Hannah’s Story

In 1741 Henry Munday patented a tract of land called “Royenton Plains” along the east side of the Monocacy River near Rocky Ridge and Mechanicstown (later Thurmont) in what was then Prince George’s County, Maryland. On March 25, 1745, these 142 acres were purchased by Daniel Pittinger, who had moved to the area with his wife Elizabeth Amy Biggs and family. Daniel Pittinger was born in 1710 in Somerset County, New Jersey. The Pittingers (or Pewtingers/Pittengers) were English and had been in New Jersey since the middle of the 17th century. Elizabeth Amy Biggs was born in 1713 in Kingston, New York, the daughter of John Biggs, Jr., and Eva Lambertse Brink. The Biggs family were English, and the Brinks were Dutch and earlier Norse. The Pittingers and Biggs families have been heavily researched and can be traced reliably to the 1600s.

M. Alan Brown, a sixth great-grandson of Thomas and Hannah through their son Thomas Brown, Jr., has graciously shared the following information on the background of Hannah’s lineage:

The first John Biggs was an ensign in the British army and came to America with Colonel Richard Nichols on a warship in 1664. Colonel Nichols took New York and the island of Manhattan from the Dutch without a shot being fired and became the first governor of New York. John Biggs stayed on at Kingston, New York, as a lieutenant with the military regiment located there. His fellow lieutenant John Hall became the sheriff. When John Biggs’ first wife died, he married his friend John Hall’s daughter, Mary. The women were all Dutch so started the Dutch connection. The first Dutch church outside of New York was in Raritan, New Jersey, and they all moved there together. Little did they know that Richard Pittinger, an aide to Sir Philip Carteret, who came to New Jersey in 1665 and became governor there, was also on the scene. He actually owned a real estate lot next to the governor’s real estate lot. Richard Pittinger’s family also moved to North Branch on the border of Somerset and Huntington County, New Jersey, for the same reason the wives were Dutch and that was the only Dutch church in New Jersey. So, a Daniel Pittinger now living near the north branch of the Raritan River meets and marries Elizabeth Amy Biggs. The Biggs and Pittinger families read about a new manor in then Prince George’s County, Maryland, where they could lease cheap land from Lord Baltimore through his land agent Daniel Dulany Sr. But in 1737 when both families moved to Maryland the leases had not been established for Monocacy Manor so John Biggs bought a piece of land outright from Dulany and they all lived there until 1741 when John Biggs became the first leaseholder on Monocacy Manor. Daniel Pittinger purchased “Royenton Plains” in 1745 and moved his family there off of Hiney Road, and this is where Hannah was born and we must assume that she met and married our progenitor Thomas Brown Sr. Daniel Pittinger also leased lot no. 3 on Monocacy Manor in 1745 but did not live there like his father-in-law John Biggs did.  

Hannah was the sixth child of Daniel and Elizabeth (Biggs) Pittinger, born in 1746 in “Royenton Plains.” She had older sisters Prudence, Elisabeth, and Maria and older brothers John and Daniel. Of these, all but Daniel were born in New Jersey. Daniel was just a year older than Hannah and born after the family moved to Maryland. William and Benjamin would be born in 1749 and 1751, respectively.

Frederick County was formed on December 10, 1748, from parts of Prince George’s County and Baltimore County. The family settled in this area for many years as what became known as the Monocacy Manor settlement grew. On May 19, 1764, Daniel Pittinger purchased 100 acres for 24 pounds, 5 shillings from Paul and Margaret Woolf, and on August 17, 1767, he bought 77 acres for 130 pounds from Frederick Ambrose and his wife. Daniel and Elizabeth are buried in a small family cemetery on the property known simply as the Pittinger Cemetery in a farm field near Rocky Ridge, Maryland. He died in 1796 at age 86, and she predeceased him in 1794 at age 81.

Little is known about Hannah until in her 20s she met Thomas Brown. It is presumed that they married around 1770 but there is no record of where that occurred. She did take his name because it later shows on the baptismal records of two of their children. Was she blonde with braids from her Dutch and Norse heritage? Was she just a farm girl and they met down a lane? Thomas was older, possibly being born about 1738, but, as previously written in his story, very little is known about him but that he leased lot #63 in Monocacy Manor as a tenant and we believed served in a militia from Frederick County during the later years of the Revolutionary War. After the marriage Thomas and Hannah lived in Monocacy Manor where four of their children were born. In the early 1780’s they moved to the new nearby settlement of Creagerstown, which is where the last three children were born. From 1772 to 1784 Hannah and Thomas had Susannah Cecelia, William, Thomas Jr., Mary Elizabeth (Polly), John Nathan, Ignatius, and Catharine Dorothea (Kate). All of the names are those of saints.

A Joseph Brown is listed in the will of Daniel Pittinger as a grandson but that is the only mention of a Joseph. Andree W. Wilson-Taylor included a son Joseph being born around 1776 and another researcher placed him being born circa 1783 and he also has been listed in other typed lists as the oldest child, born in 1766. Perhaps Thomas had a son by a previous relationship. These researchers thought he married a Sarah Stouder (there were Stouders in the Monocacy settlement). Ancestry.com links a Joseph, b. 1766, as being the son of Joseph Brown, Sr. and Solome Sarah Crissman of Bedford County, Pennsylvania. There is also some thought that Thomas may have had a brother Joseph. DNA research that is ongoing has shown a possible connection to the Brown family in Bedford County. The Joseph Brown listed in the will as a grandson along with John Brown and Catharine Brown might be really Ignatius because Ignatius’s full name could have been Joseph Ignatius. As stated earlier, some of the children seem to have double saint’s names. These were the three youngest children of Hannah’s children and would have been 16, 14, and 12 in 1796 when Daniel died.

There is also a vague reference to a Rebecca Brown who married a Gordon in the handwritten notes of Eldon Buhrman but nothing has shown that she existed and he seems to have confused her with Susannah who married Daniel Gordon or with Susannah Rebecca Harman who married Thomas Brown Jr. He mentions that a granddaughter of Rebecca Brown Gordon married an Ephraim Hauver but the spouse of Ephraim Hauver was Martha Ellen Gordon who was a granddaughter of Susannah and Daniel Gordon. 

In 1790 Hannah listed Thomas as the father in the baptismal records of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Creagerstown for John Nathan and Cathaerine Dorothea. She alone is listed as the sponsor. It is presumed that Thomas died between 1786 and 1789 because on the 1790 census Hannah is listed as head of household of four males under the age of 16, which is close to the birth years of her sons (William and Thomas, Jr are thought to be about 18 and 17 depending on the month the census was taken), and five females (including herself as the head of household). The census did not specify the ages of the females.  

Hannah, now widowed and no doubt with limited income but from what the older children could bring in or from what support she could obtain from her parents, moved with her children to Foxville on land she leased from or was provided to her from a first cousin John Biggs. It is not clear just how many children were with her. She moved there possibly as early as December 1791 because there was a land survey warrant for a tract of land known as “Round Meadow” obtained by John Biggs on December 13th of that year, although the actual survey was not done until November 1792.

There was a 14 x 12-foot cabin on the land when Hannah and the children moved in at the southern end of what is now Manahan Road and which is still referred to as “Round Meadow” in what is now part of Catoctin Mountain Park. They christened the area “Brownsville,” but because there was another Brownsville in the region the area on the mountain became known as Foxville, because the largest landowners were the Fox family.

Family lore states that the cabin burned to the ground and the family barely escaped with their lives. It was suggested that other persons coveted the property and set the fire. But Hannah rebuilt, and the house still stands today and has been renovated and enlarged and is part of the Caboose Farms Event Center.

Hannah obviously was busy raising her children. One imagines she had a garden and raised what she could and perhaps bartered for what she needed. Perhaps the older daughters helped out, and maybe she received help form other Biggs family members and her brother Benjamin Pittinger and her parents until they died in the mid 1790s, all of whom lived nearby. The older children were of marriageable age and quickly went off on their own to nearby or adjoining property, as shown by listings as head of separate households for William, Thomas, Jr., and John Nathan in the 1800 U.S. Census for Frederick County. So, for a few years Hannah lived there with the younger ones who had been born between 1780 and 1784. When the family moved there, John Nathan would have been 10, Ignatius, 8, and Catharine, 6. But by 1800 she only had Ignatius and Catharine with her.

Not much more is known about Hannah. The land was sold to her son Thomas Brown, Jr., in 1807 so perhaps that is when Hannah died. She does not appear on the 1810 census so it is probable that she had died by then. It is presumed she is buried in Brown’s Cemetery, which adjoins the property, in a grave marked with a field stone.

SOURCES:

Patent Record EI 6, p. 405. Frederick County Circuit Court Land Survey, MSA S1590, Copyright April 26, 2001, Maryland State Archives.

Pioneers of Old Monocacy: The early settlement of Frederick County, MD. 1721-1743, by Grace L. Tracy and John P. Dern.

Prince George’s County, Maryland, Deeds, Liber BB no. 1, pp. 269-270.

Frederick Co., Maryland, Deed, vol. J, pp. 430-432; Frederick Co., Maryland, Deed vol. L, pp. 430-431.

“The Brown Family,” by Andree W. Wilson-Taylor, in Antietam Ancestors, Volume V, no. 1, and her additional research.

The Brown Family, a handwritten history by Eldon Buhrman.

The 1790 and 1800 U.S. Censuses.