The patents and grants in the map of the Little Fork Patents, on the www.germanna.com website web site, range in date from 1719, for Robert Beverley’s 4000 acre tract, “Elkwood”, to 1768, for a grant to Henry Huffman. Note that this map is exclusively original patents and grants, not the resale of land as is shown on Hackley’s map. One can compare the two maps.
As a preliminary toward doing some work on the Buttons, let us return back to the Young (Yung) family. At the time the Swedes were in control of the Siegen area during The Thirty Years’ War (1618 to 1648), a member of the Jung family (Young in America), one Christoph Jung, was the Reformed pastor at Gundersheim, about eighty miles to the south of Siegen. He was last seen there in 1635, when he apparently left, as the Swedes relinquished control to the opposing (Catholic) forces. He is noted as “of Siegen”, an expression which usually denotes as born there. He had matriculated at Herborn in 1615, and again in 1618, when he was said to be pastor at Seelbach. After leaving Gundersheim, he seems to have served at Altenkirchen and Alzey.
His son, Wilhelm, was also a minister and he was “of” Altenkirchen. He was also pastor at Ostheim, 1650-1662, and at Marköbel, 1650-1697. Wilhelm Jung and his wife, Anna Maria Dietz, had eleven children, one of whom, Maria Margarete, married Jacob Bouton as his second wife. Jacob’s name is also given as Jakob Boutton. Jacob was the son of the Huguenot David Bouton and his second wife, Rachel Haseur. David was born in Metz, France, and went as a young man to Hanau, in Hesse, where he married and became a business man.
One of Jacob’s sons was Jean Daniel, who was baptized in the French Reformed Church in Hanau in Hesse. His German name was Johann Daniel and the Bouton surname was sometimes spelled as Boutton and Button in Hanau records. Jean passed through Holland, where his given name would have been Jan. Then he went the customary route through England to Philadelphia, on the ship Samuel. He was 48 when he arrived in 1739. In Philadelphia, his name was spelled by the ship’s captain as Buttong but he spelled it as Bouton. He was naturalized in Philadelphia as Johann Daniel Bouton. He was a city dweller, not a farmer.
The man who did the research on the Bouton/Button family was Benjamin F. Dake, and he wrote up his findings in Beyond Germanna, vol. 7, n. 4 . His research was based mostly on European records. In fact, his reference list was almost as long as his article. Mr. Dake declined to say that the man he researched was the same as the Daniel Button who was a taxpayer in the Elk Run district of Prince William County in Virginia in 1751. I would be inclined to say that he was, in view of the name similarity and the Young connection.
There were English Buttons in Virginia, so one must be careful not to confuse the two sets of families. B. C. Holtzclaw thought that Daniel Button was not from Siegen, but he did not go back far enough in time.
(13 Dec 02)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.