Beeks line: Jonathan Dunham 1709-1748

 This will be a short post, but only because Jonathan seems to be hiding from us.  He is important, though, because he's an ancestor to the Beeks family, and because he is part of the family of Barack Obama.  So then, why is it so hard to find information about him?

Jonathan's grandfather, also Jonathan, was an early settler and founder of Woodbridge, New Jersey.  I'm surprised that I seem to not have written about him before, and I will remedy that situation in a future post.  I've written about his father, Benjamin Dunham, earlier.  Benjamin died at an early age and Jonathan did also, which may be why Jonathan's estate was small.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Jonathan was the son of Benjamin and Mary, possibly Rolph or Rolfe, Dunham, and was born January 7, 1709.  He grew up in Woodbridge Township, probably in Dunhamtown which was just north of the meeting house, and died there also.  The earliest birthdate we have for a child is 1738, so he and Mary Smith likely married in 1736 or 1737.  I've not found records of the marriage.  Mary was the daughter of Shubael and Prudence Fitzrandolph Smith, and those families were also Woodbridge families.  

Jonathan and Mary had at least six children together.  In his will, Jonathan mentions Benjamin by name and notes that he had six children under the age of 15.  It's possible that there were other children who did not survive.  

All we know of his life is that he identified himself as "yeoman" in his will, so we know from that that he owned land and farmed it.  As his father's oldest surviving son, he had probably received land from his father, but I don't know how much.  

We can make one other guess about his life.  His father was Episcopalian, so it is likely that is the religion that Jonathan followed.  Some of his siblings were Baptist but we have no indication that is the case for Jonathan.  

Benjamin died on September 21, 1748, not yet 40 years old.  He had written his will January 31, 1747/48, and it was proved the following January 8, noted as 1748 in court records.  If we look at those dates, something is not correct.  I have not seen the original transcriptions so perhaps there is a date that has been misread or mis-typed along the way.  At any rate, he was not yet 40 years old when he died, and since he had written his will several months prior to his death, we are left wondering whether he'd had some sort of lingering illness.  We wonder the same thing about his father, who also died young.  

This is what we know of Jonathan, along with a few semi-educated guesses.  Jonathan seems to be a man who took care of his family and that is all we can really say about him.  But he's an ancestor in the Beeks family, and perhaps someday someone will be able to learn more.  

I have seen two "facts" which I question.  One calls him "Reverend",  There was an Elder Jonathan Dunham, but he lived later that this one.  He was Baptist.  The other assigns him a middle initial of "S" for Singletary.  I suspect that "S" also belongs to the Jonathan who is termed "Reverend."  It's easy to get men of the same name confused, particularly when they lived in the same area and trace back to the same Jonathan Dunham, the one  that I still need to research and write about.  

The line of descent is:

Jonathan Dunham-Mary Smith

Samuel Dunham-Hannah Ruble

Jacob Dunham-Catherine Goodnight

Samuel G Dunham-Eliza Matilda Reese

Margaret Catherine Dunham-Harvey Aldridge

Cleo Aldridge-Wilbur Beeks

Mary Beeks-Cleveland Harshbarger

Their descendants