829. Cluck

Outline

1. Johann Georg Klug, alias Jeremiah Cluck (ca. 1672–aft. 1741) m. Susanna Fisser (d. aft. 1716); Laudenbach, Baden, Germany; New York, N. Y.; Amwell Twp., Hunterdon Co., N. J.
2. Hannah Cluck (1713–bef. 1796) m. aft. 1729 Johannes Servis (ca. 1710–1795); Amwell Twp., Hunterdon Co., N. J.

Related surnames

207. Zerbe–Servis

No additional information on the Fisser family is available at this time.

Comment

The most recent genealogy of the Servis family identifies the wife of Johannes² (Johann Philip¹ Zerbe) as Hannah Cluck, daughter of Jeremiah Cluck.^[1] Henry Z Jones Jr., a well-known authority on Palatine immigrants to New York and northern New Jersey, follows the Servis genealogy in identifying Johannes as a probable son of the immigrant, and proposes a variant surname for Hannah: Klug.^[2] This appears to be based on phonetic evidence, and it also potentially makes it possible to identify Hannah more fully. Another of the 1709 immigrants was Johann George Klug, husbandman and vinedresser, who was aged 37 years when listed among the first arrivals at London in May 1709.

Georg had a son named Johannes, who was apparently aged 1½ in 1709 and baptized in 1710, and a daughter named Anna, baptized in 1713.^[3] Chronologically, she is ideally positioned to be the wife of a man who died in 1805, at the age of 95 years, and whose birth can therefore be dated to about 1710. There is, however, one obstacle to this identification, from the very source that warrants the assignment of the Cluck or Klug surname to Hannah. That record also names her father as Jeremiah, not John or George.

On 6 February 1746[/7], in the twentieth year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Second, John Cluck and his wife Margaret, of Amwell Township, Hunterdon County in the western division of the province of New Jersey, made a grant of land to Thomas Whisson of Suffolk County upon Long Island in the colony of New York. The grantors recited their chain of title as follows:^[4]

Witnesseth that Whereas William Tillyar by his Indenture of Lease and Release under his hand and Seal bearing date the 19^th and 20^th days of March Annoq Dominie 1729 conveyed unto Jeremiah Cluck one hundred and fifty acres of Land with usual allowance for high Ways &c the said Jeremiah Cluck conveyed one Moiety or half thereof containing seventy five acres unto his Son the above named John Cluck and the other Moiety or half thereof containing seventy five acres unto his Son in Law John Server & Hannah his Wife, and the Said John Server and Hannah his wife by their Indenture under their Hands and Seals bearing date the 30^th day of January 1746. Conveyed their Moyaty or half part of the abovesaid Land being seventy five acres unto the abovenamed John Cluck and Margaret his Wife.

By another indenture of 13 August 1745, Jacob Anderson had granted an adjoining parcel of 50 acres to John Cluck, and Cluck conveyed the total of 200 acres to Whisson by the same instrument.

As Jones noticed in 1985, the John Cluck who appears early in Amwell Township is in an excellent position to be the son of the immigrant. He goes on to propose: Perhaps Georg¹ mistakenly was entered as the Jeremiah Klooke, freeholder of Amwell, in 1741.^[5] Yet we can now see that the 1741 return of freeholders is not the only instance of Jeremiah Cluck in Amwell. We can also see that the immigrant’s son Johannes, if born nearer to 1710 than ca. 1707, or even later, must have come of age after March 1729[/30]. We can see as well that Anna could easily have become known as Hannah and married after March 1729[/30] to Johannes Servis, even though neither the Servis genealogy nor Jones can date the marriage more firmly than before 30 January 1746.^[6]

It is difficult to document, or even imagine, a single family that better matches the one described in the 1746/7 indenture than the one headed by Georg—except, of course, for the name of the father. This circumstance, together with the 1741 return of freeholders, itself raises an intriguing possibility: Jeremiah, the 1729 purchaser and 1741 freeholder, seems to be identical with Georg, the 1709 immigrant, having assumed a third forename relatively late in life.

Footnotes

¹ Dorothy Lee Grubb and Arleen Marvin Smith, Descendants of Johannes Servis (Zerbe) and Allied Lines (Peoria, Ill., 1989), 12.

² Henry Z Jones Jr., More Palatine Families: Some Immigrants to the Middle Colonies 1717–1776 and Their European Origins, Plus New Discoveries on German Families Who Arrived in Colonial New York in 1710, (Universal City, Calif., 1991), 381-2.

³ Henry Z Jones Jr., The Palatine Families of New York: A Study of the German Immigrants Who Arrived in Colonial New York in 1710, 2 vols. (Universal City, Calif., 1985), 1:462. Pre-immigration evidence of the family, from the Lutheran parish registers of Laudenbach, Baden, is summarized in Henry Z Jones Jr., Even More Newly-Discovered German Origins for the Palatine Families of New York, 1710, American Genealogist 90 (2018): 110-8, at 116.

⁴ West Jersey Deeds, GG:213-5, quotations at 213, FHL microfilm 460,052.

⁵ Jones, Palatine Families of New York, 1:462. The return is printed in Norman C. Wittwer, Hunterdon County Freeholders, Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey 37 (1962): 49-56, with Jeremiah Klooke at 54.

⁶ Grubb and Smith, Descendants of Johannes Servis (Zerbe), 12; Jones, More Palatine Families, 382. From the internal evidence within the indenture, it now appears that the estimate should be adjusted to before 30 January 1746/7.