W_Egbert_Family_D

William Egbert was the son of John and Margaret Egbert. His family worked a farm near Cranbury, New Jersey, in Middlesex County. Williams’ baptismal record, and that of his older brother John, is found in the Anglican Church called Christ Church, in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, New Jersey.

William Egbert was born 23 years before the beginning of the American Revolution, in the summer of 1753. It was a time of intense social and political ferment in the American colonies. In the colony of New Jersey (later to be called New Jersey), this ferment was particularly acute. Part of the reason for this unrest was the religious situation in the Jersey colony. A glance at the religious situation throughout the American Colonies is informative

In Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia, the Church of England was established by law, as it was in England. So also in the city of New York, in Westchester County, New York, and on Long Island and Staten Island. In New England, the colonies themselves had been established by people whom the Church of England called “Dissenters,” mostly Congregationalists and Puritans. In Pennsylvania, another group of Dissenters, the Quakers, had founded the colony. Only in upper New York, New Jersey, and Delaware was the civil society formally committed to no particular religious persuasion. Open territory for missionary endeavor by any of the denominations was the norm there.

Under these conditions, the Church of England had begun an organized missionary effort in these areas. This effort was carried out under the aegis of the ‘Society for the Propagation of the gospel in Foreign Parts’ (known as the SPG) with its base in London and its missionaries subject to the Bishop of London. From this organization, missionaries were sent out to the uncommitted colonies. In New Jersey, missionary stations were established at New Brunswick, Perth Amboy, Newark, Trenton, Burlington, and (for Monmouth County) at Shrewsbury.

The missionary stationed at Shrewsbury in the 1730’s and early 1740’s was Thomas Thompson. This Anglican priest asked to be reassigned to Africa and left for that service in 1750. He was succeeded by William Thompson, who served in the post at Shrewsbury until the 1760’s. His successor was Samuel Cooke, who was missionary during the American Revolution. There was also, at this time, an Anglican school at Shrewsbury and the schoolmaster there was a Christopher Reynolds.

As settlers went out from the eastern seaboard to establish “plantations” in the vacant land in the western part of the Jersey colony, local churches were founded there to serve the increasing European population. The Dutch settlers set up units of the Dutch Reformed Church (called Anabaptists)’ the German settlers units of the Lutheran Church, etc. English settlers, and those converted to the Church of England, established local Anglican churches. These local churches were the daughter churches of the SPG missionary stations.

This Egbert family was descended from Dutch colonist of New Amsterdam. Under Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch had established themselves in New Amsterdam and had spread out from there to Long Island, Albany, Staten Island, and New Jersey. When Mary Stewart became Queen of England and married William of Orange, William gave the Dutch colony in America to the Duke of York, and New Amsterdam became New York.

John Egbert, William Egbert’s father, was born in the Dutch community on Staten Island and was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church there on 10 April 1720 as Jan Egbert. He was from a numerous family settled on Staten Island, a large farming community protected by water on all sides (a situation not unfamiliar to farmers in the Netherlands). John Egbert’s descendant, Seneca Egbert, spent long hours searching the records of the Dutch Reformed Church in Manhattan to identify this provenance. There are on Staten Island a number of cemeteries full of Egbert graves. It was a prolific family.

After New Amsterdam became an English colony, many of the Dutch settlers accommodated themselves to the new situation and adopted English ways. (The king of England was, after all, one of their countrymen.) In doing this, they often Anglicized their names. For example, Laurenz Paulus became Lawrence Paul’ or, Jacob Duyt became James Dwight; or, Jan Egbert became John Egbert, and so on. They also, in many instances, adopted the English form of Christianity, that is, they became members of the Church of England, or Anglicans.

This change of religion was not the result of idle preference. All members of the Church of England were required (technically) to take an oath of allegiance to the English sovereign. In becoming Anglicans, the Dutch-American colonists were affirming their allegiance to the English Crown and, thus, to William of Orange. We believe that John and Margaret, William Egbert’s parents, became Anglicans when they were still living on Staten Island. That is to say, when John and Margaret Egbert left Staten Island, they were no longer Dutch Anabaptists but Anglicans.

John Egbert, like many other Dutch colonists, crossed the sound into the Jersey colony and established himself there, in what was to become Middlesex County. From the point of view of the Church of England, this family was leaving a territory where the Church of England was established and moving into missionary territory. On Staten Island there were long-established Anglican churches. In the Jersey colony (then called East and West Jersey) there were only a few active Anglican communities, although many new foundations were being made.

In all his research on the Egbert family, Seneca Egbert was never able to establish with certainty the maiden name of William’s mother. There are some of the family who propose the name “Gerritson” as her family name, and this is possible, but there has surfaced no conclusive proof. “Gerritson” is a patronymic based on the given name “Gerrit”, and this is a common name for men in the Dutch community. “Margaret” is an English form of a name that the Dutch would give as, perhaps, “Margrette” Jan Egbert and Margrette Gerritson, when they Anglicized their names, became John and Margaret (Gerritson) Egbert.

John Egbert and Margaret Gerritson had seven children [sic. Dr. Sparks included the list of children here]
It will be noted that there are two Williams, the first one having died in infancy. Note also that some children seem to be named after their grandparents. John Egbert’s father’s name was Abraham. It is a conjecture, but it is possible that the name William, given to their second child (the English form of Willem) was intended to honor Margaret’s father. Accordingly, she could have been the daughter of Willem Gerritson, and the granddaughter of a man named Gerrit.

The baptismal records of John and Margaret Egbert’s sons, William and John are found in the Church of England missionary church in Shrewsbury in Monmouth County, the church called Christ Church. Why so? Remembering the religious situation in the Jersey colony at the time, the open-field missionary activity going on then between the various denominations, one is tempted to attribute these anomalous baptisms to a lack of Anglican services in the community into which John and Margaret Egbert moved when they left Staten Island. The two baptisms can be described as follows:

1. In mid-summer, in June 1752, John and Margaret Egbert, with 5 year old Abraham, and John, only 6 weeks old, made a journey to Monmouth County where John was baptized at Christ Church. This does not appear to be an unplanned event, right in the middle of the growing season.
2. In October, 1753, the harvest in, John and Margaret Egbert, with 6 year old Abraham and John aged 1 ½, made a similar journey to Monmouth County where William was baptized. This also cannot have been an unplanned event.

These two journeys to Monmouth County and to Shrewsbury from Middlesex County could very well have been the result of a lack of Anglican services in Middlesex County. If so, they would indicate the degree of commitment which John and Margaret had to the Church of England at the time, and perhaps also their sentiments about the social and political situation in the American Colonies. But, most importantly, it can reveal possible dates of the family events involved.

Of John and Margaret’s children, only John and William were baptized in Shrewsbury, apparently because no Anglican services were available in Middlesex County at that time. If that was indeed the situation, the Abraham, the oldest son, must have been born and baptized when the family was still living on Staten Island. He may even have been baptized in St. James parish in Richmond, the oldest Anglican foundation there. This would mean that the family left Staten Island some time after 1747 (perhaps the spring of 1748) and some time before the spring of 1752, when son John was born. The first William died in infancy in 1750. If he died on Staten Island, then the move to New Jersey is narrowed even further to 1751.

Similarly, if the last three children of John and Margaret Egbert do not appear in the Shrewsbury records, then some Anglican establishment must have become available close enough to the Egbert’s home in Middlesex County to allow them to have these three children baptized there. It is possible to confirm this conjecture. One could seek out the records of the Episcopal Church to determine when the local church was established in or near Cranbury. A source for this information might be the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Records of the Middlesex County Historical Society could also be consulted.

William Egbert…the surviving William in this family…was born on the Egbert farm near Cranbury, Middlesex County, New Jersey. He was born into a family whose parents seem to have been sincere members of the Church of England, and perhaps with sentiments for the Loyalist cause. Yet, by the time he was twenty, the engines of civil unrest were in full swing, and there were many Anglicans who espoused the cause of the Colonies. William served in the New Jersey military establishment in the Continental Army, in spite of his Anglican background. And we must remember that the majority of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were also Anglicans.

William Egbert married Rebecca Elizabeth Job about the time the Revolutionary War broke out. Rebecca was the daughter of George Job and Elizabeth James of Jobtown and South Amboy in Middlesex County. She was born in 1756. William Egbert and Rebecca had eight children [sic. here, once again the children are listed]

Of these, the first seven were born in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Elizabeth was carried to Western Pennsylvania as a new-born infant, and Lewis was born in Elizabeth Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

In 1796, along with a large number of other New Jersey citizens, William Egbert and his family, except for his oldest son Daniel, who stayed behind in Middlesex County, New Jersey, traveled to a new settlement on the Monongahela River, in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania which acquired the name “The Jersey Settlement” because of the large number of people from New Jersey who arrived there. IT was later named Elizabeth Township. When the family moved William was 43 years old, Rebecca was 40, Daniel was 19, Job 17, Sarah 13, Clarissa 8, Charlotte 6, Ursula 3, and Elizabeth was a new-born. William’s land warrant for the property in Pennsylvania is recorded in the Quartermaster General Department, in Trenton and is dated 1793.

William and his family stayed at Elizabeth Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania only five years. In 1800, he bought land from the American Land Company in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, near a place called “The Perrine Settlement”, later set out as Sandy Lake Township. The land was surveyed by Col. Samuel Dale, a retired officer of the Continental Army who helped the Revolutionary War veterans acquire their land.

William Egbert moved his family from Allegheny County to Mercer County in 1801. He remained there for the rest of his life. He died in 1840 and is buried in the Perrine Cemetery in Mercer County next to Rebecca. He out-lived his wife by 24 years. She passed away in 1816, just 15 years after the family established the farm in Sandy Lake Township.

William’s son Job Egbert married a widow with two boys, Elizabeth (Wall) Pangborn while the family was living in Elizabeth Township. She was the daughter of Walter Wall and Alice Applegate. They moved to Mercer County with the rest of the Egbert family in 1801, where Job helped his father build the farm buildings at Sandy Lake. Afterwards, Job and his family moved to Brown County, Ohio near the village of Georgetown. Sarah Egbert, William’s oldest daughter, also married while the family was in Elizabeth Township. She married a young man named John Paul, about the time the rest of the family went north to Mercer County. She and her husband stayed in southern Pennsylvania, in Westmoreland County.

Of the family that came to Mercer County, Clarissa Egbert married a man named Charles Shields and lived in Mercer County. Charlotte Egbert married into the Perrine family, first settlers of Mercer County. Her husband was Daniel Perrine. Ursula Egbert also married a Perrine, Daniel Perrine’s brother Enoch. Lewis married a girl from Belaire, Columbiana County, Ohio, named Aseneth Nixon (a family originally from Delaware County, Pennsylvania) and remained on the family farm in Sandy Lake.

William Egbert was not a tall man, but he was tough and wiry and had a peppery temper. He lived to his 87th year, and in his 80’s he is said to have broken a horse of farm work. He had a powder burn on his face, from action he had been in the Revolutionary War and he carried it all his life.

When William Egbert bought the land in Sandy Lake Township, he had it surveyed (with that of his neighbors) by Capt. Samuel Dale, who worked for the American Land Co. Dale had been an officer in the Continental Army, and at the end of the war went to Western Pennsylvania as a surveyor, where he helped the veterans establish their property.

William’s next-door neighbor in Sandy Lake Township (and sometime tenant) was William H. Clawson, who came from Trumbull County in Ohio. Clawson was a tanner and at times served as a butcher for the community. William Egbert bought shoe leather from Clawson during the farming season, and during the winter he and the family worked at making shoes. (Shoes were a precious commodity on the Pennsylvania frontier.) In the spring and summer seasons, Lewis Egbert, loaded the shoes on a flatboat and went down the Allegheny and Ohio rivers, from town to town, selling the shoes, and brought back the winter’s income of the family.

In Bellaire, Ohio, Lewis met a pretty young lady named Aseneth Nixon, probably fitting her for shoes. He married her on 16 December 1819, three years after the death of his mother. He brought her back to Mercer County and settled down on the farm. At this time, William turned over the farm at Sandy Lake to Lewis, with the proviso that he, William, be given a room and meals for the rest of his life. At Sandy Lake, Lewis and Aseneth raised 13 children. When Aseneth died in 1882, she left behind 63 surviving grandchildren. Lewis Egbert’s daughter, Patience, married William Clawson’s soon, William H. Clawson, Jr.

Shoes were indeed precious. There is the story that, when going to church on Sunday, the women and boys would go barefoot through the woods, and only put on their shoes when they came to the church clearing.

It was no small thing for a man to stand in the New Jersey line in an 18th century battle engagement or to storm the ramparts of an English emplacement. It took strength of character and great courage. It was no small thing for a woman to take a nursing baby and get into a wagon and set out for the wilderness of Western Pennsylvania not knowing what the outcome might be. Rebecca Elizabeth matched her husband’s strength of character and courage. Insulated in our 20th century comfort and safety, it is hard for us to imagine the sheer fortitude of these ancestors or to comprehend the debt of gratitude we owe to them. We should lay the lily of remembrance on their graves and we should teach our children of their heroism.

It has been known for some time that William Egbert, the progenitor of the Egbert family in Sandy Lake Township, Mercer County, Pennsylvania came originally from New Jersey. He was born in 1753 in Middlesex County New Jersey, near the town of Cranbury and was baptized in Christ Church in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County. He married Rebecca Job of Hightstown, Mercer County, New Jersey and their first child, Daniel, was born there. William served in the New Jersey military establishment in the Continental Army during the Revolution. Thirteen years after the war, in 1796, he moved his family from New Jersey to Mercer County in Western Pennsylvania.

The details of this move have, however, been somewhat obscure, except for evidence from the will of Rebecca’s father, George Job, and a quit-claim deed by which Rebecca sold her portion of the inheritance in George Job’s farm to her brother Peter Job in 1793. We know that three years later, William Egbert and his family traveled from Middlesex County in New Jersey to ‘the Jersey Settlement” in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, south of present-day Pittsburgh. It was there that the youngest child of William and Rebecca Egbert, Lewis, was born.

(This part of Allegheny County has been designated as ‘Old Elizabeth Township” because the old township was later subdivided into Lincoln, Elizabeth and Forward Townships. The Egbert residences were in what was later to be called Forward Township.)

From this first home in Western Pennsylvania, William Egbert moved his family a second time to Mercer County, Pennsylvania. He was apparently following the initiative of friends and neighbors from New Jersey, the Perrine family, who had been early settlers in Mercer County. It appears that William made a trip to Mercer County from Allegheny County in the summer of 1800 at which time he purchased the land in Sandy Lake. He returned the following year (1801) with the rest of the family. In this period of transition, however, we lose track of two of William Egbert’s children, Daniel and Sarah. It is to clear up this obscurity that the present inquiry has been undertaken.

Research at the Mercer County Historical Society has resulted in two important determinations, one positive and one negative:

The data from this page of the Census of 1800 are summarized in Appendix A and information has been added from Family Group Sheets for William Egbert’s family and for Job Egbert’s family. There are three points to be made concerning these census data”

Daniel Egbert. There are three possible explanations for Daniel’s absence from the family group in the 1800 census: a) Daniel came west with the family in 1796, but is living elsewhere in Pennsylvania; b) Daniel has moved on to Ohio territory; c) Daniel stayed in New Jersey and took over the farm of his father in Middlesex County. The last possibility is the most likely. Daniel married a Susan ---, probably shortly before his father and the family went to Western Pennsylvania. He and Susan will most likely appear in the US Census for 1800 in New Windsor Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey.

Job Egbert. The marriage with Elizabeth Wall after the death of her husband Stephen Pangborn, occurred September 9th, 1799, the year before the census. But we do not know the names of Elizabeth’s two sons by Stephen, who became Job Egbert’s stepsons. Both the Wall family and the Pangburn family were early settlers in Allegheny County, and Stephen and Elizabeth, having come west with their families were probably married and the two boys born there. Stephen Pangborn’s father was named William and his grandfather was named Stephen. William Pangborn accompanied the Egberts when they came north to Mercer County, but returned later to Allegheny County. Grandfather Stephen Pangborn was a founder of the Presbyterian Church in Cranbury, NF.

Sarah Egbert. At the time of the census in the summer of 1800, Sarah is still unmarried and a member of her father’s household and has just passed her 17th birthday, 5 May 1783. But Sarah, at age 17, is of marriageable age and it is very likely that she married shortly after the census was taken.

It should be noted that, in the birth sequence of the children of William and Rebecca Egbert, there is a 5-year hiatus between Sarah and the next child, Clarissa. This is probably attributable to William’s military service, which took him away from his family. The last five Egbert offspring were still only children when the census was taken in 1800. But, at that time, the first three, Daniel, Job, and Sarah were young adults and were establishing, or had established, their own lives. In a very real sense, William and Rebecca had two families, one that they raised in New Jersey, and one that they raised in Western Pennsylvania. W should not be surprised to find the first family leaving the family circle at the turn of the century.

A diligent search of the records of the Mercer County Historical Society has revealed no evidence that Sarah Egbert, the oldest daughter of William Egbert, ever settled in Mercer County with her family.

In the summer of 1800, after the census was taken, William Egbert and his son Job came north from Allegheny County to Mercer County and purchased his farm in what was to become Sandy Lake Township. He used, as part of this purchase, his warrant from Revolutionary War service in the New Jersey military. He probably also used some of the money Rebecca had received from her brother Peter Job when she sold her share of George Job’s farm in Middlesex County New Jersey to Peter in 1793.

In the summer of 1800, William and Job must have made preliminary preparations for the construction of the first building at Sandy Lake, perhaps clearing the land and laying the foundation. It seems that they returned to Allegheny County in the fall and spent the winter of 1800-1801 in their two houses in Elizabeth Township. In the summer of 1801, William moved the family from Allegheny County to the new homestead in Mercer County. Job and Elizabeth and their children must have also gone to Mercer County at this time, since there is some evidence of Job’s presence in the county. He was probably helping his father build the house and other structures at Sandy Lake.

Job Egbert and his (growing) family later left Pennsylvania and settled near the village of Georgetown in Brown County, Ohio. In addition to the two Pangborn boys, Job and his wife had eight other children. During the War of 1812, Job Egbert served as captain of his local regiment. After the war, he was elected justice of the peace in Brown County.

Sarah seems not to have accompanied her family north from Allegheny County, since there is no evidence of her presence in Mercer County. We must conclude, therefore, that she must have married and established a household of her own sometime before the family went north in the late spring or early summer of 1801. There is a tradition that Sarah married a young man named Joseph Paul about this time and went to live in Westmoreland County. The marriage probably took place at the home of her father in Elizabeth Township, Allegheny County (and not in Westmoreland County, as is sometimes proposed). William, Job and their families most likely left for Mercer County soon after Sarah’s wedding.

According to the tradition, the marriage of Sarah Egbert and Joseph Paul was to end in tragedy. Like her sister-in-law, Elizabeth, Sarah would lose her husband after the birth of her second child. In early 1802, Joseph and Sarah (Egbert) Paul had a daughter whom they named Harriet. A little more than a year later, on 9 August 1803, a son was born to them. They called him Jacob. Within the next year and a half, Joseph Paul was killed, some say by Indians. This is possible; there were still Indian groups in Westmoreland County at this time. But it must be remembered that “killed by Indians” was, since the Boston Tea Party, a ruse often used to cover the tracks of other malfunctions. The source of the altercation encountered by Joseph Paul may also have had something to do with his land claim. Joseph Paul had a claim to land in Westmoreland County. It was probably originally a Virginia land claim, one of those at issue in the deliberations of the commission that settled dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania.

At the end of the Colonial period, the authorities in Pennsylvania and Virginia were contesting the placement of the border between their two colonies in the area of what is now southwestern Pennsylvania. This dispute was held in abeyance during the Revolution. After the ratification of the Constitution, a bi-state commission was established to settle the dispute. It was at this time that the Mason-Dixon Line was established as the southern boundary of Pennsylvania. Virginia gave up the counties of Bradford and Westmoreland in this settlement…but only after the Virginia assembly was assured that the land claims of (former) Virginia citizens would be honored. It is possible that Joseph Paul had become owner of one of these Virginia land claims. He was sometimes referred to as a Virginian.

But it is much more likely that Joseph Paul came from New Jersey, like many o f the other settlers in Western Pennsylvania at this time. In Middlesex and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey there was a family of Pauls. Three of these, William, Aleita and Amanda, married with members of the Egbert family living in the area. It is possible that Joseph Paul was a member of this New Jersey family and had migrated to Westmoreland County and taken up an old Virginia land claim. He may have already been acquainted with William Egbert and his family in New Jersey.

The family name “Paul” seems to be derived from the Dutch family name “Paulus.” In Dutch speaking communities in Europe, Latin endings were often used in family names. An example is the Dutch philosopher Erasmus. When New Amsterdam became an English colony many of the Dutch colonists Anglicized their names; for the Pauls, dropping the Latin ending was a simple way to do this.

With the death of her husband in 1804 or 1805, Sarah Egbert was left a widow with two small children. In the area of Westmoreland County where she lived, there was a man, named Ezekiel Dye, who operated a grist-mill. He also had been recently widowed, his wife, Elizabeth (Cox) Dye, whom he had married in New Jersey, having passed away.

Ezekiel Dye came from an extensive New Jersey family. The family name “Dye” is derived from the Dutch family name “Duyt.” When Dutch colonists Anglicized their names, this Dutch name became variously: Dwight, Dight, Dye, Dey, and even Ditts. A granddaughter of Lewis Egbert (Sarah’s younger brother) Margaret J. Egbert, married an Isaac Dight in Mercer County, Pennsylvania in 1875, probably a descendant of the original Dutch settlers named Duyt.

Members of this family were in contact with the Egberts and the Jobs in Middlesex, Mercer and Monmouth counties in New Jersey. A Daniel Dey was a witness to the will of George Job, (4 June 1778) by which Rebecca (Job) Egbert received her inheritance. He was also a witness at the hearing when this will was probated. In Freehold Township, Monmouth County, a James Dye and his son, James, were landholders mentioned in county records (1748 and 1755).

Ezekiel Dye was the son of John and Mary Dye of South Amboy in Middlesex County. The family moved to Cranbury in Middlesex County and Ezekiel was born and grew up there. In 17870, in the midst of the Revolutionary War, Ezekiel married Elizabeth Cox by whom he had eleven children. The first four of these were born in New Jersey; the remaining seven were born in Western Pennsylvania. The family moved to Pennsylvania in 1788, shortly after their daughter Mary was born. The Dyes must have been part of a large emigration from New Jersey, which went on at that time. A number of other families, the Walls, the Pangborns, the Spragues, and others all left New Jersey in 1788.

Ezekiel and his family probably came first to “Old Elizabeth Township” in Allegheny County, but he moved a little east to West Newton, Sewickley Township in Westmoreland County where he established a grist-mill on the Sewickley Creek. In the 15-year period between 1790 and 1805 the rest of his children by Elizabeth Cox were born there.

The youngest child of this couple was born in 1805 and was named Furman Dye. He was, apparently, a sickly child and did not live beyond 1820. There must have been some difficulty in the birth, or complications afterward, like childbed fever, because Elizabeth died shortly thereafter. Ezekiel was left with seven or eight children to raise by himself. In this situation, he shared the same predicament as Sarah (Egbert) Paul. In this situation, he shared the same predicament as Sarah (Egbert) Paul.

Sarah (Egbert) Paul and Ezekiel Dye were married in Westmoreland county in 1806 or 1807. They sold the grist-mill and moved to Morgan County, Ohio, where they lived for the rest of their lives. Sarah had nine children by Ezekiel: Joseph, Elizabeth, Lewis, Jane, Lucinda, Charlotte, Morgan, Cynthia, and Furman. With Harriet and Jacob Paul, her family numbered eleven. Much of the history of this family is preserved in the family Bible of Jacob Paul, Sarah’s oldest son.

Ezekiel and Sarah (Egbert) Dye named their youngest child Furman, a second Furman Dye. The name was probably given to honor Richard Furman, a noted American clergyman of the Colonial and Federal periods. Richard Furman was a brilliant preacher in the Baptist church in North Carolina. A child prodigy, he survived occasional persecution by the established, Anglican Church during the Colonial period, and at the end of his life became the first president of the Southern Baptist Conference. We can probably infer from this use of the Furman name as an honorific that Ezekiel and Sarah (Egbert) Dye were Baptists, a deduction that could be useful in searching for family records.

William and Rebecca (Job) Egbert were married at the time of the American Revolution. Their first two children, Daniel and Job were born during this tumultuous period; their third child, Sarah, was born at the end of the War. After the War, they settled down to operate their farm in Middlesex County, New Jersey. There, all the rest of their children were born, except for the last, Lewis.

By her father’s will dated 29 March 1777, Rebecca (Job) Egbert received an interest in the Job family farm. Some time after her father’s death in 1778, that is in 1793, she sold that interest to her brother Peter Job for the sum of £116. On his part, William Egbert had title to a certain land warrant by reason of his military service in the Revolution. Together with Rebecca’s inheritance, these assets represented an opportunity for the family in Western Pennsylvania. It seems that, with these assets in hand, William and his family made the decision to move to Western Pennsylvania in 1796. William’s oldest son, Daniel, did not accompany the family west. He probably took over William’s farm in Middlesex County as his inheritance, and may even have contributed some cash to the project of resettlement.

The transition of William Egbert’s family to Western Pennsylvania took place in two steps. The family went first to ‘The Jersey Settlement” in Allegheny County and remained there for four or five years. They then went north from Allegheny County to Mercer County where they established the farm in Sandy Lake Township.

In the period when the family was in Allegheny County, the second son, Job Egbert, married and moved out of his father’s household. At age 22, he married the widow of a neighbor, Stephen Pangborn. Elizabeth (Wall) Pangborn brought him two stepsons and with him she had eight more children.

At the end of the family’s stay in Allegheny County, Sarah Egbert, then at age 18, married a young man named Joseph Paul, probably an immigrant from New Jersey like the majority of the neighbors. Sarah had two children by Joseph, a girl and a boy. She lost her husband shortly after the second child was born, but she remarried to a widower named Ezekiel Dye and moved to Morgan County, Ohio.

The remainder of William and Rebecca Egbert’s family, Clarissa, Charlotte, Ursula, Elizabeth, and Lewis, came to Mercer County with them in 1801. Job and Elizabeth (Wall) Egbert also came to Mercer County at that time, but moved further west to southern Ohio. William’s family was thus established in Middlesex County, New Jersey, in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, and in Morgan and Brown Counties in Ohio.

In New Jersey, we need to search for records of the family of Daniel and Susan Egbert. A beginning would be to look for evidence on the US Census of 1800 in Middlesex county and in Mercer County, New Jersey. This record would provide at least the name of the township in which they lived and would give the composition of their family. Other records, like county histories, could also be searched.

We do not know the names of the two boys Elizabeth Wall had by Stephen Pangborn, nor do we know their marriage date. The Wall and Pangborn families were early immigrants to Allegheny County and Elizabeth and Stephen were probably married there. The Pangborns were Presbyterians, and a serch of Presbyterian church records in Allegheny County needs to be made, for both the marriage and the baptisms.

Sarah Egbert and Joseph Paul were most probably married in Allegheny County (although, if she eloped with him to Westmoreland County, the record would be there.) There is a considerable body of evidence of Sarah’s family in the historical records of the Dye family. There is also the family Bible of Jacob Paul, her first son. However, we need to know more about Joseph Paul and his family. We should look for Joseph Paul in the US Census of 1800 in Allegheny County and also in Westmoreland County. We should also look for the Paul family in the New Jersey census records.

[(sic.) I have not included the Appendices here, which have copies of census records and family group sheets and a map of Western Pennsylvania].