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Family RESEARCH
Upper Freehold Records of New Jersey
Research by Tom Phillips, Bob Howey, & others
Investigating the relationship of LOCATION
to our earliest Everinghams of America.
The Upper Freehold records are items like tax records, property listings & transfers, estray records, militia lists, surveys, etc. I refer to them as 'Upper Freehold records' because virtually every Family line (with the possible exception of yours "James UEL" and William Everingham Aka the Everhams) has a tie to the Henry & Rachel & Tom & Mary Everingham families. Be it geography, in-laws, witnesses to Wills, property sales, etc. Naming patterns also play into these 'records' since there are distinct patterns to certain families and how/when names crop up.
Roughly 80% of the US Everinghams/Evernhams since the 1720s can be traced to an 8 -10 miles radius of the Henry Everingham homestead on the border of Upper Freehold & East Windsor township based upon the above factors. (Actually it encompasses Trenton so your line might be part of it too!)
Family Lines 1,2,5,6,7,8,9 & 12 are all included in my assessment.
Bob Howey recently proved that his southern NJ Everinghams originated in Upper Freehold via Permelia & Abijah Everingham. Even the Maryland Everngams can be traced back there via my line of Evernhams!!
The real key to a lot of this lies with the records of the Old Yellow Meeting House in Upper Freehold near Allentown.
Ye Old Yellow Meetinghouse, Upper Freehold Township, Monmouth County, 1739. Baptists were among the earliest settlers in the state and several of the best preserved early meetinghouses were erected by Baptist congregations. The Upper Freehold Baptist Meetinghouse, recently restored, is located on Yellow Meetinghouse Road, off Route 526 a bit east of Imlaystown (off I195). Its dual entrances are, atypically, on the gable end rather than the long side. I believe the Middletown Baptist congregation, also in Monmouth Country was the first formally organized in the state (about 1688), but the congregation in Cohansey, in Cumberland County, was also a very early one. National Register.
This was the "mother church" of many of the area Methodist and Baptist congregations before, and especially after, the Revolutionary War and itself was an offshoot of the original Freehold church. Many Everinghham burials, marriages were here or nearby. I haven't been able to get all of the records I need on them because so many were either poorly written & recorded or lost due to depredations by the "Pine Robbers" during the Revolutionary War. (It was in the best interest of the Pine Robbers to burn most records they could since their lands & property were seized and they hoped to claim their property & more after the British won).
As time goes on it is much harder to prove any one of the established Everingham lines didn't have a connection to Upper Freehold than it is to prove they did. 'Occam's razor' indicates that logic of all of this even if we do not possess the physical records!
Tom Phillips, 2006
More on Upper FreeholdBACK TO RESEARCH PAGE
(c)2006 Everingham Family History Archives.
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