Not enough has been written about the Hope family of Hunterdon County, New Jersey. I know. I have looked.
For my children, the Hopes (though Sarah Dunham Hope wife of Adam Hope) provide a gateway family to Mayflower ancestry. With the 400th year of the Mayflower’s arrival in Massachusetts rapidly approaching, my goal is to have fully documented ancestry registered with GSMD by 2020. In order to accomplish this, I have had to do a lot of work. I honestly can’t fathom the hundreds of hours I have spent researching this family through the years. But these hours have revealed so many interesting stories and even more interesting questions.
I have captured a few of stories in my own writing. Over the past year, I have shared the stories of two notable Hope sisters, Jeannette Hope Sayen and Emma Hope Yates. But they were of a relatively more recent vintage. Going back a bit further in time, I also told a story of Rebecca Compton Hope and her illegal selling of “certain ardent spirits,” which landed her criminal charges to which she pled guilty.
In order for me to connect the Mayflower chain, this is the time period that is the most important–and the most difficult. It is the time period before reliable record keeping, where proof of ancestry has just as much to do with luck as with diligence. Yet little has been written about the Hope family in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. 
So it is with this introduction that I am beginning my retelling of the Hopes of Hunterdon in earnest. I look forward to you joining me. Please contact me if you have any information at all that may help this cause. Any thoughts, corrections, additions, and ideas are most welcome.
ON THE MARKS 