Cape May County New Jersey

Sunday Press Contributed by Harrison

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Description: Pilgrim Descendants In Cape May County

Date: April 12 1964

Newspaper published in: Atlantic city, NJ

Source: Shaw Collection

Page/Column: Heritage Edition

How about some neighborly news from our cousins across the Delaware. I thought this article would be very interesting to Sussex county people researching Cape Henlopen and the Breakwater.

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Hannah Gorham was born at the Plymouth Colony in 1663 and after her marriage to Joseph Whilldin in 1683 came with him to Town Bank on a whaling ship to become a part of the early thirteen cabin colony of Town Bank at the mouth of the Delaware River in Cape May County.
Hannah's grandfather was John Howland the Pilgrim who came over on the Mayflower, landed at Plymouth in 1630. The colony of Town Bank was built on a bluff that fronted the bay but is now under the waters of the Delaware Bay.
All of Hannah's early life was spent at Town Bank and in close contact with the sea. The Whilldin children intermarried with the other families of this county. They were Hannah, Joseph, Mary, Experience and Isaac. They did not migrate south because it was too hot, nor did they go back north because it was too cold, but being suited with the climate and surroundings they stayed, multiplied, and intermarried until today there are more Mayflower descendants in Cape May county than any other county of the United States.
Hannah died in 1728 and is probably buried in the Whilldin grave yard at Cool Spring, behind the William Eldredge Plantation. Her husband, Joseph, died in 1725, and many of the family are buried in the 'Old Brick' cemetery at Cool Spring, including a son Joseph who died 1743.