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Home Baptisms Generations
�The Dutch named their early settlement near Fonda Caughnawaga, thereby transferring a word that belonged to the�St. Lawrence River to the Mohawk Valley. The Dutch Settlement was located at the Eastern end of the present site of the village of Fonda, the old Caughnawaga church, erected in 1763 and demolished in 1868, probably being the centre of the old settlement.�
-The Mohawk Valley by William Max Reid, pg 345.
In The Beginning
The journey of the Cromwell families of the Mohawk Valley began with Jacobus Cromwell in 1703. Those familiar with this line of Cromwells have read John Calder Pearson�s �The Cromwell and Lewis Families of the Mohawk Valley� (The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, Vol XLI, New York, 1910):
�Jacobus Cromwell of Schenectady, was the ancestor of the Mohawk Valley of Cromwells. No connection has been discovered between him and the Cromwell family of Westchester county. It is not known whether he was of English or Dutch blood, but his descendants became identified with the Dutch inhabitants of the Valley, perhaps through intermarriage and environment. His name first appears in the records of his marriage to Maria Philipse at Schenectady, Sept 26, 1703�.
We do know that Jacobus and Maria Philipse and had four children: Aegie, Lysbeth, Stephanus and Jan Philipse who settled in the Mohawk River Valley and had families of their own. Many of their children were baptized in the Reformed Dutch Church of Caughnawaga.
This site is an attempt to track the descendents of those Cromwells who were baptized in or around Caughnawaga in the late 1700�s. In effect, we are trying to continue the work of John Calder Pearson.
Unfortunately, the Cromwell children had a tendency to name their children after their siblings, so each generation can have two cousins with the same name, born in the same period and in close proximity to each other. This makes it extremely difficult to tell them apart later in their lives.
This is a work in progress and will be updated or corrected as new information is provided by family researchers.