The Big Move
I've speculated on the reasons for Benjamin and Richard deciding to uproot their families and move them lock, stock and barrel to new land. Imagine what the process was in those times! We would google the new location, get a map with good directions and pack up our cars, maybe hire a moving van for the big stuff. Pile everyone in and set out, knowing that the trip would take about 3 hours, there'd be places to stop along the way to gas up and get food, stop at rest areas for bathroom breaks. We probably wouldn't expect to meet any hostile Indians, road bandits, or find holes in the road big enough to hide a horse. We wouldn't worry about getting stuck in the mud or freezing our butts off, even in the winter. When we got there, we'd probably stay overnight in a hotel until we could look at some real estate or find an apartment to rent until our house was built. We may have even lined this up through phone calls and the internet.
But this is 1808!
There was considerable planning to be done, once the decisions of "why we move" and "where we move" were made. What would happen to the land and property we owned in New Jersey? What household goods were worth the hassle of moving? Find a wagon or wagons capable of moving two families and their goods, gather enough food for the journey. Some food could be hunted along the way, but you'd need staples like flour, sugar, tea, dried meat, feed for the horses, maybe some dried apples or fruit, potatoes, root vegetables, depending on the time of year the move happened. The best time of year to accomplish the move would be spring, after the roads (such as they were) dried enough to travel on, giving time through the summer to clear land, start some crops, build some shelter, rudimentary at first, and then a solid dwelling that would help them survive next winter.
Finally the trip
The day came to start out and the Brown's, a family group of father Richard and mother Lizzie, both in their 40's by now and possibly 3 of their children, William about 23, Philip still a baby, and Nancy, their daughter, about 20, newly married to Benjamin, about 32, piled women and children in the wagons, men riding their horses. Maybe some others from the Burlington community went along- I haven't tried to figure that out yet! Head "west"- was that all they knew!? There were probably some roads that got them into Pennsylvania- the Allentown area was being settled in the 18th century, following the removal of the Indian threat, and the Pennamite War. But mostly it was "follow the sun's path", head up hill, down hill, cross rivers. Even today a lot of the country they travelled through is not settled due to the foothills. For a great description of the roads available and the conditions of travel early in the 1800's, go to this article: The Susquehanna and Tioga Turnpike.by David R. Kline on the Columbia County Historical and Genalogical Society website.
A long road ahead
Unlike our modern travel, a three hour trip on unmarked, muddy trails may have taken a week or two. I don't imagine they could have covered even 10 miles on some days. Take a look at the map and picture the journey. It was about a 149 mile journey, so at 10miles a day, it would take at very minimum 2 weeks.
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When they arrived at a likely spot, near Huntington Creek, they'd have set up camp, for now more permanently, and once immediate needs were met, they would start deciding how to buy some likely looking land. There were settlers already in the area by then, and Benjamin acquired his land from Abraham Dodderer (Dodder,Dotterer,Duder,Dudder), whose cemetery currently lies across the road from the Jones cemetery. Was the cemetery on their land, or just the town land turned into a cemetery? In 1810, the census shows a total of 604 persons living in the Fishing Creek Township, in what is now called Columbia County. There are 41 heads of households listed. This was 30% more people than the 419 on the 1800 census counted.
