Introduction. About 200 years ago, a large group of settlers migrated from Essex county, New Jersey, to Miami county, Ohio. Among these early settlers were such families as Frazee and Winans. According to Col. Warren Carey's research, my g-g-g-g-g-grandfather was one Moses Frazee, who was said to be born "about 1733" and died in 1815. Given Moses' age, we question whether he migrated to Ohio with the 1800-1810 wave of settlers, but there seem to be plenty of people who did come to Miami county who were descended from Moses and his wife, Susannah Winans.
Susannah was born 9 Mar 1734 in NJ, and died 24 Feb 1815. She was the daughter of Jonathan and Susanna (Mills) Winans, the granddaughter of Conrad and Sarah (Palmer) Winans, and the great-granddaughter of John Winans, the original Winans settler in the New World, and his wife, Susanna Melyn.
Moses and Susannah's daughter, Sarah Frazee, married William Marsh, jr., 15 Mar 1775 in Westfield, Essex county, NJ. William was born 12 Aug 1754 in Essex county and died in 1802 in NJ. One of Sarah and William's children, Charlotte "Lottie" Marsh, who was born in Rahway, Essex county, 20 May 1781, married her second cousin, Stephen Winans, and came to Miami county with him about 1807.
I don't know what Warren's sources were for his information on Moses and Susannah. I've seen a lot of conflicting and speculative information on their families and descendants. This page is my attempt to collect information on Moses and Susannah and their children and the details of their family's migration from NJ to OH. As you'll see, several other researchers have added quite a lot to my own meager knowledge of this family. To start with, we'll refer to the "original" Moses Frazee (1733?-1815?) as Moses I, to distinguish him from several namesake descendants, such as his son, the Rev. Moses Frazee, who will appear as Moses II on this page.
Our own Frazee forum. Several of my cousins have done much more research into the Frazee families than I have. Their research has added greatly to my own knowledge and also raised a lot of questions. The internet has made exchanging information a much simpler task than ever would have been possible in the old days. See our researchers list for their names and e-mail addresses.
There has been a lot of e-mail flying back and forth between the members of our informal "Frazee forum". The cousins have expressed their opinions frankly, stated their theories and asked questions. Instead of presenting all this correspondence, one message after another, within this page, I'll make it available separately in case you'd like to look through it. The following are the dates and senders of the e-mail. When you click on the message date, a separate window will open, containing the appropriate e-mail.
The opinions expressed in each e-mail are those of the writers. If you wish to question or comment on somebody's message, please contact that person directly. We'd like to hear from anybody who is interested in our Frazee roots, but will only include e-mails or other documents on this site from persons who wish to include themselves in the researchers list below.
That's where we stand as of today. A lot of information and a lot of questions. I agree with Sharon's research tactics, which she described as follows:
My style of research is to glean every single relevant (often later proved irrelevant) bit of information, then sift it out.....very slowly.
This has been known to be frustrating for fellow researchers, sorry. Haven't lost any cousins yet, though. (:
Keep the information coming, cousins. We'll all sift through it and maybe, or maybe not, arrive at some conclusions, which in due time will be posted here.
Spelling. The family surname appears in one place or another as:
We won't worry about whether these are phonetic variants, or are the result of the miscopying of public records. All early annals are inconsistent about the spelling of many common and proper nouns.
Published genealogies. One source which several researchers recommend, but which I don't have, is Ancestral Lines of the Doniphan, Frazee and Hamilton Families, by Frances Frazee Hamilton, 1928, Wm. Mitchell Printing Co., Greenfield, Ind.
Information on Moses I and Susannah is skimpy in the O. C. Winans book. Susannah's listing says only:
Born March 9, 1734, at Short Hills, New Jersey; married Moses Frazee, son of William and Lois Frazee.
The source of Susannah and Moses' information appears to be "Joe Meyer, Mrs. Fenner, Helen Sayre." No death information is given nor is any other data given for Moses. Their children are listed as follows, with the disclaimer "birth order unknown":
Under the children's entries, a baptism date of 21 Jun 1761 is given for the first three, no information for Matthias, and Moses II is said to have been born in 1764 and died in 1850. The source of the information on the children is given as "Miami County, Ohio, Genealogies, via Mrs. Lindenberger." That's all.
In the Alice Winans Egy Woolley book, the same information appears, with no source given:
1-7-1-1 SUSANNAH WINANS b 9 Mar 1734 at Short Hills, N. J. md Moses Frazee who was the son of William and Lois Frazee. They had the following children, but order of birth may not be correct:
- Sarah Frazee bap 21 June 1761.
- Susannah Frazee bap 21 June 1761.
- Martha Frazee bap 21 June 1761.
- Moses Frazee b 1764 d 1850.
- Matthias Frazee.
Could both authors be drawing on the same, possibly erroneous, sources? For contradictory information on Moses' parentage, read Pam Hystad's e-mail of 28 Sep 2002.
Wills. We were supplied the following information by Sandi Evilsizer Koscak from a book of Miami county wills. We aren't sure whether it pertains to a member of the Frazee families we're researching:
Moses Frazer pg 110 dated Mar 20 1831 recorded Apr 30 1833
Sally Frazer, wife of g.son Israel Frazer (now a lunatic), guard of ch. Dean, Matilda, John, Moses, David and Nathan.
Wit: J Gilmore, Hulburt Murray
Miami Valley Genealogy Index. Searching under all possible spellings yields an enormous number of hits. In case you're interested, I've assembled all the results of my searches in one place. We'll refer to a few of these entries from time to time. It's obvious that there were many Frazees in the Miami valley. Although many of the entries don't seem to be of interest, I do see a number of familiar names.
Beers' 1880 History of Miami County contains several references to Moses (II?) and other Frazees. Large parts of this history are available on line at the MVGI site. An index is provided to all persons mentioned in the history, and there are sections on each township in Miami county, with Lost Creek township being of most interest to the Frazee researcher.
The Frazee Family Genealogy Forum at Genealogy.com. This isn't really a very busy forum, but you should check it periodically for new posts relating to "our" Frazees.
Other Frazee researchers' sites. We'll list here those web sites which we know of that have a Frazee content, whether or not they deal with "our" lines:
Frazee researchers. These are the members of our own little "Frazee forum", who have contributed most of the information we have:
Their current e-mail addresses are listed on our researchers page. Please let me know if you'd like to have your name added to, or deleted from, that list. If we've posted your e-mail here and you'd rather not see it on this site, or wish to correct its contents, please let me know.