A COURT CASE (1680-1685) INVOLVING MY 9th Great grandfather ~ Jacob Jansz GARDENIER - New York

Today I was doing a bit of research on my GARDENIER line. This is a paternal line through my great grandmother.  I don’t have a date of death for my 9th great grandfather, Jacob Jansz Gardenier aka Jacbo Jansz FLODDER. 

While doing some digging, I came across a court case from 1680-1685 (no exact date is given).  This does help me because it seems he was still alive during those years.  I have an approximate birth for him of 1618. This assists me in moving forward to try and locate his death date. Using all available records can be invaluable to us in ascertaining facts about our ancestors.

To see how I descend from Jacob please read this blog post FOLLOW UP ~ The Jacob Jansz Gardenier line of Colonial New York–My 9th great grandfather

Here’s what I located today on Ancestry.  This comes from the book Minutes of the court of Albany, Rensselaerswyck, and Schenectady, 1668- 1685, vol. 3, translated & edited by A.J.F. Van Laer and published in 1932. This particular link will take you to Family Search as I believe it’s easier to search in the volume from that site vs Ancestry.

On page 202 I find this record.

“Jacob Janse Gardenier, plaintiff, against Jan Bronk, defendant.  Jacob Janse Gardenier says that the defendant, Jan Bronk, has failed to deliver 16 logs on account of 200 boards delivered to him five years ago, as also 51 logs by balance of account of 200 boards delivered, making together 67 logs.  And as he has failed to deliver the same on the shore, in the presence of Leendert Phillipse and his wife, he requests that the defendant may be ordered to deliver the 67 logs in the kill, according to his promise.

Default of the defendant.

The honorable court condemn the defendant to deliver to the plaintiff the 67 logs in Flodder’s kill, as soon as the water is fit to float them down, unless the defendant meanwhile can produce any evidence to the contrary.”

Here is an image of page 202.

(PLEASE CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT)

These are questions I have:

• Did the defendant ever comply? This volume has 601 pages and no index, so other than reading each page I may never know.
  
• What is Flodder’s kill? (I know that the plaintiff used the name Jacob Jansz Flodder) So this land or tributary may be named after him.
  
• What is a “kill” as defined in the 17th century?  I did find that it was used as a place name in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania and meant a stream, creek or tributary.  The origin being derived from Middle Dutch “kille” which meant riverbed or channel.  Thank you Google for always coming through for me on my crazy searches.
• Based on the information above I’ve probably answered my own question as to what was Flodder’s kill.

That’s it for today.  I have a burning desire to go to Albany and spend some quality time in the libraries, courthouses and archives there.  Lots of ancestors have history in that area.  I’ve never been to New York, except as a stopover when I’m flying.

If you are connected to anyone mentioned in this blog post, please get in touch.  I’d love to connect with you and perhaps expand our family histories.

OTHER POSTS THAT MAY BE OF INTEREST

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks–Week #7–Cornelia Gardenier Cooper–My 7th great grandmother

SURNAME SATURDAY–COOPER–Have I really gone back 3 more generations?

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2020   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION

THIS IS WHY I ATTEND SEMINARS–WHAT I NEVER KNEW ABOUT COURTHOUSE RECORDS

Left to right – Cabell County, West Virginia, Cheshire County, New Hampshire and Lawrence County, Ohio

I was fortunate to be able to attend a seminar this past Saturday that featured Judy Russell as the speaker.  The seminar was put on by the North San Diego County Genealogical Society, of which I am a member.

Who is Judy Russell?  Most of you probably know she is the Legal Genealogist.  She has a blog where she keeps us up to date and completely informed about various laws involving our genealogy research.  I have followed her blog for a while now and we’ve become Facebook friends.  However, I had never had the honor of hearing her speak.  What I did know from other genealogy friends, was that I would not be disappointed. 

That is an understatement.  Judy is not only knowledgeable about many areas of the law, but she’s also an excellent genealogist and a really good speaker.  And, she’s funny too.
There were four session to the seminar which went from 9:30 to 3:30.  Here are the titles of those sessions:

THAT FIRST TRIP TO THE COURTHOUSE

• What to know before you go
• What to bring
• What to look for when you get there
• When the clerk asks “May I help you?”
• Tips for courthouse research
• Checklist for courthouse research

THE FAIR COURT

• Introduction
• Some basic concepts
• Kinds of cases in equity
• Reasons why genealogists should love chancery cases

THE TIES THAT BOND

• What is a bond?
• A discussion of the kinds of bonds: marriage, bastardy, bail, adminstrators, guardianship, appeal, peace and official
• Why do we care about bonds?

DOWERED AND BOUND OUT – WIDOWS AND ORPHANS UNDER THE LAW

• The law of dower
• Records of widows
• The law as to orphaned children
• Records of orphans

I was spellbound during these sessions.  I have been to courthouses in several states during my various genealogy road trips.  However, I now know that I missed a large amount of the possible records available for my ancestors.  Yes, I’d heard of bonds, and even seen a couple of records.
 
What I didn’t know was
- That there are so many different types
-  That they can contain copious amounts of information
-  That they can connect one family member to another
- And that I should look for them every time I enter a courthouse

Since most of these records can only be obtained at the actual courthouse, it will be a while until I can revisit some of the places I’ve been.  However, there was a website that Judy told us about that has many scanned chancery court records.  It is the Virginia Memory-Library of Virginia website.  Here is a direct link to the Chancery court page http://www.lva.virginia.gov/chancery/  


I began looking on this Virginia page yesterday and found a 96 page court record involving my 6th great grandfather, Andrew HAMILTON and other family members. On page 4 was a mention of his daughter Alice Hamilton who married my DAR patriot, Andrew BOWEN.  This was my first good piece of evidence as to Alice’s father, other than circumstantial evidence.

Here I have circled references to family members on this page. 
 (Click on the image to enlarge it)


The images from the Virginia Memory site can only be saved one page at a time.  As a result it will take me several days to save all 96 pages of this document.  It’s much easier to read them on a monitor or on the iPad when you can enlarge the print.  I’m actually very pleased with how readable the document is.

To quote Judy Russell “Is this a record that you would like to have?”  My answer is a resounding “YES!”

Now I cannot wait to go to other courthouses and find bond records of all kinds.  Those courthouses shown at the beginning of this post are all places I’ve been.  I’ve been inside two of the three courthouses and never looked for bonds.  Don’t make that same mistake.

Have you looked at these types of court records before?  Or, is this your first time hearing how valuable they can be?

Happy hunting,

Michigan Girl

Copyright ©  2010-2015   Diane Gould Hall

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.  NO USE WITHOUT PERMISSION