Third Generation

15. Benjamin Skillman was born in 1710 in Brooklyn, Kings, NY. He died in 1783 at the age of 73 in Kingston, Somerset, NJ. His SOA Number is 9. He was christened at Dutch Ref. Church in Brooklyn, Kings, NY. From SOA:
He was sponsor at the bap., 1737, in N. Y. (Ref. Dutch Church) of Hendrick V. de Water, 9th child of his sister Ann. With his brothers Abraham and Jacob, he was appointed executor of his father's will of 1739. His name also with Abraham's appears in a list (Newtown, May 26, 1755) of "owners of Negro slaves." Benjamin's home from birth was the ancestral "stone house" (see Ante) of which the northwest corner, when the old Dutch Kills road (later, School Street, Brooklyn) was widened, jutted into the highway. These 78 acres fell to him as his share of his father's property, and this farm he sold, April 11, 1764, to Abraham Polhemus, (the deed being witnessed by Thomas,4 son of Abraham3 Skillman), and removed to Kingston Princeton, N. J. Benjamin m. about 1731, Margaret, dau. of Samuel Coe and Margaret Van Zandt, his wife. Margaret Coe's grandfather, Capt. John Coe, was son of Robert,2 and grandson of Robert1 Coe, who, b. 1596, came from Norfolk, Eng., in the ship Francis to Watertown, Mass., in 1634, and to Boston the same year. (Huntingdon's Hist. of Stamford). The son Robert removed to Hempstead, L. I., in 1644, then to Jamaica in 1656, and finally to Newtown. Sam'l Coe, Margaret Skillman's father, removed to Haverstraw, N. Y., and d. there in 1742. By will, dated May 11, 1741, he left "Margaret, wife of Benj. Skillman of Newtown" £40. Benj. Skillman d. 1783, his wife earlier. By his will, June 5, 1777, probated Jan. 31, 1784, Jacob Skillman, Jr., Wm. Badcock, and Lemuel Scudder (great grandfather of the writer) witnesses; two sons and six daughters are named.

Benjamin Skillman and Margaret Coe were married in 1731. Margaret Coe, daughter of Samuel Coe and Margaret Van Zandt, was born on 27 October 1713 in Newtown (Maspeth Kills), Queens, NY. She died by drowning on 30 April 1769 at the age of 55 at Millstone River in Kingston, Somerset, NJ. From Charlie Skillman, 11/24/2009

She died drowning in the Millstone River swollen with rain. This took place on April 30, 1769. This I found on page 78 in a book by Elizabeth G. C. Menzies titled Millstone Valley. This was in probably called "Princeton (New Jersey) May 6th. It was published in 1969 by Rutgers University Press in New Brunswick, NJ. She was my 6th great grandmother, wife of Benjamin one of the 6 sons of Thomas II first born in USA

From The Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 2107, May 11, 1769

PRINCETON, (New-Jersey) May 6.
On Sunday evening, the 30th of April, as the Revd. Mr. John Blair, Mr. Benjamin Skillman, his wife and daughter, who had a young child in her arms, were returning from Kingston, where Mr. Blair preached that day, had occasion to cross Millstone in a Battoe (as it was swollen with the rain) were accidentally overset in the middle of the current, which run very rapidly; Mr. Blair 'tis said was so long under water, that a few moments more would have landed him in eternity; after they emerged, they clung to the battoe, until they caught hold of some limbs, by the help of which they all got on shore, except Mrs. Skillman, who missing that opportunity, was unfortunately drowned.

Benjamin Skillman-64 and Margaret Coe-227 had the following children: