The Brouwer Genealogy Database - Hill Manuscript

The Hill Manuscript was created in 1923 or thereabouts, apparently by Fred J. Hill of Smiths Falls, Ontario, Canada. It was an effort to gather and distribute information about the lawsuits surrounding the "Trinity Church property" claimed by heirs of Anneke Jans. It also addresses a supposed inheritance due the heirs of one Captain Robert Edwards.

The manuscript contains a section devoted to cataloging numerous lines of descent from Anneke Jans. In addition there are a few genealogies that deal with descendants of Capt. Robert Edwards. There is an especially large portion of this section devoted to descendants of Nazareth Hill and Catherine Edwards. Catherine Edwards was a daughter of the above mentioned Capt. Robert Edwards. Nazareth Hill (a.k.a. Nazareth Brouwer Hill) was a son of Thomas Benjamin Hill and Jane Brouwer. The manuscript includes an incorrect ancestry for Jane Brouwer back to Anneke Jans. Despite the claims of the author of this manuscript, Jane Brouwer and her Hill descendants are not descendants of Anneke Jans. The manuscript includes a number of other incorrect genealogies regarding some inter-related early New Netherland/New York families, namely Bogardus, Brouwer, Drake and Webber. Anyone examing the pages of this manuscript is forewarned that the early lineages presented are largely incorrect and essentially useless. Please do not duplicate or cite them. Some of the later genealogies, those of the Hill descendants of the 1800s, and a Brower family found on pages 25 and 26, are likely to be accurate, or at least largely so. They were submitted to the author by family members who were contemporaries, and in most cases members, of the immediate families that they describe. This section of the manuscript can provide an outline of descendants of Nazareth Hill and Catherine Edwards which should be confirmed and expanded upon by further research.

Along with the genealogies are accounts of some earlier lawsuits, background info on Anneke Jans, her "farm" and the House of Orange (no doubt there is incorrect info here), and a list of correspondents. The manuscript as a whole, also offers the reader something of a look into the mindset of those seeking to claim a lost inheritance (the lottery ticket of that day) or perhaps an example of the methods used to exploit the hopes and naivety of others.

The document is stored online in seven parts with links below. They are scanned images, saved as PDF documents, of a mimeographed copy of the manuscript that I obtained from William B. Bogardus. Part 1, in particualar is light and difficult to read. Parts 2 through 7 were in much better condition and they should be no problem to read. The original was on 8x14 legal size paper. The scanner would only accommodate 8x11, so pages were "split" at a convenient break, resulting in many short pages in the PDF documents. The original did have page numbers. The genealogies are found in parts 3, 4, 5, and end in part 6. In addition there is a link to a chart of the descendants of Jane Brouwer and Thomas Benjamin Hill, compiled directly from the genealogies presented in the manuscript.