Subject: Re: Merrill family - Theodore Murrell
Date: Wed, October 20, 2010 10:59p

Question: George Merrill wrote:

Do you have any information on the person listed below? I have been stuck on my third Great Grandpa for a while.
Name: Theodore Murrell
Spouse: Sarah Ann Murrell
Children: Ida Murrell, Theodore Merrill
Birth: abt 1835 in New Jersey
Residence: 1880 in High Bridge, Hunterdon, New Jersey, United States

Answer: George:

We do not have your Theodore Murrell in our database, probably because we do not record the Murrell or Morrell spelling variations.This is the first case where a name consistently used Murrell and later changed to Merrill. Switches back and forth between Merrill and Merrell are quite common, mostly based on interpretation of handwriting.

We found Your Theodore and Sarah in the 1900, 1880, 1870, and 1860 census, all in northern Hunterdon Co, NJ, and they consistently used MUrrell, Theodore and Sarah Ann had 14 children. We searched for Theodore as a child in the 1850 census, where he should be with his parents, but we could not find him. We assume that because the only male child you named from the 1880 census was Theodore, that your line comes down through him. Is that correct? We found a Theodore Merrell, b. NJ 1865 Apr in North Readington, Hunterdon, NJ in 1900, with an Anna B and son Frank, b. 1890 Aug, but his 1865 date does not agree with his ca 1868 date from 1880 and 1870. Is this your line? We would be very interested in details of your descent from Theodore, and when the name changed.

There was a large clan of Merrills in Hopewell in southern Hunterdon Co, now Mercer Co, but we don't have record of a Theodore in that family. But records there are far from complete. Most were Baptists, that did not believe in infant baptism. NJ records are probably the worst of the original colonies. There were also some Merrills in Warren Co, NJ, that we believe [but have not proven] came from Hopewell. They are a lot closer in location to your Murrells in Tweksbury and High Bridge in Hunterdon Co.

There is a new tool that has proven helpful in Genealogy and that is DNA testing. The DNA associated with the male Y-chrosome is passed from father to son, essentially unchanged over tens or hundreds of generations. The original Merrill immigrants to the area were Richard and William, believed to be brothers, who came to Staten Island ca 1680. William later moved to Hopewell, but both had descendants in NJ. DNA testing would show if you were descended from this Staten Island family, but would not tell you who Theodore's father was.

Howard and Jean Merrill