children, Laura (aged 23) and Sarah (aged 17).
The tree on FamilySearch suggests that Rachel's middle name was Silvers, and that she was the daughter of John J. Hutchinson (1802-1856) and Mariah Silvers (1803-1856). So that and the marriage record noted above would also suggest that Rachel should be listed in the 1840 census with John and Mariah. There are a few John Hutchinsons in the 1840 census with at least one female in the household aged 10-15; Rachel would have been about 12 years old in 1840. However, since the 1840 census lists only the name of the head-of-household, I don't know which one is this John, and I don't know the names of anyone else in the household at that time.
Also, Rachel is not yet listed in the Find-a-Grave memorials for John or Mariah. So I'm still a little skeptical about the connection from Rachel to them. I gained access to NewspaperArchive.com this week, so I tried a few searches there, but they don't appear to hold any archives of newspapers from New Jersey in the mid-19th century. A similar search at the Library of Congress newspapers archive (Chronicling America) also turned up empty results.
Since the Famous Relatives page listed the relationship through Rachel to John Howland, I tried tracing John Howland's descendants down to Rachel. I found a couple of books with digital copies online including Genealogical History of Mercer County, Vol. 2 (via Google Books) and John Howland of the Mayflower, Volume 4 (via Archive.org). These connect John Howland all the way down to John J. Hutchinson and Mariah Silvers, but do not make that last connection that I need. One possible resource that I still need to check is the "Silver books" endorsed by the Mayflower Society. The Wisconsin chapter notes that there's a copy in the Black Earth Library, which is the repository holding a copy closest to me right now (curiously, they don't list a copy in the Madison Library).
So Stephen Ford and Rachel S. Hutchinson are still, as far as my current database shows, unconfirmed links to the Mayflower passengers. Stephen is himself also a current brick wall in my database as I have no information yet on his parents (other than FamilSearch trees listings which I need to verify). I need to research about Mercer County, New Jersey, some more.
