Meet the Hanvills – Descendants of One of Basking Ridge’s Original Families

Two hundred and fifty years ago today, King George II of Britain granted a charter to form Bernardston Township. One of the original families living in the newly formed township was the Hanvills.

James Hanvill lived in present day Basking Ridge starting in 1745, had five children and was a pew holder at The Presbyterian Church of Basking Ridge. Two hundred sixty-five years later, his descendants, living all over the country and having found each other via research into their family line, gathered for the first time as a group on Charter Day in Basking Ridge.

This is their story.

Several years ago, Meg Irizarry started researching her family history. A resident of Pocono Pines, Pennsylvania, with her husband Joe, Irizarry describes herself as a lay genealogist, not fully able to figure out if you're a second cousin once-removed or a third cousin still attached, but quite capable of digging deep into past family connections.

Using genealogy websites like ancenstry.com and digging through township archives, Irizarry was able to trace her own family line back to John Breese (1718 – 1803) and Dorothy Riggs (1713 – 1803). Breese was also an original inhabitant of Basking Ridge, and the family name can be found on a plaque in the Presbyterian Church honoring those who fought in the Revolutionary War.

Irizarry is a descendant of the union between John Breese's daughter Esther Breese (b. 1745) and James Hanvill, whose children would later be married by the Presbyterian Church's Reverend Robert Finley, a name many present-day residents recognize from the name of the main street running through downtown Basking Ridge. Irizarry soon found out that she was not the only descendant of the Hanvill and Breese families researching her past. A circuitous path led not just one researcher back to her family roots, but more than a dozen related individuals (and counting), none of which had previously met.

Kimberley Rosalez is good with the once-removed calculations. She lives in Montana with her husband Rosie, and keeps track of her genealogy findings with a big family tree map, filled with cross outs, sticky notes, coffee stains, Hanvills and Breeses. Ancestry.com allows users to search for other people researching the same family line. A couple of years ago, another user of the Web site who was researching the same names got in touch with Rosalez. "She contacted me just as I was getting ready to move," Rosalez said. "All of my stuff was in boxes, so I told her how to get a hold of my mom, but we kind of missed each other."

"A year and a half later. I'm on ancestry.com, and I see another person researching, so I contact her," Rosalez said. "And she said, oh I think I contacted you a year and a half ago. So that was the beginning. I came out to see her in January." Who was the other researcher? Meg Irizarry.

Rosalez said she felt an immediate connection to her newly discovered second-cousin once removed. The two researchers soon found several other unknown relative-genealogists, starting a Facebook group to connect with one another. Cheryl Smith is married to Charles Smith, who goes by Chuck, and is also a descendant of the Hanvills. She is unusual in the group, as the primary researcher but for her husband's family line. Despite the lack of a direct family connection, Smith says that the work has brought all of the researchers together.

"I think it has something to do with genealogists in general," Smith said. "You're like a team in baseball. You have camaraderie. You're all doing similar work researching your family, with similar goals. You run into the same problems. I think there is a connection with almost anyone who is a genealogist."

The group currently stands at 16 strong, and has members living all over the US, in California, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Tennessee, Montana, Nevada and Pennsylvania. They decided they had to meet.

Irizarry had spent time in Basking Ridge at the Presbyterian Church and cemetery doing research, and found out there was going to be a large celebration commemorating the 250th anniversary of the township. "We brainstormed and thought, wouldn't it be fun if we get some of the families together for this celebration," Irizarry said. "It would be the perfect time to do it."

The Smith, Irizarry and Rosalez families, along with Tom and Carolyn Hanville (modern spelling) from Hillsborough, who were pulled in by their daughter Cathy who lives in California, all met in New Jersey on May 13, two days before Charter Day. The group visited the Trenton archives to look for more information on their ancestors past.

They visited local cemeteries on Friday and met once again for the penultimate event, Charter Day on May 15. Like hundreds of other families, they toured the Brick Academy, the Presbyterian Church and adjacent cemetery, and walked up and down Finley Avenue. And with just a little imagination, one could picture their descendants doing the same many, many years before.

"It just blows me away when I think about, to stand in the graveyard or walk in this area, knowing that they did that, I walked on the sports that they walked. It just really is pretty profound," Irizarry said. "And a little spooky."