James Hanna of Sussex County New Jersey

James Hanna was one of the five co-purchasors of the 1250 acre tract along the Delaware River in 1760 along with Joseph, Thomas and Robert McMurtrie and Robert Howey. McMurtrie/McMurtry family historians have assumed this business arrangement implied that James Hanna and Robert Howey had married McMurtrie sisters, but no evidence to support this conjecture has ever been found.

We have very little information about James Hanna.

He was appointed fellow bondsman with George McMurtrie the administrator of the estate of Robert McMurtrie in 1777. And the same year, he was listed by the Council of Safety as “disaffected and dangerous”. George McMurtrie had also been taken to task by the Committee of Safety for “speaking disrespectfully” of the Continental Congress. But George left some records for his presence after the Revolutionary War, but we find no references to James Hanna other than his presence at a wedding in 1781 in Hunterdon Co.

Below are some miscellaneous references to the James Hanna and so possibly related Hanna’s.

References:

In Hunterdon Co, there is a Rev. Mr Hanna in in 1777, James Hanna at a wedding in 1781, and a Rev Hanna in 1800.

There is a Rev James Hanna of Pittson (which was Hunterdon Co) as having letters left at the post office in Philadelphia in 1771, but a footnote in the book by Honeyman that the post office report is published in says this might be a mistake for Rev. John Hanna as sketched in “The Jerseyman”, 1895.

The new York times in November 24, 1895 has an article about the history of the Presbyterian church in Kingwood, in Hunterdon Co written by Henry Race. The Rev John Hanna is mentioned as marrying Mary McRea. He was graduated from Princeton in 1755. The Rev John Hanna is listed in a listing of famous Presbyterians as born pre-1740 died 1801.

Minutes of the Council of Saftey:

The following as disaffected and dangerous…

James Hannah…1777..all of Hardwick

A History of the Hanna Family

Nearly all of the Scotch-Irish who settled in in the North of Ireland at the time of the Great Plantation were from the western Lowlands counties of Scotland, lying on the opposite coast and and less than thirty miles distant from County Down. The great part of them came from Ayrshire and Galloway and those two districts of Scotland were the nesting places of the early Scottish Ancestors of the majority of the people living in the Ohio Valley to day.

HI Bob,

I can not find much if anything about James Hanna on the internet and have not done any “real” researching in the actual records.

James Hanna was a witness at a wedding in Hunterdon Co in 1781.  There was a James Hanna in Cumberland Co NJ 1773. 

There is a James Hanna in Bucks Co in 1781 who is an attorney.  But the Bucks Co family seems to be of a James Hanna that migrated as a child to America in 1763, son of a Thomas Hanna.

There was a James Hanna in Mecklenburg, NC by 1760s.  This is curious location because one branch of the Todds of Somerset and Hunterdon Co NJ migrated to Mecklenburg Co in the 1760s.   AT this point, I’m ready to consider that James Hanna did not stay long in Sussex Co, but migrated southward as did many New Jerseyans.  But this is just a guess based on incomplete data.

Richard

But I did find the following on the New Jersey archives site:

Select	15636	Hanna, James (Plaintiff)	James Hanna v. Joseph Corwine	Undetermined	Undetermined	1772
Select	16243	Hanna, James (Defendant)	Jacob Horn v. James Hanna	Undetermined	Undetermined	Undetermined
Select	5917	Hannah, James (Estate of) (Defendant)	Daniel Clark (Executor) [et al] v. John Buck (Executor) [et al]	Trespass on the Case	Cumberland	1773
Select	16719*	Hannah, James (Defendant)	Samuel Hannah v. James Hannah	Undetermined	Undetermined	1773
Select	21164*	Hannah, James (Witness (Testifying))	King v. Josiah Pricket [et al]	Counterfeiting	Morris	1744
Select	40788*	Hanna, James (Defendant)	Bank of Anna v. James Hanna	Undetermined	Undetermined	1802
Select	36121*	Hanna, James (Defendant)	Jacob Starn v. James Hanna	Undetermined	Undetermined	1757
Select	35843	Hanna, James (Defendant)	Jacob Starn v. James Hanna	Undetermined	Undetermined	1758

James and Samuel Hannah appear to have been in Cumberland Co by 1773.  This is in southern NJ.