March 28, 2025
Thirty years ago, when I started doing serious genealogy, I began with my husband’s New Jersey family. Very little research had been done on the Stetser’s at that time. My husband’s family knew little about their roots.
One of the first ancestors I discovered was my husband’s second great grandfather, Enos G. Stetser. Enos was a farmer, and his entire life was spent in Gloucester County, New Jersey. He was born, married, raised his family, and was eventually buried there.
New Jersey kept good records in the nineteenth century. Gloucester County has a wonderful historical society with an expansive library. I rapidly found dozens of documents for Enos. These included censuses, marriage records, records of his children’s births, death records, and lots and lots of deeds.
When I began researching Enos, the internet was new. There were few copies of original records online. There were, however, message boards. The boards were a good way to contact other genealogists.
I found a Stetser board and was thrilled to post some of the information I’d found about Enos. Someone raised a question concerning Enos’s middle name. Although I’d found many documents naming Enos, none of them contained his full middle name. Only his middle initial was given.
Trying to be helpful, I posted that I’d seen Enos’s middle name mentioned on another board as George. In those days, I was a new genealogist and didn’t worry too much about sources. I didn’t have one, and I thought I was just passing along a suggestion for more research.
That post to a long-defunct message board had long-lasting consequences. Today, Enos Stetser’s middle name is listed as George everywhere from Family Search Family Tree to dozens of trees on Ancestry.
Over the years I’ve found more records for Enos G. Stetser. None of them give his full middle name. I have found deeds that indicate Enos’s mother’s maiden name was Hannah Gibbs. Hannah had inherited land from her father, Enos Gibbs. The Gibbs Family were early Quaker settlers in Gloucester County. They were large landowners and two towns, Gibbstown and Gibbsboro were named after them.
I believe that Enos G. Stetser’s middle name was probably Gibbs. After all, it was his mother’s maiden name, and the family was a prominent one. It would not be unusual for Hannah’s son to be named after her father.
Maybe one day I will find a record that contains Enos Stetser’s full middle name. I believe it will be Gibbs, not George. It won’t matter to the internet, though. Once something is posted, it’s there to stay.
Too bad I wasn’t aware of the internet’s permanence back then. I never would have suggested that George might be Enos’s middle name without any proof. At this point there’s not much I can do. I still don’t have definitive proof that Gibbs was Enos’s middle name. Although I think it was, I won’t be posting it online. I won’t make the same mistake again.
If there’s a lesson to be learned from Enos’s story, I hope that it’s “Be careful what you post online. Once posted, it’ll never go away.”
Carol Stetser
Researcher
Larimer County Genealogical Society