Philippe de Carteret - Origins of Philippe de Carteret

Private User, this might be something you'd know something about.

Erica Howton, you too may have run into this before.

And, since the Taylors were seemingly Quakers, Private User might also have some insights.

Alas, no, out of my bailiwick.

So I realized that there was a Philip de Carteret in New Jersey, but he was the first Governor of New Jersey. He was born in 1639, which makes him quite possibly the *brother* of Catherine Taylor, not the father.

I've rearranged the tree accordingly, since Philip's genealogy is well known. He does fit in well with the Jersey noble family, although it's a side branch. I assume that Catherine shares the same parentage. It looks like the whole family arrived in 1665 in New York, after Philip was appointed. His brother also wound up getting appointed, and another de Carteret (a cousin George).

.. will be paying attn. to this thread ...

Here is Catherine Taylor's profile:

Catherine Taylor

I think we should take another look at Catherine's parentage. What is the source which tells us that her maiden name is de Carteret?
The trustworthy-looking family trees that I can find just list her as Catharine, no maiden name and several of the comments on Wikitree point out that nothing is known about Catherine and there is not proof that she is a Carteret. http://files.usgwarchives.net/nj/monmouth/history/family/taylor.txt https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/DeCarteret-1

It seems that Mathew Taylor, of New York did have some interaction with a Lady (Elizabeth) Carteret, as he had exchanged some land with the Carteret family, but as we established, the claimed connection between Matthew and Edward Taylor is not true.

'but as we established, the claimed connection between Matthew and Edward Taylor is not true'

I don't think we've established that yet.
I think we've established that somebody created a bogus claim that Edward was mentioned in Matthew's will. It's clear that that person found no documentation supporting the belief that Edward was a brother of Matthew. That, however, is not disproof.

If it transpires that there is no relation between Edward and Matthew, it *still* doesn't disprove that Edward married Catherine De Carteret. Indeed, should there be no relationship between the two Taylors found, and Edward nevertheless married a de Carteret, that gives motive to the attempt to make Edward Taylor seem to have a pedigree.

So let's research first, disconnect later please.

So

Karl David Wright, quite right!

Here is a message thread on the de Carteret family website that mentions Catherine. It seems like there is no Catherine mentioned in de Cartreret family trees and no proof found so far that Edward married a de Carteret. https://decarteret.org.uk/2012/08/welcome-to-de-carteret-family-web...

We can of course wait a bit to see if anyone comes forward with proof though.

The Taylor genealogist (with the wrong parents for Edward) had no maiden name for Catherine.

https://archive.org/details/jerseyman08deat/page/7/mode/1up

I wonder then where the idea of "de Carteret" came from? It might have been bogused, but if so we owe it to ourselves to figure out who and when did it.

Derives from Asher Taylor

https://archive.org/details/jerseyman08deat/page/7/mode/1up

Matthew Taylor did have a distant connection to the de Carterets, and Asher thought Edward was Mathews’s brother, but it must have been someone else who came up with the wife.

Well, lots of Edward's descendants can't figure it out either. Search for "Edward Taylor" in this page:

https://decarteret.org.uk/2012/08/welcome-to-de-carteret-family-web...

Nobody seems to have evidence or knows where the conjecture came from, but it's apparently family lore for some descendants.

Interestingly enough nobody stopped to think that a sibling arrangement with Philip was more likely than a father/daughter relationship. But hey, that's why they pay me the big bucks. :-)

The legend lives on at FindAGrave!

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/124033209/edward-taylor

The following reference, which uncritically repeats the Matthew - Edward connection, does not mention a De Carteret connection at all.

https://archive.org/stream/genealogyofjudge00detr/genealogyofjudge0...

This volume is dated 1886. So I suspect the De Carteret tradition emerged sometime in the early-mid 1900s. What source did it first appear in, I wonder? Does it even appear in a source?

FWIW, there was a Catherine De Carteret born on Jersey, so it's not too unusual a name for that family:

http://database.decarteret.org.uk/wc04/wc04_168.htm

The legend lives on in RootsWeb too!

https://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/trees/200473/I143068/-/individual

Just copying out the “search”

“Catherine de Carteret 1652-1710 that marries Edward Taylor 1649-1710 are my 8th grandparents. I have not found any definitive information linking Phillipe born 1639 and arriving in America 1665 as Catherine’s father. Has anyone proved that link or who is Catherine’s father?”

08/04/2017 at 18:33
“Have you found any documentation, from the time it supposedly occurred, on this legend?“

—-

You should check FamilySearch to see if they had it as a pedigree submission on the old ancestral file.

https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/vitals/GQ31-W5N

Born at NYC in 1652.

Reason this information is correct: family records.

And links to this record:

Catharine Carteret
in the U.S., Dutch Reformed Church Records in Selected States, 1639-1989
Name: Catharine Carteret
Event Type: Baptism
Birth Date: 17 Apr 1727
Baptism Date: 4 Jun 1727
Baptism Place: New York City, All Boroughs, New York, USA
Father: Thomas Carteret
Mother: Margrete
Source Citation
Holland Society of New York; New York, New York; New York City Lutheran, Vol I, Book 85
https://search.ancestry.com/collections/6961/records/177620

Wait a moment -- 1752 is not 1727; different generation.
The NYC birth is intriguing, but this cannot be the right baptism.

In fact, Ancestry helpfully points me to this marriage record for her, dated 1649:

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?dbid=7854&h=43070&a...

Name: Cath'A Carteret
Spouse Name: Luykas Witbek
Marriage Date: 1749
Marriage Place: Loonenburg (Athens), Greene, New York

Marriage ID: 2220325432

I'm of two minds at this point.

First, it's clear that no evidence for a maiden name of "De Carteret" was known back in the 1800's. The only way this could be real is if somebody either discovered a document or a relationship with the De Carteret family since then - certainly possible, given modern records and technology.

But it's also possible that somebody made an error (like Erica's FamilySearch reference to a wrong generation De Carteret from New York) and that error propagated and "grew legs". A google search does not find any reference to evidence that a Catherine De Carteret ever lived in New Jersey around that time. That would have been way too easy, I suppose. A debunking would also have been helpful, but I can find nothing there either.

In the absence of evidence either way I plan to proceed as follows:
- try to find out the origin of the speculation, should it be that, and
- look for alternative evidence of Catherine's origins

If the children were born in England which seems likely, and we basically have no idea where Edward Taylor came from in England, the search for his wife could be a very long and unprovable search through English records. Catherine had a Will in 1710. Start there. And I would disconnect Carteret as a mixup / wishful thinking in submitted pedigrees from the 1990s.

'If the children were born in England which seems likely'

In the material I included in Edward's overview, Edward's cattle brand supposedly first shows up in New Jersey in 1684. So his very first children might have come from England but no more than that. The claim that he arrived in 1692 (and thus ALL of his children were born in England) is based solely on the fact that "brother" Matthew died in 1688, and the popular tale had him arriving then. A record of land purchase in 1692 was the evidence used, but they neglected earlier land purchases in spinning that story too.

'And I would disconnect Carteret as a mixup / wishful thinking in submitted pedigrees from the 1990s'

Well, we're going to have to install some kind of a firewall then, because just about every modern web tree I can find lists Catharine as a De Carteret. It's more than popular; it's ubiquitous.

Give me a day to finish my digging before taking that step.

Another good resource, which happens to agree with my assertion that Catherine Taylor daughter of Edward Taylor married a Fitzrandolph:

https://www.ourfamtree.org/descend.php/Edward-Taylor/432394

It also includes Catherine DeCarteret as Edward's mother. Places of birth of Catherine's children are all listed as Monmouth County NJ, consistent with every reference I've seen save the bogused one. Three researchers were involved in creating this pedigree. I'm willing to contact them for information.

Observation: This is *not* an under-researched family. There are at least 3 books written all or in part about the Taylors since 1850.

You should be able to find records for the Monmouth birth dates given.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monmouth_Tract

After granting patent for Elizabeth-Town (Achter Koll on Newark Bay) in 1664, Nicolls granted patents for a triangular tract of land called the Monmouth Tract also called the Navesink Tract on April 8, 1665. Twelve men, most of whom were Quakers from Long Island, purchased a tract that extended from Sandy Hook to the mouth of the Raritan River, upstream approximately 25 miles (40 km), and then southeast to Barnegat Bay.[2][3] It was first known as Navesink, likely after a band of the Lenape who inhabited the area, and it was established into the settlements of Middletown and Shrewsbury, and later as into Monmouth County.

Hmm, so that got me thinking.

I first searched for Lippincott births in a 10-year window around 1680. First recorded birth was via a Quaker monthly meeting in 1684, in Burlington NJ. Prior to that we see records from the "US and international marriage records index", which seems to be gleaned from published pedigrees and genealogical works: There are a few FindAGrave entries as well.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=_Lippincott&birth=1680_ne...

Search for Taylor births shows no Quaker birth records pertaining to them at all in the time period, a fact which I think we'd already discussed. It is possible that Edward Taylor was recruited into the faith only after his children were born, which would be very Quaker-like, since he was apparently quite prosperous, so I don't think we can count absence of evidence as evidence of absence. FindAGrave is quite assertive where the Taylors are concerned, as is the AGI, but neither of these sources is definitive.

https://www.ancestry.com/search/?name=_Taylor&birth=1680_new+je...

However, when I explore some of the trees in Ancestry, I do find records, such as:

https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=5769&a...

This sound like distillations of other people's trees rather than any kind of objective proof though.

Meanwhile, I did find something else interesting. There were other Taylors in Shrewsbury in that time period:

https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/108220444/person/1...