Family Roots in the New World
The early history of the Falkinburgs has been documented by Leah Blackman in 1880. {HF1.1}
The roots of the Falkenburg family in America begin before the founding of the United States. The family roots are in Little Egg Harbor along the New Jersey coast and begin in the latter part of the seventeenth century. At the left is a rare map of Britain's American colonies in 1684-85. This map is based on cartographer Richard Daniel’s documentation. Below is another rare map published circa 1677 depicting New Jersey. This was the first printed map of New Jersey after the province was split into East New Jersey and West New Jersey in 1676. Both of these maps are in the collection of the New Jersey State Archives. Each image on this page is linked to the full image on njarchives.org. The large bay toward the bottom of the coast is New York harbor. (Note: the map is presented with North aligned to the right). The Delaware is in the upper left, and the inlet to Little Egg Harbor is at the left of the second barrier island (moving down the coast from New York--up and to the left on this map).
New Jersey circa 1677
Leah Blackman describes the earliest records of Europeans in Little Egg Harbor .
"The first recorded account of a visit of Europeans to Little Egg Harbor is that of Captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, commander of the renowned ship "Fortune," which sailed into the harbor in the year 1614, reaching the harbor by the Old Inlet, which then flowed between Long and Short Beaches. This visit seems to have taken place during the season for birds's eggs, which must have been in the months of May or June, for in their explorations of the marshes, the crew of the "Fortune" found immense quantities of gulls' and other meadow birds' eggs, and the unusual abundance of those fair oval prizes induced the Dutch adventurers to name the place Eyre Haven, which, in their language, means Egg Harbor."
After the visit of Captain Mey there does not seem to have been much, if any, notice taken of the place until the year 1698, (a period of eighty-six years) when several persons from the upper sections of Burlington county, made various locations of land in the township. Among the proprietors of these surveys I have noticed the names of Heinz Jacobs or Henry Jacobs Falkinburg, Eleazer Fenton, Susannah Budd, Edward Andrews and his brother, Mordecal Andrews" {HF1.2}.
| Notes | |
| {HF1.1} | You can access a segment of Blackman's The History of Little Egg Township as a pdf on this website, or in its entirety as an appendix of The Proceedings, Constitution, By-Laws of the Surveyors' Association of West New Jersey found on Ancestry.com. A reissue of this publication is available from the Tuckerton Historical Society and the Higginson Book Company. All page references to Blackman's work found on this website refer to pagination in the Appendix of in the Proceedings of the Surveyors' Association. |
| {HF1.2} | Blackman-1868 p. 177. |
| References | |