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Tracing deeds


Swamp_Yankee

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I was dismissed from jury duty today and it was already 3:00 p.m. so I took a walk over to the Hunterdon County Hall of Records to do a little digging on our property.  We are told that our house was once a barn and that our 1.85 acres was part of one of the neighboring 100+ acre farms.  It makes sense as the center of our house is built on a square foundation of 3' thick rubblestone walls.  The floor joists that span the walls are some type of rough sawn hardwood about 5" x 8" x 15' or so with no center girder.  The basement was enlarged over the years by adding on more foundation walls and at some point a rough concrete floor was poured in parts.  According to tax records our house was "built" in 1896, but I would be very interested in finding out when the stone foundation for the barn was laid.  With a little help from the woman who runs the search room I was able to put together some history on the house and property:

2017 - We bought the property from the Kesty family

1976 - The Kesty family (Westfield, Union County) purchased the property from the Giarratana family

1967 - The Giarratana family (New Milford, Bergen County) purchased from the Tedesco family (I actually have an aerial photograph of the property as a working farm with "Tedesco" written on the back)

1945 - The Tedesco family (Newark, Essex County) purchased from the Kramer family

I lost the trail here because the deeds become hard to follow and then picked it back up with the White family-I'm not sure how it was conveyed from the Whites to the Kramers.

1913 - The White family  (Newark, Essex County) purchased from the Bigelow family

The trail then goes cold again, but the Bigelows (who are listed as residing in nearby Hampton Borough, not Bethlehem Township, so perhaps they were landlords to tenant farmers?) purchased from the Walters-year unknown.  I could spend all day pulling the deeds and reading through them, but its hard to get down there as they are only open 8:30-4:30 during the week.  I have some vacation time to burn before the year is out so I'll have to set aside some time to do more research between now and then.  Anyone else put together a history on their property like this?  I'm thinking of having some type of print made up with each family name and the years they spent here to hang next to a survey of the property I framed.  It was done by a surveyor out of Frenchtown in the 1990s, but between the fact that its done on a brown colored paper and the fact that he put a very artistic flair on the drafting work it looks like it was done 100 years ago.

I live back in the woods you see

My woman and the kids and the dogs and me

I got a shotgun a rifle and a four wheel drive and a country boy can survive

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Who was the surveyor in frenchtown that did it. Around that time there was a older surveyor who died then this son kept the business going without a license until he got busted. Not sure if it is the same person or not. 

Anyway I read deeds all day every day

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17 minutes ago, rgw said:

Who was the surveyor in frenchtown that did it. Around that time there was a older surveyor who died then this son kept the business going without a license until he got busted. Not sure if it is the same person or not. 

9IBNLg0.jpg

Dated 1993-hope it was the father and not the son :eek:  Probably doesn't really matter though-I have a pretty much identical (albeit much less aesthetically pleasing) from 1976 done by a William Ferlaine, and the metes and bounds description is exactly the same as far back as I've been able to search thus far.   

I live back in the woods you see

My woman and the kids and the dogs and me

I got a shotgun a rifle and a four wheel drive and a country boy can survive

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I grew up in Nutley.I personally know Tedesco's,Charlie,Ernie  father was a builder and Dick Kramer of Nutley worked at ITT.Maybe there's a relation.

Bigelow was a motor car co.in Belleville just over the Newark line.

http://newjersey.news12.com/story/34886650/belleville-car-dealership-succumbs-to-credit-crisis

Edited by hunterbob1

“In a civilized and cultivated country, wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.” -Theodore Roosevelt

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3 minutes ago, hunterbob1 said:

I grew up in Nutley.I personally know Tedesco's,Charlie,Ernie  father was a builder and Dick Kramer of Nutley worked at ITT.Maybe there's a relation.

Interesting-the couple that lived in our home was Basil (husband) and Frances (wife).  The farmer adjacent to my property knew them as a young kid.  They had a couple of large chicken houses with as many as 500 laying hens at a time and made their living selling eggs.  Basil and Frances were living at 116 Garside Street in Newark in 1945 when they bought our place.

I live back in the woods you see

My woman and the kids and the dogs and me

I got a shotgun a rifle and a four wheel drive and a country boy can survive

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36 minutes ago, hunterbob1 said:

Bigelow was a motor car co.in Belleville just over the Newark line.

It seems as though the Bigelows were from out here.  If I get some time I'll check some of the cemeteries in the area for the names.

I live back in the woods you see

My woman and the kids and the dogs and me

I got a shotgun a rifle and a four wheel drive and a country boy can survive

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Found this today which was interesting.  I've been researching the Bigelow family which seems to have been prominent at one time in Hampton, and through some Googling found two ads they had placed in the 1917 New Jersey Agricultural Circular selling farms:

5OGKtKV.jpg

This one sounds like it could be what is now my neighbor's house (the main house) and mine (the tenant house), but of course I did find a deed saying that the Bigelows had sold the property in 1913, but maybe they took it back in a foreclosure?  The description, 1-1/2 miles from the Post Office/Train Station, 750' elevation is pretty much dead on.  I reached out to a guy who is the unofficial historian of Hampton to pick his brain a bit and see if there are other documents I can look through to get more history on our property.  

I live back in the woods you see

My woman and the kids and the dogs and me

I got a shotgun a rifle and a four wheel drive and a country boy can survive

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