Isaac Read and Mary Shackleton had 10 children born betweeen 1783 and 1803. They had at least 175 grandchildren who were born between 1806 and 1853. I have identified 180 great-grandchildren born between 1827 and 1892; 111, 2^nd great-grandchildren born between 1849 and 1921; 44, 3^rd great-grandchildren born between 1902 and 1948; 27, 4^th great-grandchildren; and 3, 5^th great grandchildren. Total identified descendants equals 550.

It has been suggested that Isaac served in the American Revolution (Chase n.d.). An Isaac Reed is included in Stryker's (1967) list of officers and men who served in the war. However, this is not the son of Joseph and Sarah (Sutton) Read. The Issac Reed in Stryker's list was born in Hunterdon County in 1761, a year before the Isaac Read of this essay. Isaac Reed in Stryker's list enlisted as a private, in the New Jersey Line of the Continental Army in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. He served in Captain John Mott's Company, First Regiment, Third Battalion. Isaac Reed of Mott's Company eventually settled in Mongehala County, Virginia (now West Virginia). In 1830, he gave testimony concerning the service of his brother-in-law Titus who also served in Mott's Company (Lee McGee, personal communication, November 2000). Although Isaac Read, the son of Joseph and Sarah (Sutton) Read was 20 years old when the war ended, he does not seem to have served in the Continental Line of the American forces.

Isaac married in the early 1780s. His bride was Mary Shackleton, the daughter of Richard and Mary Shackleton of Knowlton Township (Armstrong 1979:346). In 1745, Richard Shackleton had the contract to construct the raceway at Oxford Furnace, Greenwich (now Oxford) Township, in Morris (later Sussex and now Warren) County (Snell 1881:613). In 1754, Mansfield Township was set off from Greenwich Township. Richard Shackleton is listed as a Freeholder for Mansfield Township between 1763 and 1768 (ibid:726). He was one of the witnesses to the will of John Axford of Oxford, which was dated 17 March 1767 (Armstrong 1979:121). Shackelton's daughter, Mary Shackelton Read, was possibly born in Mansfield Township. Kern (1938) gives her birth date as January 1762. Between 1768 and 1773, the Shackeltons moved to Knowlton Township. Richard Shackelton appears on the 1773 tax list for the township (Stryker-Rodda 1972:101). He was active in local politics, serving on the Knowlton Town Committee between 1775 and 1776 and again in 1778. He was the township tax assessor in 1776 and between 1789 and 1790. He served as the town clerk in 1778 and 1779. He was also a Freeholder for the township from 1784 to 1790. His son-in-law, Isaac Read, Sr. would follow in his footsteps in the early decades of the nineteenth century.

Isaac and Mary Read had at least nine, possibly ten, children. Isaac named nine of the children in his will (Warren County Surrogate Court Records, hereinafter WCSCR, Wills Book 1, page 367): Richard, Joseph and Isaac Read, Sarah Middlesworth, Elizabeth Luse, Mary Raub, Phebe Kerr and Hannah Freese. Azubah Allen, who predeceased her father, is mentioned as the mother of one of Isaac's grandchildren. Read (1998) and Stewart (1998) suggest that Issac and Mary Read had another child, Benjamin Read, who died young. I have placed Benjamin between Richard and Sarah in birth order because there is a four and a half year interval between their births. A quick look at the list of children will show, that with the exception of Richard and Sarah, all the children were born at two to two and a half year intervals. The dates of birth for the children are as follows: 1783, 1788, 1790, 1792, 1794, 1796, 1798, 1800 and 1803 (there is a two and a half year interval between the last two children). It seems likely that Benjamin was born between 1783 and 1788. I have not located a grave marker for him.

Six of the children are named in the settlement of the estate of their first cousin, John Hetty Read (son of James Read) on 2 February 1865 (WCSCR Orphan Court Minutes Book 6, page 156):

It appears that only those first cousins who were living on 14 August 1862, when John Hetty Read died, were entitled to a portion of the estate. Therefore, four of the children of Isaac Read, Sr., who had predeceased their cousin, are not listed in the settlement of the estate. These children were Benjamin Read (who died young), Azuba Allen (died 1823), Joseph Read (died 1849) and Sarah Middlesworth (died 1859). Sarah's children lived in Michigan. However, Azuba and Joseph both had children who were living in the area. None of their children are named as beneficiaries of John Read's estate. When the court ordered payment in 1865, both Mary Raub and Phebe Kerr were dead (they both died in 1863). However, the heirs of both women were still entitled to their mothers' share of the estate, as both women were still alive when John H. Read died. Only Richard Read, Elizabeth Luce and Hannah Freese were still living in 1865.

Most of the Read children remained in Warren and Sussex Counties. Richard Read, Elizabeth Read Luse and Phebe Read Kerr settled in Frelinghuysen Township, Warren County (Armstrong 1979:346-347; Johnsonburg Christian Cemetery; Yellow Frame Presbyterian Church Yard; 1850 and 1860 United States Federal Census). According to the 1830 United States Federal Census, Richard Reed and Aaron Luse (Elizabeth Read's husband) were residing in Hardwick Township, and Ira Kerr (spelled Karr in the census; husband of Phebe Read) was located in Knowlton Township. As the township boundaries were changed between 1830 and 1840, it is unlikely that Richard Reed, the Luses and the Kerrs moved. They were probably on the same farms in 1850. Isaac Read, Jr. lived in Hope Township, Warren County (St. John's of Hope Methodist Episcopal Church Yard; 1840, 1850, 1860 and 1870 United States Federal Census). The 1830 United States Federal census places him in Knowlton Township. A portion of what is now Hope Township was included in Knowlton Township in the early nineteenth century. The shift in the census from Knowlton Township to Hope Township is a reflection of the redrawing of township boundaries. Isaac, Jr.'s house still stands on the road between Hope and Mount Hermon, New Jersey. According to the current owner, the house was built by Isaac in 1814. He was still living in the house at his death in 1876. Mary Read Raub and Azuba Read Allen also stayed in Warren County (Cedar Ridge Cemetery; Union Brick Cemetery). The 1830 United States Federal Census places the Raubs in Knowlton Township. John Allen (Azuba's husband) was the tax assessor for Knowlton Township in 1839 (Snell 1881:626). Hannah Read Freese appears to have stayed in the Warren/Sussex area, she is buried in Union Brick Cemetery. Two of Isaac and Mary's children "went west." Sarah Read Middlesworth and her husband, John Middlesworth, settled in Argentina Township, Genessee County, Michigan between 1838, when her father died, and 1840, when the Middlesworths appear on the Michigan Census (United States 1840 Federal Census; WCSCR Wills, Book 1, page 367). Before the Middlesworths migrated to Michigan, they lived in Hardwick Township (1830 United States Federal Census). Joseph Read III purchased land in Hardwick Township from his father in 1816, then moved over the county line to Green Township, Sussex County, he finally left New Jersey in about 1836 and settled in Henry County, Indiana (1830 United States Federal Census; Kern 1938; NJSA Sussex County Land Records Deeds Book G2, pages 485-486).

Isaac and Mary Read lived in Knowlton Township for most of their lifetimes. Isaac served as a member of the Town Committee of Knowlton between 1801 and 1803, and during the period 1806 through 1807. He also served as a Freeholder from Knowlton Township between 1803 and 1804, in 1806 and between 1809 and 1811 (Snell 1881:626-627). The 1830 United States Federal Census for Warren County, New Jersey (page 358) places Isaac, Sr. in Knowlton Township, Warren County. When he died in 1838, his will stated that he was a resident of Knowlton Township (WCSCR Wills Book 1, page 367).

Issac began his political career in 1801 at the age of 38, Mary was 39. They were the parents of 8 living children (their youngest child Azuba would not be born until the spring of 1803). Their eldest son, Richard, was 19 years old, the youngest child in the household was 18 month old Hannah. In addition, to their own children, it is probable that at least some of Isaac's younger brothers and sisters lived in the household. When Isaac's parents died in 1792, he and his brother James were left in charge of the estates and their younger brothers and sisters. At that time, six of his brothers and sisters were unmarried minors. They were Azuba (age 18), Joseph (age 15), Sarah (age 13), David (age 11), Samuel (age 7) and Aaron (age 6). These children probably resided with their older married brothers and sisters who were: Issac and Mary (Shackleton) Read; James and Mehitable (Coleman) Read; Benjamin and Hannah (Read) Ogden; John and Elizabeth (Ogden) Read; and Andrew and Phebe (Read) Kirkpatrick. However, in 1794, Isaac's bother James and his brother-in-law Benjamin Ogden both died. By this time, Azuba was married to Joseph Newman. Only five of the children still needed to be housed and cared for. They were probably divided among the households of Isaac and Mary Read, John and Ellizabeth Read and Andrew and Phebe Kirkpatrick. Between 1792 and 1801, in additon to their own growing family, Isaac and Mary also had several of his siblings (if not all of them) living with them. When Isaac began his political career, only the three youngest boys were still minors: David (age 20), Samuel (age 16) and Aaron (age 15).

Until 1801, Isaac had maintained his parents farm as an entire entity. The farm had never been divided among the heirs, although it is clear that at least two of the children had recieved their share between 1792 and 1807. Later documents concerning Joseph and Sarah's estates only mention a one-ninth portion held by the heirs. As there were 11 children, there should have been eleven shares. Isaac's brothers John and Joseph never signed off on the estate. John Read died in 1815, he and his his estate appear to have retained their share of his parents"s property. Joseph died in 1806. As with John, his estate retained his share of Joseph and Sarah's estate. Regardless of how much of the estate remained to be apportioned, in 1801 Isaac was faced with the prospect of managing not only the financial well being of his own family and of his emerging political career, but also with maintaining a large estate in good order for his numerous brothers and sisters. He decided to buy out his siblings. Between 1801 and 1807, Isaac received eight quit claims to the estates of his parents from his bothers and sisters and their spouses. Table 1 lists the quit claims Isaac received during this period, as well as the amount Isaac paid to each of his siblings for the release. Use the link to land records provided above to view abstracts and transcripts of these quit claims and other land transactions. Full references for the quit claims are included in the land records section.

TABLE 1: Quit Claims to the Estates of Joseph and Sarah Read, 1801-1807

Isaac's total personal land holdings after 1807 (derived from his parents's estates) amounted to at least 503.09 acres. On 23 November 1816, the day after the birth of his grandson Samuel H. Read (son of Richard), Isaac and at least two of his three sons gathered together with John Armstrong, a neighbor and one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas in Sussex County. They were there to sign three deeds for land, one for each of Isaac's sons (Richard, Joseph and Isaac, Jr.). Richard and Joseph were certainly present on this occassion as Joseph witnessed the deed to his brother Richard, and Richard witnessed those to his brothers Joseph and Isaac. Each of the three boys recieved a farm, Richard at Union Brick and Isaac near Hope, both in Knowlton Township. Joseph's farm was in Hardwick. These deeds amounted to 336.05 acres in all, leaving Isaac with a smaller farm of 154 acres. It is probable that Richard and Joseph had both been working their land for several years. Both were married, both had several children (Richard had four living sons and Joseph had at least two daughters and a son). Isaac, Jr. may not have been married to Mary Durling at this date. He was 22 years old at the time. The new farm would allow him to set up housekeeping.

By November 1816 all but two of Isaac and Mary's children were married. The two youngest daughters, Hannah and Azubah (ages 16 and 13) were still at home. The third youngest daughter, Phebe, had married Ira Kerr the previous September. Mary still had help in the house from her two daughters, but Isaac probably had no help on the farm from his sons. He was in the position of having to hire help around the farm. He and Mary were now 54 (Isaac would have that birthday the following month). It was time to set his sons up on farms of their own and to lessen the burden of acres for which he had to personally care. However, Issac didn't just give the farms to each son. Each of the farms came with a price tag. Richard's 119.3 acres (by the 1816 survey) were purchased for $4,000 (approximately $33.52 per acre), Joseph's 96 acres for $300 (about $3.12 per acre) and Isaac's 120.25 acres for $1,860 (approximately $15.46 per acre). The difference in the price is probably due to the location of the farm, whether the farm had already been cleared and improved, how much water was available on the land and whether or not there were existing structures. Richard's land had been near the core of the family farm since his grandfather's life time and was probaly cleared and improved with outbuildings and a house. Joseph's farm, on the other hand, probably had little cleared land. The price also indicates that there were few if any building on the property. Isaac's farm came with a large pond (known today as Read's pond) and propbably had a minimal amount of improvements associated with it. What is intriguing about these deeds is that Mary Read, the boys's mother, did not sign any of them. In 1807, when Isaac conveyed the original 90 acre Read home lot to his youngest brother Aaron, Mary made her mark at the end of the deed. Mary was alive in 1816, but she did not sign the deeds to her sons. In general, a wife's signature was required on a deed. The judge of the Court of Common Pleas would then examine her in private to insure that her dower rights were not being infringed and that she had not been threatened or coerced into signing the deed. Then, and only then, was the deed recieved by the clerk for recording. But that did not happen in this case. Why the court did not require her signature is a mystery. The deeds for the four land conveyances, the one to Aaron in 1807 and the three to the their sons in 1816, state that Isaac held the land by right of inheritance. There was no difference in how the land was owned. Perhaps because these where conveyances to the children the court did not require her signature. Whatever the reason, she did not sign the deeds for her son's farms.

Isaac and Mary were parents or a large brood of children. Mary was occupied with cooking and cleaning; baking and washing; making candles, soap, cheese and butter; weaving cloth and producing clothes. Isaac had a farm to work and animals to raise and care for. He was actively involved in community politics, holding several elected offices between 1801 and 1811. The couple was also active in their church. When Isaac died in 1838, his will stated that he was a deacon. Isaac was probably raised in the Baptist church. His grandfather James Sutton had been a Baptist (Chase n.d.) and it is probable that his mother was rasied in that church. The little community church at Union Brick seems to have served both Baptist and Presbyterian Congregations. By 1783, when Isaac and Mary's first son Richard was born, the Rev. Daniel Vaughn was the pastor of the Baptist congregation at Union Brick. The congregation was known as Knowlton Baptist Church. Vaughn served the church until 1800, when it closed (Griffiths 1904). In the late 1790s he became Isaac's brother-in-law, when he married Isaac's widowed sister Hannah Read Ogden. It is likely that Isaac and Mary and their children attended Vaughn's church during the years he was at Knowlton. Some sort of division appears to have occured in the Baptist Church in northwestern New Jersey in the late 1790s and many of the churches there either ceased to exist or pulled out of the Baptist Conference altogether. It is possible that Daniel Vaughn continued to serve the community as a minister, but not as a Baptist, after the Knowlton Church ended in 1800. He died in 1810 and it is not known who (if anyone) took his place. By 1824, a new group of evangalists had entered the area spear headed by Elder Jonathan S. Thompson and Abigail Robertson. The two formed the First Christain Church in Johnsonburg, Hardwick (now Frelinghuysen) Township in 1826 (Snell 1881).

On 15 July 1826, Isaac and Mary Read were among the group who formed the Christian Church of Johnsonburg. The congregation was lead by Elder Jonathan S. Thompson, who had come to New Jersey from New York. They meet for 12 years in the Episcopal Church, their own building was not completed until 1848, after both Isaac and Mary had died. Original members of the church included a number of Isaac and Mary's relatives: John and (16) Sarah Middlesworth³ (their eldest daughter and her husband), (104) Maria Middlesworth Cummins⁴ (their granddaughter), Ira and (21) Phebe Kerr³ (their fourth daughter and her husband), (12) Samuel Read² (Isaac's younger brother) and Elizabeth O. Winterstein (widow of Isaac's brother, (6) John Read²). Another member of the congregation included William Sharp, whose son Isaac would marry (121) Martha Maria Luse³, a granddaughter of Isaac and Mary Read (Armstrong 1979; Snell 1987:690). Isaac was probably a deacon of the church, his will begins, "I Isaac Read Esquire deaken[sic]..." (WCSCR Book 1, page 367). On the day the church was formed, the original members of the congregation made the following declaration:

The pastor of the church, Jonathan S. Thompson, eventually married Isaac and Mary's neice, (78) Jane Read³ (daughter of Samuel Read and widow of George W. Drake (Swayze Cemetery)). Thompson was the pastor of the church from 1826 until 1836. Of the many marriages he performed in the area, one that Isaac and Mary probably attended with great joy, was that of their first grandson, 21 year old (94) Issac Read IV⁴. Thompson united him in marriage to Mary Allen, on 11 March 1830.

One of the last glimpses we have of Isaac and Mary's family life is through the 1830 United States Census (the first available census for the state of New Jersey).

Table 3: Composition of Isaac Read's Household in 1830.
1830 United States Federal Census, Knowlton Township, Warren County, New Jersey, page 381

Isaac and Sarah's children were all married in 1830. I have been able to account for all of them in the 1830 census, except for Mary Read Raub. Her family does not fit the parameters for adult and children ages and sexes as seen in the census above. Who the other individuals living in the house were is not known. It is possible that the woman between 50 and 60 was Isaac's widowed sister, Sarah Read Manning. She was born 10 April 1779. She and her husband Ephraim had settled in the Finger Lakes area of New York between 1802 and 1810 (Stewart 2002). Ephraim died by 1819 and Sarah returned to New Jersey sometime after that. Her daughter Hannah married Jonah Price in Warren County in the late 1820s. Her daughter Anna would marry George Price, Jonahs's brother, in Warren County in 1832. Sarah's son, Isaac R. Manning was a witness to his uncle Isaac's will in 1838 (WCSCR Book 1, page 367). It is possible that he was the young man between the age of 20 and 30 living in Isaac and Sarah's house. As Anna Manning was still a minor in 1830, it is possible that she was the young woman between 15 and 20 listed in the census. An alternative hypothesis is that the inidivudals living in the household in 1830 represent inidividuals from the Shackleton side of the family. Mary's brother Benjamin died in 1800, leaving a widow (Mary Ogden Shackleton) and several children. The youngest child, Benjamin was about 30 years old in 1830 and was married with children. It is possible that the grouping represents Mary Ogden Shackleton, her son Benjamin and his family.

Table 4: Location of Isaac and Mary Read's Descendants in 1830.

Henry Mingle and William Allen inventoried Isaac's personal estate on 7 March 1838. The estate was valued at $5,952.49. Of the total, $1,139.48 was cash; another $3,781.73 was notes for debts owed to Isaac by several local people. Isaac Read's personal property and crops in the ground came to a total of $1,031.28. Household furnishings are listed in the inventory. One line lists a corner cupboard and contents, a dining table, a small table and stand, and an eight day clock. These items were probably in the parlor. Another entry is for five beds and bedding and other bed clothes (WCSCR Inventories Book 3, page 109). Transcripts of the probate records associated with Isaac's estate may be viewed by accessing the kink to "probate records" provided at the top of the page. The estate sold Isaac's farm to his granddaughter Euphemia Read Haggerty and her husband Aaron (Kern 1938). Euphemia was the daughter of Joseph and Lydia (Hart) Read.

Isaac and Mary (Shackleton) Read are buried side-by-side in Union Brick Cemetery on Heller Hill Road in what is now Blairstown Township, Warren County. The stones were field checked on 23 June 1983, 18 July 1998 and March 2003. Isaac's single stone is inscribed:

Mary is buried to the right of Isaac as you face the gravestones. Her single stone is inscribed:

Several of Isaac and Mary's children and grandchildren are also buried in Union Brick Cemetery. Photographs of Isaac and Mary's graves may be viewed using the "Family Album" link provided above.

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