Herbert Cornelius Rorick, of Newark, was born in Ledgewood, Morris County, August 31,1861, and comes from an old New Jersey family. His great grandfather, Michael Rorick, owned the land on which the famed zinc mines of this state were subsequently discovered, and was a private in the Sussex County militia in the War of the Revolution. Gasper Rorick, son of Michael and grandfather of Herbert C., was an extensive lumber merchant and resided in Franklin, Sussex County. He married a Miss Hoyt, of an old Vermont family, and while temporarily residing in Montreal, Canada, in 1816, their son Samuel Hoyt Rorick, the father of Herbert C., was born. Samuel was for many years the collector for the Morris Canal and Banking Company of New Jersey. He married Phoebe McPeek, daughter of John McPeek and Susan Jayne and granddaughter of Jonathan McPeek, a private in the Sussex County militia in the Revolutionary War.
The Rorick family is descended from ancient Holland ancestry, and came to New York when that province was under Dutch rule.
Herbert C. Rorick attended the public schools of Ledgewood, N.J. and was graduated from the Centenary Collegiate Institute at Hackettstown in 1882. He taught school in Morris County for four years and afterwards was engaged in other employment until 1890, when he established himself in the life insurance business. He spent some time in Europe in company with the distinguished novelist, F. Marion Crawford, and upon his return again engaged in the life insurance business, which he has since followed with great success, becoming manager of the Colonial Life Insurance Company at Newark in 1898. In this connection he has displayed marked ability and gained a high reputation among the leading insurance men of his section.
Mr. Rorick was one of the original members of the Eastern Division of the New Jersey Naval Reserve and its first Lieutenant Commander. He is a Democrat, as were all his family, and is a member of the Jeffersonian Club of Newark, Secretary of the New Jersey Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, Vice-President of the Roseville Athletic Club. He is also a prominent Mason, holding membership in St. John’s Lodge, No. 1, F. and A.M. of Newark (of which he is a past Master), in Mecca Temple, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine of New York, and in all the Scottish Rites bodies, including the New Jersey Consistory 320, of Jersey City. He was married May 19, 1900 to Matilda M. Wilke, of Orange, N.J.
Source: Whitehead, John. 1901. The Passaic Valley of New Jersey in Three Centuries. Volume 2. New York: New Jersey Genealogical Company.
Carol Ann Hilton 