The Johnston and Winter Families of New Jersey and New York

We previously discussed 2nd great grandfather Dr. James Gordon (1838-1912) of Newburgh, New York.  He was from Northern Ireland and his parents James Gordon and Susan McClughan originated from Edinburgh, Scotland.  There is no earlier trace of this branch of the family.

But there is quite a bit of information on the other half of the Gordon branch.  Dr. James Gordon married our second great grandmother Jeanette Johnston (1848-1932) in Washington, Warren County, New Jersey in December, 1872.  It is not clear what drew James to Warren County from Belfast.  Immediately after the marriage, James and Jeanette moved to Newburgh, probably for the purpose of establishing James’ medical practice there.  Great grandmother Bessie Johnson was born in Newburgh in 1873.  

Tracing back through the Johnston family tree, five generations of ancestors lived in and around Warren and Essex counties in north-western New Jersey between the early 1700s and 1872.  The following diagram shows this family history as far as I can trace it. The green regions indicate settlements in New Jersey.

There are no major discrepancies in this branch between this picture and the genealogical research of grandfather Gordon Hynes (conducted in the 1950s), although with modern technology I was able to go further back in several areas.

Five generations preceding Jeanette Johnston lived in Warren and Essex counties.  William Johnston came via the Hudson River side, and was an early settler of Newark New Jersey (founded in 1683). The Oakley family came via the Delaware River route, sixth great grandmother Sarah being born in Trenton in 1707. (Trenton was founded in 1679, Philadelphia in 1682.)

Most of Hannah Winter’s ancestors came directly to Warren/Essex in the early-mid 1700s, many from Germany.

One branch was traceable back to the level of our ninth great grandparents. The family of Sarah Oakley, the wife of sixth great grandfather Samuel Johnston, came from England (Essex, Yorkshire, and Hampshire) in the mid 1600s and became founding pioneers in Hempstead and Oyster Bay, Long Island and Jamaica, Queens, New York.  The exact dates are difficult to determine, but Jamaica was founded by the Dutch in 1656 and our seventh great grandparents Captain Thomas Oakley and Sarah Whitehead seem to have been there very early in its history.

This the third family encounter I know of with Queens, New York, the others being the family of Laura Wright before the American Revolution and Queens resident U.S. Senator Nathan Sanford (1777-1838, the topic of a future post).

The following description of ninth great grandfather Daniel Whitehead comes from another family genealogy that intersects ours.

The family migration map has been updated to include more detail on the Gordon/Johnston branch, and can be found here.