Excerpts pertaining to
the Dennis Family

DESCENDANTS OF NICHOLAS AND JOHN SCULL

IN AMERICA 1685-1830

By Robert Drake Scull

 However, it cannot be determined that the inhabitants in England and elsewhere who have inherited the name Scull or Skull are descended from Sir John Skwl.  It is just as likely that they are descended from other persons of Viking origin who in some way identified with the surname Scull or Skull.  In a questionnaire that I sent out to over 500 households with the name Scull in 1995 I could find no one who could verify a direct link to Sir Walter Scull. Because of this lack of continuity in information any explantions about the origin of the Scull surname have to be regarded as theories and will probably remain in this status for eternity.

THE EARLIEST SCULL IN THE NEW WORLD:

 The earliest records of a Scull/Skull in the New World show up in the land patent records of the colony of Virginia, which list thousands of names of European and African immigrants to the colonies during the colonial period of American history.   These land patents or land titles were given in return for paying the passage of immigrants to the New World at fifty acres per head.  The earliest one of interest was dated May 22, 1642, in which William Eyres was given a grant of land on the western branch of the Nansemond River in which the land of John Sculler is mentioned as marking the northern boundary of the grant. A second land patent dated May 22, 1643 gave William Storey 250 acres on the western branch of the Nansemond River as compensation for transporting five persons across the ocean, including Oliver White, Karbery Kagan, Anthony Fletcher, Richard Marberry, and John Skull.  On a land patent dated November 20, 1645 William Storey received 200 more acres of land on the east side of the northwest branch of the Nansemond River for paying the cost of passage for Thomas Bayley, William Story, Harbor Kogan, and John Scull from England to Virginia. Each of these patents probably refer to the same John Scull, for It is hard to believe that there was a John Sculler, John Skull, and John Scull all on the western branch of the Nansemond River in the 1640s.  The Nansemond River is a very short river completely within the boundaries of what would later become the city of Suffolk (Nansemond County) and there are few other variations of the name Scull up any other creek in all the volumes of land patents for Virginia and Carolina for the entire century covered.  (Cavaliers and Pioneers: Abstracts of Virginia Land Patents and Grants, edited by Denis Hudgins, vol. I, p. 160, 778, 784).

 One notable exception would be in the current city of Virginia Beach, in Lynnhaven Inlet, where there was a small peninsula known as Scull Neck in 1652. A land patent to Edward Hall dated that year identifies the name in describing its boundaries.  In 1648 and 1652 Savill Gaskins purchased portions of Scull Neck and is believed to be the man who built a house there that is one of the oldest brick houses in the United States. Today the Association owns this house for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.  It is called the Lynnhaven House because it is not really certain who built it, but the creek that ran up to it was called Scull Neck Creek until sometime after the 1690s, when its name was changed to Witchduck Creek because a celebrated witch was dunked there. I visited Lynnhaven house in the 1980s to find out why the land was originally called Scull Neck, but apparently no one knows. There is no way of knowing if John Scull or any other Scull once frequented that neck of the woods.  (Cavaliers and Pioneers, vol. I, p. 260)(Gateway to the World, by Florence Kimberly Turner, pp. 73-75).

   In fact, there is no way of knowing if any Scull stayed in southeastern Virginia after 1645.  The only comprehensive record of residents of the county that has survived other than the land patents is the Quitrents or land taxes paid in 1704.  No Scull is listed in those records. Since John Sculler owned land in 1642, it seems likely that land would have stayed in the family if the line continued.  I have searched the courthouse records surrounding Nansemond County for evidence that the descendants of John Scull stayed in Nansemond County after 1645, but there is no evidence of any Sculls in any of the surrounding counties from 1645 until 1749 when a carpenter named Edward Scull showed up with Virginia money in Bertie County, North Carolina.  It is hard to believe that if John Scull had any male descendants in Nansemond County that they could have quietly stayed in the Dismal Swamp listening to the bullfrogs and swatting the mosquitoes for over one hundred years without at least once leaving a record of their existence in one of the surrounding counties.  Therefore, it appears most likely that John Scull returned to England or that he died on the banks of the Nansemond River without having left behind any children. It is probably only a coincidence that my proven ancestor Edward Scull appeared there again about one hundred years later and saved some Virginia money before moving on to North Carolina.

 The elusive John Scull of Nansemond County may also have been missed in his home country.  On December 28, 1649 a widow named Alice Skull from Brinkworth, Wiltshire had a will drawn up in Somerset House, London in which she stated that her "sonne John Skull...is gone into another land and I know not whether ever hee mai returne." Therefore she chose her "kinswoman" Alice Beale to "queathe and peaceable enjoy the ...ground called Oxlayes (her estate in Brinkworth) until the said John Skull (alias Sherer) lay claime thereto."  Evidently, he never returned ("The Family of Scull" by Gideon D. Scull, p. 9) Oddly enough, there was a John Sherer who lived and prospered in Isle of Wight County, Virginia, the county adjoining Nansemond until 1701, when his will left land holdings to numerous descendants, but there is no evidence that any of them changed their name back to Scull if they were, in fact, part of the same family (Cavaliers and Pioneers, vol. 2, p. 32)(Isle of Wight County Courthouse, deeds and estates).

 On the other hand, John Scull may have become an experienced seaman.  In 1658 in the records of the admiralty court of London there was a lawsuit brought against Francis Doacket and Smith Franclin in regard to a cargo of nineteen casks of saltpeter (the most important ingredient of gunpowder) carried on board a ship called the Star whose master was none other than John Scull. One of the earliest ships to make regular voyages to Virginia is known to have been the Starr, which was designed in 1612 to transport tree trunks from the Chesapeake Bay area to England for the manufacture of masts.  The ship was "specially arranged for that purpose in the way of its decks and scupper holes" to carry tree trunks. Some of the tree trunks available in Virginia in 1612 were so large that the Starr could only carry forty of the eighty trunks for which it was originally designed.  (Scull Pedigree, by Hardee & Page, vol. I, p. 174, 1926)(JoAnne McCree Sanders, Barbados Records, 1982)(Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, p. 90).

 Of course, there is no way of knowing if this was the same John Scull or even the same ship, but if it was it appears that John Scull may have lived an interesting and somewhat stressful life.  Perhaps he was a Cavalier.  Virginia was loyal to the Stuart dynasty throughout the English Civil War and all through the Puritan rule of Oliver Cromwell until the Stuart Restoration of 1660.  He may have had good reason not to return to his family's estate at Oxlayes.

 There are three other records of Sculls in the Barbados during the colonial period and one record of a Scull in Maryland.  John Sculler was recorded in a court record in Barbados in 1671.  This could also be the same John Scull of Nansemond River in Virginia. There was also a Robert Scull, alias Robert Rogers, originally from Wakes Colne, who was sentenced in County Essex and transported to Barbados in 1684 and a Susanna Scull who was baptized on in Barbados on September 20, 1724.  It should be pointed out that the original labor force on the sugar plantations on the island of Barbados were indentured servants from Great Britain and Ireland. It is known that the descendents of this labor force began to immigrate to South Carolina after 1670, but no Sculls show up in the early records of South Carolina.  The name Cornelius Scull appeared on a passenger on a ship arriving in Maryland in 1671,but there are no indications that he stayed or survived. (Passenger and Immigration List Index).

 NICHOLAS SCULL OF PENNSYLVANIA:

 The next two Sculls to come to America were the patriarchs Nicholas Scull of Pennsylvania and John Scull of New Jersey. Nicholas arrived in Chester, Pennsylvania on a ship called the Bristol Merchant on October 10, 1685.  Some accounts say he was born in Ireland around 1665, which gives one the impression that Scull was an Irish name, but I have not been able to verify the Irish origin of the name with any documentation. While visiting Ireland in 1995, I could not find any Sculls in any of the phone books. Nor could I find Irish Sculls in the British census records from the 19th Century, but this does not prove that there were no Sculls there in the 17th Century, for Ireland's population declined by about 50% during the 19th Century as a result of famines and emigration.  It is possible that all the Irish Sculls died off or emmigrated to other lands.  In fact, I have found ten American Sculls in 19th Century census records who claimed they were born in Ireland. All ten of them were males and all ten of them were born between the years of 1800 and 1881, which was the period of greatest immigration of the Irish to the United States. (Colonial Families of the United States, vol. 6, pp. 93-94)(Quaker Saga, by Jane T. Brey, p. 543)(Autobiography of Charles Biddle, by Charles Biddle, p. 378).

 The record of the Bristol Merchant states that Nicholas Scull came over with seven "servants": Samuel Hall, Cornelius Dayire, George Gooding, Miles Morris, John Ward, Mary Cantwell, and Daniel Morin.  These "servants" may have been tenants on a previous estate in Ireland or they may simply have been unemployed residents of Bristol. Identified in the deeds as a "gentleman," and a "planter," Nicholas Scull purchased 100 acres of land from Zechariah Whitpain in 1688. By 1690 he purchased four more plots consisting of a total of 400 acres of land, located at the confluence of Sandy Run and the Wissahickon. He called his estate "Springfield Manor."  In 1691 he purchased 500 acres and in 1693 he acquired 300 more acres.  He died in 1703, leaving six young sons and a widow named Mary, whose brother was Major Jaspar Farmer, a British officer who had served under Cromwell before joining the Quakers and coming across the ocean in the same ship as Nicholas Scull.  In Ireland Jaspar Farmar had been a member of the Youghal Meeting House (Colonial Families of the United States, vol. 6, pp. 93-94)(Book of Deeds, Philadelphia County, vol. E2-5, p. 49)(The Papers of William Penn) 

 The relationship between the Sculls and Farmars appears to have been close. Farmar's sister had married Nicholas Scull and his overseer at his estate at Whitemarsh in Pennsylvania was named John Scull, believed to be a younger brother of Nicholas.  According to the New Jersey born genealogist Gideon Delaplaine Scull, who was buried in the town of Ilkley in Yorkshire, there is a colonial record dated in May of 1685 that indicates that John Scull was already in Pennsylvania before Nicholas Scull arrived. (Quaker Saga, by Jane Brey, 1967, p. 543)("The Scull Family of Pennsylvania, by Gideon Delaplaine Scull, p. 1).

 According to a history on Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which was later carved out of western Philadelphia County; the local Indians made a complaint to the Governor's Council of Pennsylvania on July 21, 1685 that:

 The servants on Jaspar Farmar's place had made them drunk and abused them. A warrant was issued and sent out by a messenger, who after being lost in the woods, returned, when it was deferred. When the time arrived the servants made their appearance, but the Indians did not appear as accusers, and so the matter was probably dropped.

  (History of Montgomery County, by Theodore W. Bean, p. 1138).  

In 1701 and in 1712 Edward Farmar was employed by the government of Pennsylvania to serve as an interpreter in negotiations with the Indians (Ibid, p. 1138).

 In the will of Nicholas Scull, dated March 5, 1703, Scull made his Quaker in-laws Edward Farmar and Thomas Farmar overseers of the will. He also authorized the Quaker Meeting to look after his children in the event that his wife Mary was "not in capacity." There is no evidence that Nicholas Scull was a Quaker, but the trust that Nicholas Scull placed in the local Quaker meeting shows that he had some appreciation for the denomination.  Having also married the daughter of a Quaker, Jaspar Farmar, Scull's connections with the Quakers may have been a family tradition (Will Books, Philadelphia County, vol. B p. 456, #167).

 For this reason, I searched to see if the Quaker records in England could link Nicholas Scull to his ancestral place of origin in England.   The only surviving record of Sculls or Skulls active among Quakers in all of England are to be found in the meetinghouse established at Brinkworth:

October 16, 1677 John Church of Lea married Mary Skull, spinster of Brinkworth

September 9, 1703 Sarah Skull was buried

Dec. 14, 1703 Hannah Skull daughter of Thomas Skull of Brinkworth married William,son of William Walker of Brinkworth

March 21, 1724 Lydia Skull was buried

(Quarterly Meeting of Gloucester and Wiltshire, Book 576, p. 242; Book 580, p. 8; Book 620, pp. 73, 476)

 I think it is more than a coincidence that Brinkworth is the same town where Alice Skull left a will in 1649 in which she expressed her loss over the disappearance of her son John Skull, who had "gone into another land." The founder of the Quakers, George Fox, is known to have preached on a route across Wiltshire in 1662.  Brinkworth is located in Wiltshire. He passed through Wiltshire and Bristol again in 1663. He established a monthly meeting in Wiltshire in 1668 and traveled back through Wiltshire and Bristol again in 1670 and 1673.  Any one of these meetings could have gotten one or more Sculls involved and this would explain why they ended up in Ireland, as part of the general migration of Quakers there before their later migration to New Jersey and Pennsylvania. (Journal of George Fox, by George Fox). 

  The first son of Nicholas Scull was Nicholas Scull Jr., who was trained to be a cordwainer, but later became a surveyor in Philadelphia and Bucks counties. He learned how to speak several Indian dialects fluently and was employed by the government to help conduct negotiations with the leading chiefs of the Conestoga, Delaware, Gawanese, and Shawanese Indians at Conestoga in 1728 and 1729. In 1737 he was one of three Pennsylvanians who participated in the so-called "Indian Walk," which settled the boundary between Pennsylvania and the Delaware Indians by a fifty-mile walking contest.  In 1740 he was sent to settle an Indian dispute at Minesinks and in 1745 he served as an interpreter when an Indian delegation visited Philadelphia.  He was elected Sheriff of Philadelphia in 1744. He became Surveyor General of Pennsylvania in 1748 and the director of the first library in Philadelphia, which met in his home during its organizational period in 1744  (Colonial Families of the United States, vol. 6, pp. 93-94)(History of Montgomery County, by Theodore W. Bean, p. 1140)(Autobiography of Charles Biddle, by Charles Biddle, pp. 379-83) (Pennsylvanian Magazine, vol. 14, p. 73). 

 Several booklets that he used for surveying notes and writing poetry have been preserved in the archives of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Some of his maps have been reproduced and were available for sale when I visited there in the 1985.  In the Peyton Randolph House in Williamsburg, Virginia, there is an enlarged print of a drawing of the Philadelphia waterfront by Nicholas Scull that has been reproduced as a mural on a wall next to the staircase. I first saw this while on a school field trip to Williamsburg in the sixth grade. When I saw his signature on the wall of the print I think it was the first time I had ever seen my last name outside the context of my own immediate family in Norfolk, Virginia. In 1990 when I was a Social Studies teacher in Belhaven, North Carolina, I took my classes on a field trip to Williamsburg and stumbled across this mural again. Although I had completely forgotten about it by that time, my memory came back to me and I could remember wondering at the age of twelve if my ancestors in North Carolina had somehow come from Pennsylvania.

 The rest of the sons of Nicholas Scull, Sr. lived less accomplished lives.  The second son, Edward Scull, was trained to be a joiner, an artisan who constructs articles by joining pieces of wood.  This was an important occupation before the mass production of nails, for wooden pegs held houses together in the time in which Edward Scull lived.   The third son, Jasper Scull, was trained to be a blacksmith.  The fourth son, John Scull, was trained to be a cordwainer, an artisan who works with leather.  Later he became a shoemaker.  The fifth son, James Scull, was trained to be a carpenter. The sixth son, Joseph Scull, was trained to be a husbandman. Originally, the term "husband" was used to refer to a man who earned his living by working as a farmer.  Over time the term has become more commonly used to refer to a woman's spouse, but before the Industrial Revolution almost all men were farmers and therefore most male spouses were husbands. All of these occupations and names are recorded in the deeds relating to the distribution of the original property of Nicholas Scull Sr.  On May 4, 1714, the six sons sold fifty acres of their father's land to their stepfather, Allen Forster, for £35. On September 29, 1717, they sold 150 acres to Edward Farmar for £95. On May 30, 1739, they sold 180 more acres of the land to Benjamin Charlesworth for  £110 (Book of Deeds, Philadelphia County, Pa., vol. E7-10, p. 449; vol. F1, p. 135; vol. H9, p. 157).

  The numerous sons of Nicholas Scull, Sr. all married and had so many children between them that the exact genealogy of the grandchildren is confusing, despite the survival of numerous records in the Philadelphia County records and in the local churches.  A roughly-drafted sixteen inch by twenty-four inch genealogical chart of the descendants of Nicholas Scull Sr. can be seen in the Pennsylvania Genealogical Society Library in Philadelphia. It includes thirty-eight grandchildren, eighteen of whom are listed as the children of Joseph Scull, the husbandman, who reportedly had five wives over the course of his lifetime. (Perhaps this is the origin of the double meaning of the word "husband.")  I made a copy of this chart and would like to share it with you. (Scull Genealogical Chart in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Library).

JOHN SCULL OF NEW JERSEY:

 Only five years after Nicholas Scull settled in Pennsylvania there was another line of Sculls that settled in New Jersey. The patriarch of this family was John Scull, who purchased 250 acres along Great Egg Harbor in 1695, married Mary Somers, the daughter of a wealthy Quaker named John Somers, the owner of Somerset Plantation, an estate of 5000 acres.  John Scull became a prominent member of the Great Egg Harbor community, where he was one of the founding members of the local Quaker meeting house and served as tax accessor and justice of the peace in Gloucester County.  His will that was written in 1745 has survived in the New Jersey Archives.   John Scull died in 1748, leaving behind thirteen children, nine of whom were sons.  The names of these nine sons were John, Abel, Peter, Daniel, Benjamin, Recompense, Gideon, Isaiah, and David. Not surprisingly, the New Jersey clan of Sculls is the most prolific branch of the Scull family in America.  Census Records throughout the 19th Century trace most Sculls throughout the northern United States back to New Jersey.  ("Genealogical Notes Relating to the Family of Scull", by Gideon Delaplaine Scull, pp. 3-4)("Notes on the Scull Family of New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia," by William Ellis Scull, Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, vol. II, pp. 808-814)(New Jersey Archives, XXX, 422).

 The genealogists Gideon Delaplaine Scull and William Ellis Scull, who are descended from John Scull of Great Egg Harbor, have subscribed to the theory of William de Hardy that the founder of the New Jersey branch of Sculls was a Dutchman, the son of Pieter Jansen Schol of New Amsterdam, whose father had been prominent in the court of William of Orange before the latter became the King of England. This idea is based on the evidence that the Great Egg Harbor deed described John Scull as "late of Long Island," where Pieter Jansen Schol settled after leaving Holland, but the Dutchman also spelled his name as "Scholt" and the deed only states "late of Long Island."  I think it is more likely that the overseer John Scull left the estate of Jaspar Farmar, traveled to Long Island for a while and later returned to Philadelphia, where he purchased the Great Egg Harbor plot. He purchased this land from Thomas Budd of Philadelphia, a wealthy Quaker merchant from Somerset, England who owned 15,000 acres of land in what is now New Jersey.  Budd was part of the commission that went to London and lobbied for self-government for the Quakers. He published a book proposing Quaker settlement in the New World in 1684 called A True and Perfect Account.   Because the Sculls of Philadelphia had strong Quaker connections and the New Amsterdam Schols did not, to me it is more likely that the mischievous overseer John Scull had a religious awakening, turned away from his early life of drinking with the Indians, and making use of his skills as an overseer became a leading member of the Quaker community of Great Egg Harbor.  ("Genealogical Notes Relating to the Family of Scull", by Gideon Delaplaine Scull, pp. 3-4)("Notes on the Scull Family of New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia," by William Ellis Scull, Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, vol. II, p. 808-814)(Scull Pedigree, compiled by William Le Hardy, Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania)(The Province of West Jersey: 1609-1702, by John E. Pomfret, pp. 89-90, 140, 285-87).

  EDWARD SCULL OF NORTH CAROLINA:

 The earliest Scull to settle in North Carolina was Edward Scull, a carpenter and a joiner, who purchased land in Bertie County, Virginia in 1749.  He died in Hertford County, North Carolina in 1767, leaving behind a will as indicated on a list.  Unfortunately this will had not survived. By the time of the 1790 Census there were several Scull households in Hertford County, North Carolina and Bible Records indicate that they were descendants of Edward.  Some of his descendants moved to Mississippi before the Civil War. Today there are Sculls directly descended from Edward in Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama. (Bertie County Deeds)(Hertford County Deeds and Wills)(Elisha Scull Bible Record, film #1036950, LDS Genealogical Services)(James Scull Bible Record, Harrellsville Historical Society)(U.S. Census. 1850, 1880). 

 It was difficult proving that Edward Scull the carpenter/joiner of North Carolina and Edward Scull the joiner of Pennsylvania and the apprentice Edward Scull of Ireland were all the same person.  It required me to make a trip to Ireland, but in doing this I was also able to establish that the Sculls of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina were all very closely related. The deed records in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania indicate that the second son of Nicholas Scull was Edward Scull the joiner. A single entry in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting regarding Edward Scull's apprenticeship in Cork, Ireland did not indicate the occupation he was trained in, so it was possible that all three of these Edward Sculls were different people.  (Marriages, Christchurch, Philadelphia)(Administration Book, Philadelphia County, Book G, p. 49)  Therefore, in the summer of 1995, I decided to see what information there was in the Meeting House records of Cork, Ireland regarding the apprenticeship of Edward Skull.  Mary Shackleton, the librarian at Swansbrook House in Dublin explained to me that the practice of serving apprenticeships on the other side of the ocean was not unusual for Quakers during the colonial period because many families had business contacts on both sides of the ocean that were strengthened through the social contacts provided by the Quaker meeting houses. 

The apprenticeship of Edward Scull was verified in the minutes of the Cork Meeting House and a reference concerning Edward Skull, dated September 9, 1706:  "John Dennis having received a letter from Edw. Skull out of Pennsylvania to send him a certificate drawn on by John and Thos. Wright saying he is not married." This indicated that John Dennis and the John and Thosmas Wright were among his most significant contacts of Edward Scull in Ireland. (Minutes, Cork, Ireland Meeting House, Swansbrook House). 

 Therefore, I needed to know the occupation of these men.  To answer this question it was recommended by more than one Quaker in England and Ireland that I contact Richard Harrison of Bantry, the author of a book on the history of Quakers in County Cork. I wrote him a letter while still in Ireland requesting information concerning the occupations of the three members of the Cork Meeting House listed on Edward Skull's certificate. Not long after returning home to North Carolina I received an aerogram from Harrison, dated July 26, 1995, in which he explained that "although I do not have information on John or Thomas Wright, John Dennis was certainly a timber merchant." I was delighted with the response, for as a timber merchant, John Dennis would have been an excellent prospect to place young Edward Scull in the hands of a master woodcraftsman.

 Fortunately, while in Swansbrook House in Dublin, I found a letter written to the library in 1960 by Richard P. McCormick of Rutgers University.   McCormick was researching the proprietors who founded the Quaker colony of West Jersey in 1677.  Looking over the names of the seventeen proprietors, I noticed that two of the names were Samuel Dennis of Cork and John Dennis of Cork. This means that John Dennis was not only a lumber merchant, but one of the leading investors in the Quaker settlement in what is now southern New Jersey. 

 After returning to the United States I picked up a copy of McCormick's book, New Jersey From Colony to State: 1609-1789.  According to McCormick, ten years before William Penn acquired Pennsylvania, West Jersey was created in 1674 when Lord Berkeley decided to sell half his interest in the colony of New Jersey.  He sold the land to John Fenwick, a former officer in Cromwell's army who had become a Quaker.  The line was drawn across the colony from the coast beginning at Great Egg Harbor and running off to the northwest as far as the Delaware River.  The West Jersey colony was divided into 100 shares or "proprieties" at £350 per share. Fenwick established the Quaker community at Salem on the Delaware River in 1675. Gloucester County, including Great Egg Harbor, where John Scull settled in 1695 was at first known as the "Irish Tenth" because it was largely purchased by Quakers who had previously fled from England to Ireland. According to another historian, John E. Pomfret, the Quakers in Ireland "were mostly of English birth that had left for Ireland to escape persecution." They later left Ireland because they were persecuted there as well (New Jersey From Colony to State, by Richard P. McCormick, pp. 39-50)(The Province of West Jersey, by John E. Pomfret, p. 89).

 All of the 120 purchasers of shares in the Irish Tenth were Quakers except for one.  Among the early purchasers of shares in the colony were three Quakers from Cork:

  1678 1/4 share to William Steel of Cork, merchant

       1/14 share to John Dennis of Cork, joiner

       1/7 share to Samuel Dennis of Cork, merchant

  (The Province of West Jersey, by Pomfret, pp. 87, 285-89)

Here I could see that John Dennis actually was a joiner before he became a lumber merchant. Thanks to the work of McCormick and Pomfret, I had proof that the Edward Skull who returned from Ireland in 1706 had been trained as a "joiner" and therefore had to be the same Edward Scull who was the second son of the gentleman Nicholas Scull. According to Pomfret, John Dennis later moved to West Jersey and settled on Timber Creek (Pomfret, p. 90).

 I think it is also worth noting that in the New Jersey deed of sale giving 250 acres on the shores of Great Egg Harbor to John Scull that the deed specifically granted to Scull the "privilege of cutting cedar," a comment that would not have been mentioned unless the purchaser intended to make a profit in lumbering.  Perhaps he intended to sell timber to John Dennis and other New Jersey proprietors, much as an earlier John Scull had done in Nansemond County and in the waters about Scull Neck fifty years earlier.  Coincidentally, of the fourteen other surnames on the list, three of them (Sharp, Starkey, and Hunter) intermarried with the descendants of Edward Scull in North Carolina (New Jersey Archives, vol. XXI, 1664-1703).

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