The HARTRUM / HOTRUM Family Tree pages linked to this page are a compilation of the work of many researchers documenting their ancestry. If you have any HARTRUMs or HOTRUMs in your ancestry then this web site is also yours and we would appreciate hearing from you. We hope you will benefit from the information provided here and will share your findings (and any disagreements) with us. All information about living individuals is kept in the strictest confidence.
My name is David Naylor and I am the compiler of this family tree. I live in Canada and am retired from designing computer systems for the telecommunications industry. I've been interested in genealogy and researching my own family tree since I was presented with my family's Naylor Family Bible in 1950 following the death of my paternal Grandmother, as I was the last known male expected to continue this Naylor lineage. The amount of time spent researching has greatly increased since retiring from gainful employment and this has helped to keep me entertained and out of trouble.
While researching my wife's HOTRUM roots I realized that all HOTRUM and HARTRUM families were likely related. I found this very interesting and therefore decided to research them all. Except for a few occurrences of the HARTRUM name in London, England in the 1600s, they seem unique to North America. This research put me in contact with others researching these same names and they have kindly provided their data for inclusion in this One-Name Study database.
In New Jersey and Ontario of the late 1700s and early 1800s the same individuals appear with different spelling of their surname — HADERIM, HARDRAM, HARTRAM, HARTRUM, HATRAM, HATRUM, HATTERIM, HOTHERHAM, HOTRUM, HOTRAM, etc. Since many people of that day could not spell or write, their names were written as the writer heard them and as these were mostly Germanic-speaking folks with harsh pronunciation their names ended up every-which-way. Because these names have not been located in Europe some researchers believe that they may have been derived from some other more-common surname — suggestions for this have been HARTRANFT, HARTRUMPH, and HARTMANN.
Searches of ships' passenger lists for these names have not been very fruitful. The most interesting candidates, so far, are:USA Hartrums
Our earliest-known individual, Joh: HARDRAM, lived in New Jersey, Colonial America, and the only record found for him is his burial in the Zion Lutheran Church cemetery in what was New Germantown (now Oldwick) Hunterdon County on 30 August 1784 at the age of 62.
This early Lutheran church located in Tewksbury Township, Hunterdon County, was apparently also used by families living across the county line in Washington Township, Morris County (which includes German Valley and Schooley's Mountain). Data from this area shows that our families had connections with, and married into, families living in both of these townships.
In the early 1800s one or two HARTRUM families moved from this area to the border between Morris and Bergen (now Passaic) Counties. Edward and George, and their families are found in the 1830 census in Pompton Township, Bergen County (we believe they lived near Newfoundland, New Jersey).
In the mid-1830s these families moved to Ohio. Also moving to Ohio at about this same time was the family of Frederick Hartrum. The descendants of these three families are still mainly in Ohio, with one branch in Chicago, Illinois. Descendants of all these HARTRUM families are found today across the USA.
Canadian Hotrums
From Washington Township, Morris County, New Jersey, a family (Conrad, wife Catharina and children) moved to Upper Canada (now Ontario, Canada) sometime between 1784 and 1789. Unfortunately the earliest known record of this, a joint land petition dated June 22nd 1793, has been misread. The book "Ancaster's Heritage – A History of Ancaster Township", published by the Ancaster Township Historical Society, lists the first settlers in the area at the Head of the Lake (Erie). These 22 names were copied from the joint land petition and the book details what has been researched about each one of these individuals and their families. Page 22 of that book states "Conrad Latham, the twenty first petitioner, is a completely unknown person to your historian. The Registry Office does not show him as a Crown Patentee in Ancaster Township."
Actually by scrutinizing the original list of names it is clear that this Conrad's surname is *not* Latham. The surname directly above it is Lampman and the L in Lampman bears no resemblance to the first letter of Conrad's surname. For some unknown reason many of the initial letters of the names were written in the petition with lower-case letters, and Conrad's surname was one of these. His name in the original list is actually written as "Conrad hattrum", however there is a copy of that list in a later petition in which the names were hand-written and copied from the original petition, and that's where the error seemingly crept in, because in that document Conrad's surname is written as Latham.
The sequence of the 22 names in the book "Ancaster's Heritage" indicates they were read from this later petition where it is the twenty-first, instead of from the original one where it is the nineteenth. Interestingly, page 28 of "Ancaster's Heritage" lists people purchasing goods from Rousseau's store in Ancaster, and there is one line showing that in "1800 - Coonrod Hotrum bought powder, shot, and indigo."
It should also be mentioned that another of the 22 petitioners was David Jones who was Conrad's father-in-law, so it is likely these two families (and possibly more) travelled together from New Jersey to Ontario.
The spelling of this family's surname became fixed as HOTRUM. Today there are hundreds of their descendants living in Canada and the USA. Some descendants of this family moved to Michigan, USA around 1860. They were the ancestors of the HOTRUMs now living in south-west Michigan, Washington state and Alaska.
Recently, within the last one or two generations, some Hunterdon County, New Jersey, families descending from John A. Hartrum, changed the spelling of their surname to HARTRIM. Still more Hunterdon County families, these ones descending from John J. "Alex" Hartrum, changed the spelling of their surname to HARTMAN. Their living descendants are still mainly in New Jersey but unfortunately are lost amongst the other Hartmans. Perhaps these last two name changes were made because the families didn't like RUM. Although we believe all the above-mentioned families are connected, we have not yet proven it, but hope to do so using Y or autosomal DNA testing.
We are using Y-DNA testing to help discover the original ancestral surname, to verify that the family tree as we have it is correct, and to see if the various unconnected branches of HARTRUM and HOTRUM families have common ancestors. For this purpose we need male individuals with the HARTRUM, HARTRIM or HOTRUM surname (and even a BRONSON) to supply a DNA sample (by means of a mouth swab) for Y-DNA testing. Other descendants, of either gender, are also welcomed to take an autosomal-DNA test to see which family connections show up. All tested individuals will get their results which will show their connection to other individuals around the world (that have also been tested). Go to our DNA page for further information.
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If you find something in this website that doesn't look right or if you have (polite) suggestions please send Dave an e-Mail