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The history of the Sand Hill Indians living on the northern shores of Monmouth County, New Jersey, can be traced back to the
1700s. Lenape Indian groups were present when the first European explorers visited the area in the 1600s. Cherokee Indian
inhabitants migrated to the area during the 1700s. Since 1780 Sand Hill family names such as Reavy, Revy, Rebee, Revey and
Richardson are found on tax records, property transactions, deeds, census enumerations, birth indexes, death and marriage
certificates.
Using cemetery records, probate records, will inventories from the Monmouth Hall of Records, military lists from Freehold,
tin type pictures, family photos, artifacts from the Neptune Historical Museum, records from the Monmouth County Library Archives
in Manalapan, the New York Public Library Genealogical Research, the New Jersey State Library in Trenton, New Jersey Historical
Society in Newark, NJ, records from the late Jim Revey of the New Jersey Office of Indian Affairs and oral histories told
by generations of Sand Hill family, supplement the story of the survival of Indian families in New Jersey.
Due to relentless land encroachment, Cherokee groups were gradually forced out of their homelands in Georgia. In the late
1700s the Cherokee Richardsons migrated to New Jersey and New York to live with their Lenape cousins, the Reveys. Cherokee
Indian Isaac Revey Richardson was born in Eatontown village in 1818 to Rebecca Revey and Joseph Richardson. In 1844 Isaac
married a distant Lenape cousin, Elizabeth Susan Revey, born in 1826 to Susan Van Sneaden and Freemason Richard P. Revey in
Manhattan. To save our Sand Hill heritage and counter misperceptions that all Indians moved westward and departed the area,
the Sand Hill Indian Historical Association was created in 2002.
After living in Eatontown for over thirty years, Isaac and Elizabeth Richardson moved their eight children to the newly
developing area of Asbury Park in 1877, the family became identified by the name Sand Hill from the local hill on their fifteen-acre
property. Along with population growth at the shore area, Sand Hill families grew in number with each generation and prospered
in Monmouth County, New Jersey,
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This website traces the settlement and growth of the area called Shrewsbury where the authentic Sand Hill Indians lived
and prospered. Sand Hill Indians have hundreds of descendants who contribute to the mosaic of American citizens today.
On August 7, 2004 Theodore J. Narozanick, Harry Larrison, Jr., and the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders recognized
the Sand Hill Indian descendants by a Proclamation of Sand Hill Indian Day and thanked the Sand Hill Band of Indians for two
centuries of contributions to their communities throughout Monmouth County, New Jersey.
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