The Overall Index contains all names found in the abstracts and should be used to do eye-ball scans to see if there could be alternate spellings of the surname(s) of interest. Or, you might want to browse to see if there are any other names you might want to research. After recording the spelling of your names, go directly to the Text File.
Note: Starting with the addition of the new names for 1883, the Index format has been slightly modified. Before, all female names were listed separately with their respective "Miss, Mrs. or Ms." designations. Now, all female names that are exactly the same, but have more than one title, are combined. Example: SMITH, Mary, Miss & SMITH, Mary, Ms., will now be listed as: SMITH, Mary -[Miss/Ms.]. Starting with the addition of the 1884 Index, the names of women who are listed after their husband's name, will be combined with the name of the male. Example: SMITH, George, Mrs. will be listed as SMITH, George -[Mr./Mrs.], if the male name is already in the Index! There were 654 names merged with a male name, as of 1885. Those married women who are listed under their female names will not be affected. Major reason for these consolidations is that this Index is getting extremely large and it has taken more than 2 days to merge the names for one year.
The Overall Index does not give the exact count of how many individual persons have been indexed. My guess is that there are now over 61,000 different persons noted in the newspaper, as of the 1899 entries!
Hint for searching: Type only the Surname in the "Find Box" and view the list before you refine your search. Sometimes you only have initials instead of full first names!
These indexes may be used to differentiate persons with the same name and to locate individuals within the towns or townships of Hunterdon County. These listings were compiled with names that were associated with a location. If no location was given in the newspaper item and I did not proof against Census Records, then the name is not included in these indexes. Thus the number of entries are less than the full Overall Index noted above.
There are locations that could either be a town or a township: Lebanon - Lebanon Township [Tp.]; this presents a major problem in that the town of Lebanon is in Clinton Tp. Many of the names that could be a town or township were not so noted in the text and you will have to guess which is which!. I have also tried to be careful with "Raritan," since this could be a township in Hunterdon County or a town in Somerset County; if it is listed as "Raritan Tp.," then there was sufficient evidence to put it in Hunterdon County.
The names of certain locations have changed over the years. The conversion of these old names to those used today is according to entries in the book: "Hunterdon County Place Names" by Phyllis B. D'Autrechy; Updated in 2005. This revision is not in print but is contained on the new DVD or on CD #4 of the Hunterdon Gazette Newspaper
There are names that have listings for more than one location. It is possible for one of these conditions to be true: 1. Newspaper error. 2. Compilation error. 3. There really is more than one person with the same name. 4. This person owned property in more than one location. 5. This person moved to a different location. 6. The location was "near to -" or "in the vicinity of -" and the report or reporter was guessing what location the person was nearer to! This is true of places like "near to" Croton, where a person could actually live in Delaware, Franklin, Kingwood or Raritan Townships and there are other locations like that. 7. Some properties were located in a position where the township line and in a few cases, the County line ran through the acreage. If given, the site of the homestead was used for the location. 8. The person lived in one location, but worked or owned property in another location.
Please note that there are names of persons listed who did not live in Hunterdon County. If their 'outside' locations were listed, I did not always include them. However, there are names from outside the County - the reason is that they may have lived in the Warren County part of Asbury, Bloomsbury, Changewater and perhaps a few other towns on the border of neighboring Counties - Mercer, Somerset & Morris Counties.
Any questions, do not hesitate to send an e-mail and ask for clarification - Go to bottom of the Home Page.
Click on the link below to go to the Overall Name/Location Index
The Listing of Marriages gives you access to a link between the name of the Bride, the name of the Groom and the surname of the Bride (Wife) after her marriage! The listing is sorted by date of the marriage as given in the Newspaper. [Note: I have created the name of the married woman based on the surname of the Groom, and the first name, initial, etc. of the Bride, this name was NOT in the original Newspaper Item! This "made-up" name is sometimes different when the lady appears later in the newspaper. First names are shortened or expanded - Lizzie to Elizabeth or vice versa and middle initials sometimes change to the surname prior to the marriage.]. If question marks [??] appear for a date, it could mean that the date was missing from the original, or that the date was blurred.
So, if you only know the name of one of these persons, you will be able to find the others! Please remember that not all marriages that took place in Hunterdon County, were printed in the Hunterdon Republican.
When you find a name, continue to look through the entire list, because there may be others with the same name. There are three different ladies named - "Mrs. Emma Hoffman," two named -
"Mrs. Mary Hoffman," two named - "Mrs. Mary Ann Hoffman," and a bunch of others with similar names - at least when I typed this note. All of them had different surnames before marriage and all had different husbands. So don't stop searching if you get one name, there may be others with the same name! You will occasionally find a repeat name with a different spouse - which could mean an error or a remarriage if a former spouse had died - there were a few like that!
Couples
One additional Index has been prepared that contains the names of other Married "Couples" listed in the Text File, who were not listed as Marriages in the Newspaper. They were found under other Item Headings.
These couples are identified by Date of Issue, Item Category and Location. Starting in 1880, I used the Census records to find spouses, if only one spouse was listed in the newspaper item. This generally occurred in the Death notices, where only the father of a child, or one spouse who died, was listed. Starting with 1880, when I proofed marriages and parents of the bride with the 1880 US Census, you will find a number of couples listed under the "Married" category. They are the parents of the bride rather than the married couple! I did not consistently note the source of these names that were not contained in the original newspaper item - and you can give me a demerit for that! But remember, these are abstracts and not direct quotes!
Click on the appropriate link below for Marriages or Couples
[Active links have a Green background & red font, they change to blue after your visit.]
Go to List of Selections
Death Index
Please read the following carefully, so you will understand how the index was prepared and how much you can rely on [trust!] the information.
Basic Content: The material was derived primarily from the HuntRepNews Text files and the material was frequently compared with the online Hunterdon Democrat and the US Census Records at Ancestry.com. There is no reference to material taken from these other sources and the only way you will know this, is when you compare the Index entries to those in the Text files! Starting with the 1893 newspaper, some deaths, the date of which was not noted, were checked against the New Jersey Death Index which was found at Ancestry.com
A disturbing finding occurred when I reviewed death information during the 1895 newspaper and compared it to the New Jersey Death Index provided by Ancestry.com. The finding is reported in the Project Details page for the Year 1895. In short, the transcriber allowed the electronic form being used to enter the date of the previous Year for all deaths that occurred during January through June of the next year. Thus a death that happened in Jan. 1895 was recorded as Jan. 1894. I also found this error for 1896 and 1897. An email to Ancestry.com did not provide an answer. I have overridden this error by using the death date in the newspaper. I have also used "findagrave.com" to verify dates and relationships. I noted one grave stone was cut with an incorrect date - at least it didn't agree with the NJ Death Index and did not agree with the newspaper. So beware, even of "official" documents!
These are the Table headings and their contents:
Name: Surname in capitals, followed by first name, etc. The text files were searched with these key words: body, buried, death, dead, deceased, dec., died, drown, fatal, funeral, interred, killed, murder, obit, stricken and suicide. The most hits were from the words: death, died and dec. Based on this experience, I will modify how deaths will be categorized in text documents after 1890.
There were many unnamed young people. One of their parents was always listed, so they can be searched by last name only. I have added the words: Boy, Girl, Child, Infant, if so indicated in the Item. Again, unknown information is given a question mark [?].
Issue: This is the date of the newspaper in which the item for the name appears, listed as: year - month - day.
DOD: This is the Date Of Death. When the exact date was not given, with words such as , died recently, died last week, a few days ago, etc. I assumed the year, guessed the month and used “??” for the day. If the month could not be guessed, it also got a “??” If a missing date was not found in the Hunterdon Democrat, the word “Unk” was entered for unknown date. There is one problem that I could not resolve when the entry said "died last Thursday." Sometimes the entry was "Thursday week." Did that mean last Thursday or the week before last Thursday? I did not change the text, so you will see how I handled these dates. Be careful and check your dates against more reliable sources!
Age: The number of years, months [mn] or weeks [wks] as given in the item. If “about” age was used, then “~” is put in front of the age. If the age was: “in their 75th year”, then I rounded down to 74, or the actual age at date of the issue. There were a number of different ages for the same person when I compared the HuntRepNews with the Democrat and with the US Census Records. I did not try to resolve them, but generally used the age given in the Census Record.
Reason: This is the reason for the death if it was given in one of the newspapers. Clarifications or further explanations are given in the last column.
Location: This is the original, primary or only location in Hunterdon Co. for the deceased, or the location of the death. They may not have died at this location and may not have lived there for many years. When the newspaper said the person lived near ….., I checked the Census records to see the Township in which they lived and entered this in the Location column with further explanation in the last column. The text was generally not modified.
Additional Information: This contains whatever I thought was important to understand the identity of the person and clarify information in the other columns. One note about the "Orphans’ Court" Items which probably had the most entries from the “dec.” search word. Since pertinent data is not available from this item, about all you can surmise is that the person died before the issue date. Also, note that I assumed the person lived in Hunterdon Co., since they were being recorded by the Hunterdon Co. Orphans’ Court. Because there were so many entries under this category, I did not proof against the Democrat nor the Census Records!
Click on the link to Deaths below, to go to the Death Index. Before you do that, remember how to open the search function in the .pdf document. You must use the "Go back arrow" on top left of the Web page to get back here! - DO NOT CLICK on the "RED X" at top right of any Web page, or you will shut down the browser!
Go to List of Selections
Occupation/Position Index
Please read the following carefully, so you will understand how the index was prepared and how much you can rely on [trust!] the information.
Basic Content: The material was derived primarily from the HuntRepNews Text File and the material was frequently compared with the online Hunterdon Democrat and the US Census Records at Ancestry.com. There is no reference to material taken from these other sources and the only way you will know this, is when you compare the Index entries to those in the Text File!
These are the Table headings and their contents:
Name; Issue [date published in newspaper]; Location [this could be location of person before they purchased property or received the appointment, or it could be their location after the event if I could not confirm their prior location. Many but not all Locations were proofed with US Census Records.]; the occupation or position of the person [note that not every person in the Text File, nor every person who was entered in this Index, had every instance recorded. I entered what I thought would help me identify people as I type the remaining years!] The last column is the catch all to help me identify the person. Some of this information came from Census Records, the Hunterdon Democrat, the Hunterdon Gazette and the Internet through "Google!"
Click on the link for the Occupation/Position Index
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REPUBLICAN
