William Norcross Hennion was born on 26. Aug. 1794 at Stilestown, New Jersey. He married
Julia Ann Ward on 3. Jun. 1821. William Norcross Hennion died on 2. Mar. 1866 at Parsippany, Morris County, New Jersey, at age 71.
William Norcross Hennion
CHahn7386 (View posts) Posted: 5 May 2000 12:00PM GMT Hennion Forum on Ancestry.com
Classification: Biography
Surnames: Hennion, Baldwin, Ward, Crane, Treat, Lord Stirling, Haring, Ford, Cummings, Lafayette, Dixon
William Norcross Hennion was my great-great-grandfather. Whenever I went to the Presbyterian Church in Parsippany where I grew up I would sit in a certain seat so that I could see his pew with the brass plaque with his name on it. I wondered about him and what things were like when he was alive during the period from 1794 until 1866.
Today I know a lot more about him. He was named for his uncle William Norcross who was secretary to Lord Stirling who owned the Stirling Forge at Hibernia during the Revolution.
His father, John D. (for David, of course) was commissioned a Captain after the Revolution and his mother was Phebe Baldwin, a descendant of Robert Treat and Jasper Crane who settled Newark in 1666. Phebe's grandfather Zachariah Baldwin III and his brother Abraham were invited to Parsippany by the Indians settled there to live among them on the banks of the Rockaway River and teach them Christianity.
William was born in Stilestown near Montville and spent his early years in the family home on the corner of Route 202 and Park Road in Parsippany. This homestead was later sold to an Abraham Haring. William was the second of 8 sons from his father's second marriage.
At the age of 16 he began an apprenticeship with a Mr. Ayers in Morristown to learn the carriage-making trade. He first worked in Troy, NY, and eventually headed west. He stayed with a tribe under Chief Corn Planter along the headwaters of the Allegheny.
He bought a skiff and went to Louisville for a year where he built the first coach ever built in that town.
He went to the mouth of the Ohio and jumped the falls at Louisville with the aid of a guide and then on to St. Louis for a year where he saw the first steamer that ever went up the Mississippi. In Natchez he nearly died of bilious fever.
After he worked the winter in New Orleans there was a risk of yellow fever and he headed home on a hermaphrodite brig out of the Gulf of Mexico. Seas were heavy and it took 16 days to reach NY. He had been away from home about 5 years.
When he returned home he was sporting a type of braid called a queue. I wonder if that was a shock to his parents.
Back home in Parsippany he married Julia Ann Ward who was his third cousin. Julia had learned the millinery trade on Broad Street in Newark and kept a shop in their home hiring most of her housework done.
William built a carriage shop on their property which was near the edge of the present day Jersey City Reservoir on Route 46 in Parsippany. He had to give up his trade on the advice of his physician.
He served as assistant postmaster, constable for seven years or so, and justice of the peace. Eventually he got the postmastership in his name and kept a general store too.
William wanted his oldest son Horatio to go to college and sent him to study under Rev. John Ford and Dr. Cummings. But Horatio, having a roving nature (his own words), wanted to see something of the world and to have a trade that he could work at along the way. So, William reopened his carriage shop and taught his son the trade.
William was Captain of a company in the Morris Brigade which participated in the welcome given Lafayette in Newark.
William and Julia earned a good living and built a nice home. Two sons and four daughters grew to adulthood and they raised three other children as well.