It has been quite some time since I worked on the Donnington family and hoped that, in the intervening years, new records had been found to tell more of their life stories.
Alas, that was not to be. Furthermore, it is possible that Thankful might have been a second wife, given the gaps in birth years between his three eldest children and a child “to be born” named in his will.
There are but two entries for the Donnington [Dorrington] surname in the New Jersey Calendar of Wills, 30:147, both pertaining to Thomas Donnington:
The second entry is an abstract of the will of Thomas Donnington of Elizabethtown, New Jersey, written on 3 June 1731 and proved two years later on 12 June 1733.
In it, we learn that Thomas was a mariner and his wife’s name, at least in 1733, was Thankful. Her maiden name is unknown, nor is the date of their marriage.
Thomas named three children – Eleanor, wife of John Woodruff, Abigail and John with an EXPECTED child.
If Eleanor was 21 when she married (typical of the time period), she probably married shortly before her father wrote his will, perhaps c1730, and would then have been born c1709. She is likely the oldest child.
Next, by examining the first entry in the New Jersey Calendar of Wills, note that John Dorrington, son of Thomas, deceased, was about 15 years old on 1 February 1738. That puts his birth year as roughly 1713.
Abigail, named before John in the will, might be the second child born to Thomas.
With his fourth child expected in 1731, that leaves a wide gap between the births of his children, suggesting perhaps a second marriage.
There is one Thomas Donnington found in the later 1700s living in Morris County, New Jersey, which borders Essex County. It is possible that this Thomas is the 1731 expected child of the deceased Thomas mentioned in his will. It seems especially likely given the rarity of the Donnington surname.
Notice, too, that Thomas was expecting a child with Thankful. Given the gaps in birth years with Eleanor, Abigail and John, it seems possible that Thankful might have been a second wife.
Children:
- Eleanor, born c1709; perhaps died c1769, although the Find-a-Grave photo linked to her is not her gravestone; married John Woodruff, c1730
- Abigail, born c1711; died after 1731 when her father wrote his will. No further record.
- John, born c1713; died after 1784. He signed one Essex County petition in 1760. There is a second petition dated 25 November 1784 signed y the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church of Elizabethtown, which was burned during the late war.
- Child, born late 1731. No further record.
John Donnington Jr. left an 1803 will in Essex County, New Jersey:
This John married Esther Chandler, born 1760; died 1785. John Jr. was probably born near 1760 or slightly earlier and was a young man when he died. He may well have been the son of John, born c1713.
John married (2) Jane Arven, 6 March 1802, Essex County, New Jersey.
There is little else known about Thomas Donnington’s family. However, my husband’s line is through Eleanor who married John Woodruff, so all is good for me!
I just stumbled upon this post. My family descended from Thomas Donnington’s son John, through his son William, who married Sarah Chandler (I believe she was Esther’s sister). William and Sarah had three children— Elias, Phebe, and William, who were orphaned in 1794. I believe Thankful’s full maiden name was Thankful Bennet Smith.
Elias married Deborah (maybe née Muchmore, not Doolittle, as has been reported), and they had 5 children. We descend from the only surviving son John Wyckliffe Donnington, Sr. (1828-1870), not to be confused with his father’s cousin John Wyckliffe Donnington (son of William’s brother Thomas), who married Catherine (offhand, I think her maiden name was Montagne, and they married about 1812?).
John Sr. and his wife Anna Eliza née Harris (m. about 1848) had 4 children — Ursula, John Jr., Emma (possibly aka Daisy), and Minnie Belle. John Sr. served in the Union Army during the Civil War and was wounded, and he died in 1870 at the age of 42. John Jr. then moved the family to northern California to become a sheep farmer for wool. John Jr. died in the 1880s at the age of 34, a respected businessman. He never married. Emma died before the age of 20. Ursula married a vineyard owner in Napa named Del Bondio. They had only one daughter, who died young during an epidemic. Ursula died in 1941, leaving everything to my grandmother, Minnie’s daughter Mabel.
Of she and her siblings, Minnie was the only one to have children that lived to adulthood. Minnie married prominent printer and inventor James W. Hoag. J.W. invented the first successful fully automated rapid printing press and the automatic paper feeder and founded The Hoag Rapid Press Company in 1903. The prototype machine was lost in the fire that followed the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but the company had great success in the early 1900s up until J.W.’s death in 1932.
According to a letter written by Elias’ sister to her nephew John Jr. in the 1870s, all the Donningtons in the states at that time were related. Elias’ sister married James Muchmore. She named one of her sons Elias Donnington Muchmore, after her brother. Elias Muchmore died as a POW at Andersonville during the Civil War. Nothing is known of what happened to the younger William.