Background
Jonathan Singletary, later Dunham, was born on January 17, 1639/40, in Newbury, Massachusetts, the son of Richard Singletary.
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Jonathan Dunham
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Career
He is United States. President Barack Obama’s eighth great-grandfather and the first of Obama’s Dunham ancestors to be born in North America. Possibly due to an unsubstantiated family legend about his father being the heir of the family of Dunham, or because Jonathan himself was the son of an earlier marriage of Richard Singletary to a Dunham wife who had died in 1638/39, Jonathan Singletary called himself Dunham after moving to New Jersey. At Woodbridge, Dunham was granted 213 acres (086 km2) of land by the newly appointed Governor of New Jersey.
Upon this land, he built the first grist mill in New Jersey.
He later received a further grant of 203 acres (082 km2) and also acquired many other tracts of land in New Jersey and Massachusetts. After finding success with his grist mill, Dunham went into public life, serving as the Clerk of the Woodbridge Township Court and overseer of highways, and in 1673 he was elected to the New Jersey Provincial Congress.
Dunham died in Woodbridge, New Jersey in 1724. In the words of Woodridge historian Review
Joseph West. Dally, "Dunham was a man of great energy.
When he determined upon an enterprise he pushed it forward to success with indomitable perseverance. So many of his relatives settled in the north of the Kirk Green that the neighborhood was known as Dunhamtown for many years." In addition to one of the original millstones used by Dunham, two memorial plaques have been placed in front of the Trinity Church Rectory. The first plaque reads, "This millstone from the mill of Jonathan Dunham builder of Trinity Church Rectory 1670 was placed here by Trinity Young Peoples Fellowship on the 250th Anniversary of Trinity Church May 16, 1948." The second memorial plaque reads, "In Memory of Jonathan Dunham who in 1670 established the First Grist Mill in New Jersey at Woodbridge, New Jersey and built the Brick House now Trinity Church Rector dedicated October 5, 1969 by the 300th Anniversary Commander of Woodbridge Township New Jersey.".
