Class ___i:_L2j_ 
 Book__._/SLdt> 
 
 SMITHSONIAN DEPOSIT 
 

 Bi-Centennial Celebration 
 
 OF THE 
 
 B OAR D O K 
 
 American Proprietors 
 
 ill 
 
 -2^ 
 
 OF 
 
 East New Jersey. 
 
 At Perth Ainboy, Tuesday, November 25, 1884. 
 
 NEWARK, N. J,: 
 
 Press of the Advertiser Printing House. 
 
 1885. 
 
AT THE semi-annual session of the Council of Proprie- 
 tors, at the Surveyor-General's office in Perth Amboy, 
 N. J., on the third Tuesday of May, 1884, it was resolved 
 that the approaching two hundredth anniversary of the 
 Board of American Proprietors should be commemorated 
 by appropriate exercises, and the Executive Committee 
 were authorized to make the necessary arrangements for 
 that purpose. 
 
 A meeting of the Executive Committee was held at Perth 
 Amboy on the second of July, to carry out the above reso- 
 lution. Plans for the exercises were matured and the work 
 of preparation begun. It was carried forward in successive 
 meetings, with the results given in the following pages. 
 
 The public addresses were delivered in the City Hall, 
 and the collation was served in the same building. There 
 was a large and appreciate audience present, and much in- 
 terest was shown in the occasion which had brought them 
 together, as well as in the matters presented by the speakers. 
 
 The Executive Committee are glad to make public 
 acknowledgment of the attention shown them by the Mayor 
 and Common Council of Perth Amboy, and by the com- 
 mittee of ladies and gentlemen who assisted in the enter- 
 tainment of the visitors; and their thanks are especially 
 due to the gentlemen whose able, appropriate and inter- 
 esting addresses graced these commemorating exercises 
 
 Charles E. Noble, President, 
 George H. Cook, Surveyor-General, 
 William M. Force, Register, 
 Hon. Amos Clark, Jr., 
 Timothy Lord, Esq., 
 U. B. Watson, Esq., 
 
 Executive Committee. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. — HisTORTCAL Address by Hon. Cortlandt Parker, 
 of Newark, N. J. 
 
 II. — Statements, with Exhibition of Maps, explanatory 
 of the Location and Boundaries of East New 
 Jersey, by Prof. George H. Cook, Surveyor- 
 Qeneral, of New Brunswick, N. J. 
 
 III. — Address: "The Influence of the Proprietors in 
 Founding the State," by Prof. Austin Scott, 
 of Rutgers College, New Brunswick, N. J. 
 
Mr. Parker's Address, 
 
 A few weeks ago, England and America sympathized 
 in the celebration of the centennial birthday of a great 
 Hebrew philanthropist, a most interesting and praise- 
 worthy reunion. To-day we celebrate here in their an- 
 cient and original home the bi-centennial anniversary of 
 the organization of a body, once Lords by title, and, in 
 fact, of New Jersey and of her domain ; no representa- 
 tive creation "of the people, by the people and for the 
 people," but acquiring the title to soil and Government 
 too, by conveyance from the British crown ; from whom 
 the title to every foot of land in New Jersey springs ; 
 and among whom, even after Government was sur- 
 rendered, her chief and most influential citizens were to 
 be found. Little by little the domain, the possession of 
 which gave the Proprietors consequence, has passed 
 from their hands. What is left in their control is now 
 of comparatively slight value. But thei;e is enough 
 remaining to make the Board still possess great conse- 
 quence. And though but a ghost of its former self, it 
 is proper and right that they should meet upon this 
 day, look back on the two hundred years which have 
 passed, and render the tribute of their respect to the 
 wise, energetic and enterprising men who were their 
 early predecessors. 
 
The existence of a separate Board or Council of Pro- 
 prietors from whom all titles are derived, instead of 
 obtaining them from the governing power, as is the 
 case, I believe, in all the other States of the Union, is a 
 fact which, well understood among native Jerseymen, 
 almost always seems strange to those who are not. 
 And, therefore, it may be well, familiar as is the topics 
 to state succinctly how it came about that we had in 
 New Jersey from the beginning, and have now as the 
 fountain of all title, a private body of landowners. 
 
 The doctrine of English law was that discovery and 
 conquest gave title, as to all heathen and uncivilized 
 countries, to the British Crown. To use judicial lan- 
 guage (C. J. Kirkpatrick in Arnold v. Mundy, i Hal- 
 stead R. i): " When Charles II. took possession of this 
 country by his right of discovery, he took possession of 
 it in his sovereign capacity. He had the same right in it 
 and the same power over it as he had in and over his other 
 dominions, and no more. This right consisted in grant- 
 ing the soil to private persons for the pusposes of settle- 
 ment and colonization ; of establishing a government, of 
 supporting a governor, and of conveying to him all 
 those things appurtenant to the sovereignty, commonly 
 called royalties, for the benefit of the colonists." 
 
 Both discovery and conquest, it is claimed, gave the 
 British crown the title to New Jersey.* " The English 
 first discovered and took possession of this part of North 
 America. Being at war with the States of Holland, 
 they were driven out by their' enemy, who took pos- 
 session and built the city of New York, calling it New 
 Amsterdam. They extended their settlements into New 
 
 *Wall and Scott arguendo, I Halstead i8, 50. 
 
Jersey, particularly into the adjacent counties of Bergen, 
 Essex, Monmouth, Somerset and Middlesex, the first 
 European inhabitants of which were generally Hol- 
 landers. But in 1664 the English reconquered the' 
 territory and expelled the Dutch Government. The 
 King thus gained a new title by conquest of a civilized 
 nation." On March 12, 1664, Charles TL, by royal 
 patent, granted New Jersey to his brother James, then 
 Duke of York, afterwards Charles' successor upon the 
 throne. He immediately took possession. Thus the 
 landed property of New Jersey is held direct from 
 the King of England. 
 
 This grant of the Duke gave not only the property 
 in the soil, but also the right and power of government. 
 No other title to the soil than his was ever recognized 
 by the law. It was unappropriated land, a savage 
 wilderness, a great waste. " To such property the law 
 appoints the King as owner, because there is no other. 
 Moreover, it is a fundamental principle of the common 
 law, that all lands, even those of private persons, are 
 held of the King. Where there is no private owner, 
 therefore, all persons must claim through him." (3 Bl. 
 Com. 49, 50.) In respect to the old settled and granted 
 lands, this may be a fiction of law, but it is truth and 
 history here. It was a newly discovered wilderness 
 conquered by the King of England ; it was the King's 
 from necessity, and belonged to him solely, substantially 
 and beneficially. 
 
 Shortly after this deed, James, Duke of York, con- 
 veyed the land and the government to John Lord 
 Berkeley and to Sir George Carteret. These men had 
 been distinguished for their loyalty during the civil war, 
 and the grant was an evident reward. Carteret had 
 
been Governor of the Island of Jersey, and was distin- 
 guished for his defence of it against the troops of the 
 Parliament. Hence the name Nova Cesarea or New 
 Jersey. 
 
 Phillip Carteret, the first Proprietary Governor, with 
 the first settlers under Berkeley and Carteret, arrived in 
 New Jersey in the Summer of 1665. By the treaty of 
 Breda in 1667, New Jersey was formally ceded by the 
 Dutch to the King of England. ' This gave rise to a 
 new grant, July 29th, 1674, by the King to the Duke of 
 York, and bv the Duke to Berkeley and Carteret anew. 
 In July, 1676, the province was divided between the 
 two Proprietors, Carteret taking East Jersey, and 
 Berkeley West. Thereupon, Carteret, by will, devised 
 his plantation of New Jersey to trustees to be sold for 
 certain purposes, by him stated, in 168 1-2. The trustees 
 and his widow, executrix, sold all East Jersey to twelve 
 Proprietors, who, again, conveyed half of their interest 
 to twelve others. This conveyance was strengthened 
 by a release to the twenty -four by the Duke of York, 
 in 1682. 
 
 Each Proprietor had a twenty-fourth interest in the 
 l)r()ijerty, inheritable, divisible, and assignable, as if it 
 were a farm instead of a province. And by these means 
 the estate has come down to those who now own the 
 the property. Every foot of ground in the State has 
 once belonged to these Proprietors, and belongs to its 
 present owner, as their successor, by and through the 
 rules ot Common and Statutory Law. 
 
 The rules of the Proprietors, forming an agreement 
 between them, have established two modes of convey- 
 ing titles in severalty to their lands. One is b)^ letters 
 patent — a plan pursued in the earliest period, but long 
 
ago abandoned — the other by what is called warrant 
 and survey, the method followed for many years past. 
 It is thus clearly described by Chief-Justice Kirk- 
 patrick: " The Proprietors of New Jersey are tenants 
 in common of the soil. Their mode of securing the 
 common right is by issuing warrants from time to time 
 to the respective Proprietors, according to their re- 
 spective and several rights, authorizing them to survey 
 and appropriate in severalty the quantities therein con- 
 tained. Such warrant does not convey a title to the 
 Proprietor ; he had that before. It only authorizes him 
 to sever so much from the common stock, and operates 
 as a release to testify such severance. This is mani- 
 festly the case when the Proprietor locates for himself. 
 When, instead of locating for himself, he sells his war- 
 rant to another, that other becomes a tenant in common 
 with all the Proprietors pro tanto, and in the same 
 manner he proceeds to convert his common into a 
 several right. It is true that the survey made in pur- 
 suance of this warrant must be inspected by the Sur- 
 veyor-General, approved by the Board, and registered 
 in their books ; but all this is for the sake of security, 
 order and regularity only, and is by no means the 
 passing of the title. It proves that the title has passed, 
 but it is not the means of passing it." 
 
 As survey after survey has been made upon warrant, 
 approved and registered, the domain of common land 
 has diminished in extent. But at least until all New 
 Jersey has been so disposed of this Board must continue 
 to exist. 
 
 The United States Government owns, or rather, has 
 owned, all the great West through conquest or through 
 treaty. Therefore, a party desirmg land goes to the 
 
12 
 
 Government officer, and on complying with established 
 regulations, gets a patent or a deed. The States re- 
 spectively own lands within their boundaries. They 
 acquired them, each for itself, by conquest or by treaty, 
 or later, by taxation and sale therefor. In New Jersey, 
 however, our Legislature has nothing at all to do with 
 our waste or unappropriated land. It all belongs to the 
 Proprietors, to those, namely, who own what are known 
 as Proprietary rights, or rights of Proprietorship, and 
 is subject to the disposition of the Board of Proprietors. 
 Any one who holds one quarter share of Propriety, I 
 understand to be admissible to a seat as one of the Board. 
 I hope it is not invidious for me to add, just at this 
 point, that it is qiiestionable whether the i)lan followed 
 for so many years, in disposing of unappropriated lands 
 in New Jersey might not have been improved upon. It 
 certainly has been susceptible of much abuse. Surveys 
 have, of course, and necessarily, taken precedence ac- 
 cording to record. Hence, careless and unwary people 
 have, more or less frequently, lost their lands. And 
 again, blanket or " including " surveys have been 
 allowed — surveys, that is, which have comprised within 
 their limits other surveys theretofore made, and which 
 leave dispute possible as to where the boundaries of ex- 
 cepted surveys are, and as to how much land is lying 
 outside of them and within the boundaries of the inclu- 
 sive one. I venture to think, beside, that sufficient 
 attention has not been paid to the registration and 
 perpetuation of beginning monuments. Nor am I 
 quite clear that the practice of avoiding, in surveys, 
 the mention of any monuments but the beginning 
 one has contributed to j^eace and the avoidance of 
 dispute concerning boundaries. 
 
^3 
 
 It is questionable, may I be permitted to suggest, 
 whether it would not have been wise, if feasible, to have 
 made, early, correct maps of every township in the State, 
 upon which each return and survey as made should be 
 laid down, and which would thus exhibit always to the 
 eye, Avhether there was unappropriated land within the 
 bounds of that township and what and where it was. 
 Such a scheme, or one similar to that under which the 
 great State of New York was laid out, mapped and 
 divided into sections, would have contributed, I think, 
 to that certainty in regard to boundaries of land, which 
 should be and doubtless has been the great motive of a 
 Board sustaining the dignified position towards the 
 community of New Jersey, always occupied by this 
 ancient and venerable body. Even now it would seem 
 not to be too late for action of this nature ; not, indeed, 
 that the Proprietors themselves can be justly called 
 upon to undergo such an expense, especially in view of 
 the small area still belonging to them. But would it 
 not be policy tor the Proprietors to sell and convey to 
 the State all their interests and rights remaining in its 
 soil, and for the State to buy and then to cause complete 
 surveys, such as those sketched, to be made, with the 
 view of perfect certainty, and that boundaries now exist- 
 ing but not clearly established, may be free from future 
 disturbance? This seems to me to be an argument for 
 such a purchase, closing forever the existence of this 
 anomal}^ in practice as to the devolution of land titles, 
 additional to that of thereby settling all disputes between 
 the State and the Proprietors, growing out of the 
 language of the early grants, the surrender of Govern- 
 ment to Queen Anne, the acquisition afterwards, by the 
 State, through the Revolution of 1776, of the rights of 
 
14 
 
 the crown, and all other possible claims. It is time, 
 many think, that this impcriuiii in iiupcrio, this Lord- 
 ship over ungranted land, should come to an end. 
 
 But I confess that these explanations and suggestions 
 are scarcely in place to-day, dedicated as it is to the 
 memory of those who first composed the Board, and 
 their immediate successors. We have to do with the 
 past — perhaps with the past only. Who and what 
 manner of men were they, these early Lords Proprietors ? 
 What sort of a country was this now fair and thriving 
 Jersey, in those far away times ? 
 
 Subjects which have filled volumes can hardly be 
 adequately, or with any approach to adequacy, treated 
 on an occasion like this. All that can be done is to 
 present some faint glimpses of early days ; of the men 
 who lived in them, and of the fair land we now inhabit. 
 
 The now well-known book of George Scot, of Pit- 
 lochie, reprinted and annexed to the excellent work of the 
 late William A. Whitehead, " East Jersey under the 
 Proprietary Government," with several letters appended, 
 gives us very full knowledge of the early attractions of 
 our beloved State. It is true, Scot's book presents in- 
 ternal evidence that it was written as a recomendation 
 to emigration. And yet exaggeration in these days was 
 slight compared with such works now. He published 
 his book in 1685. It is quaint, learned, prolix, and shows 
 him to be a single-hearted religionist of the Scottish 
 t3'pe. Yet his description of New Jersey as it then was 
 is exceedingl)^ interesting, and evidently reliable. He 
 extols its climate — the same, he says, with Naples — the 
 fertility of its soil, its convenience of situation, lying upon 
 that " vast navigable stream called Hudson's river, and 
 also upon the sea, along which it stretches 100 miles or 
 
more ;" its harbors, especially that noted " Sandy Hook 
 bay," its fisheries for " whales, coadfish, colling and 
 hakefish, and large mackerel," for sturgeon, scalefish, 
 eels and shellfish, as oysters, its rivers and rivulets, with 
 their finny inhabitants, its meadow lands along their 
 banks; its fine timber, such as good oak, "fit for ship 
 ping and masts," and also chestnut, walnut, poplar, cedar, 
 ash, fir; its fertility, being cleared, " which yields a vast 
 increase, not only of Indian corn, which is a very whole- 
 some food, but of English grain, such as wheat and 
 barley, whereof it usually yields betwixt the 20th and 
 30th fold, and with far less labor than in Britain ; its 
 products, such as flax and hemp, its grass, its fruits, as 
 grapes, plums, mulberries and also apricots, peaches, 
 pears, apples, quinces, watermelons, which are in 
 England planted in orchards and gardens, but grow 
 there with far less labor ; " its game, as deer, connies and 
 wild fowl of several sorts, as turkies, pigeons, partridges, 
 plovers, quails, wild swans and geese, ducks in great 
 plenty ; its domestic animals, as horses, cows, hogs and 
 some sheep ; its minerals ; its furs, beaver, mink, raccoon 
 and marten skins. He celebrates the fewness of the 
 Indians, their peaceableness, their usefulness to the colo- 
 nists, their friendliness, being conciliated by purchasing 
 their lands instead, of compelling their submission by 
 force of arms ; but most does he dwell on the freedom 
 guaranteed by the grants and concessions, especially on 
 what he regards as the perfection of religious freedom, 
 in that, " to be a planter or inhabitant nothing is required 
 but the acknowledgment of one Almighty God, and to 
 have a share in the government, a simple profession of 
 faith in Jesus Christ, without descending into any other 
 of the differences among Christians, only that religion 
 
i6 
 
 may not be a cloak for disturbance." He celebrates the 
 rapid growth of the colony in population and enumerates 
 its settled to\yns, such as Shre\ysbury, \yith Colonel 
 Morris' iron mills, his manor, etc., the \yhole population 
 computed at 400; Middleto\yn, \yith about 50o,and among 
 them a Captain John Brown, not quite so famous as he 
 of later date and immortal memory, of whose body and 
 soul we all hayc heard ; and also Richard Hartshorne, 
 whose name and race haye come down to our day, 
 famous on the yery spot where their great ancestors 
 bled and died. He mentions also Piscataway or Piscat- 
 awa, a town which has not kept pace with his expecta- 
 tions — Woodbridge, Elizabethtown and Newark or 
 jNIilford. " In this town," he says, " hath been a Court 
 of Sessions, held between this and Elizabethtown.'' It 
 is the most compact town in the proyince, and consists 
 of about one hundred families, and of about 500 inhabi- 
 tants. He has a good deal to say of Berghan, and 
 makes out that all the population of the colony equals 
 700 families and 3,500 people. 
 
 A letter of Thomas Rudyard, Deputy-Governor of 
 East New Jersey, to a friend in London, dated May 30, 
 1683, is 'the fullest and most succinct account of the 
 country and its people. (" East Jersey Under the Pro- 
 prietors,'' page 410.) 
 
 It was the day of small things, this infancy of New 
 Jersey. Its first Legislative Assembly met May 26, 
 1668. Thirty pounds was levied on the different towns 
 to defray the public charges — five pounds on each of 
 the six towns. When Philip Carteret came, first Gov- 
 ernor of the colony, he found at Elizabeth, his future 
 residence, four families. What a kingdom that must 
 have seemed to him, a youth of twenty-six, clothed 
 
17 
 
 abroad with the title of Governor of the Province of 
 Nova Cesarea, when he came to this wilderness and 
 found what was its population ! He was equal to the 
 occasion. As he left his vessel at the port, he went to 
 the settlement with a hoe on his shoulder that all might 
 see that he, like the inhabitants already come, was to be 
 a planter. A good young man was he, who endeavored 
 with all his might to maintain the peace, and increase 
 the property of the infant province. He had not a 
 peaceable time. Indeed, anything like constant peace 
 was the lot of very few of New Jersey's early Gover- 
 nors. Governor Andros, of New York, disputed Car- 
 teret's authority ; nay, failing by peaceable means to 
 gain his point, he sent a party of soldiers by night, who 
 dragged Carteret from his bed, carried him to New 
 York, and there kept him close until a day was set on 
 which he was tried before his opponent himself in the 
 New York Courts, and three times acquitted by the 
 jury, who were sent back with directions to convict, 
 but firmly each time refused. 
 
 The authority of Carteret was confirmed by the Duke 
 of York, and Andros was recalled. But Jersey was 
 then an insignificant place indeed. For Governor John 
 Winthrop, of Connecticut, writing July i8, 1665, speaks 
 of it thus: "New Jersey, which is a place I know not, 
 nor ever have heard where it is." 
 
 Woodbridge, in 1667, and Newark, in 1666, were 
 settled from New England on the invitation of Gov- 
 ernor Carteret, and in consequence of the favorable 
 terms which he held out. The settlers were to extin- 
 guish the Indian title for themselves, and, that being 
 done, a nominal quit rent only was demanded. Thus 
 more strong blood was transplanted to New Jersey. It 
 
had Holland blood some years before in Bergen and 
 in Somerset. It acquired Puritan in 1666, and Hugue- 
 nots came with the Dutch. Some years afterwards 
 came the Scotcli, who first settled Amboy, called it 
 Perth after their most distinguished companion, and 
 made it the home of Johnstons, Gordons, Skinners, 
 properly McGregors, Alexanders, Hamiltons, Barclays, 
 Fullertons, Scotts, Rutherfurds and other Scottish folk. 
 This infusion had much to do with the shaping of the 
 colony. The decided and conservative character of 
 East New Jersey, the enterprise of Newark, the sturdy 
 industry of our agricultural counties, the independence 
 of all — in short, the individuality of the State, more 
 striking perhaps than that of any other, is the plain out- 
 growth of the fusion of their dirfcrent but excellent 
 nationalities. There is no frivolity in the character of 
 any of these compounds, and the absence of excitabilit}-, 
 of gregarious following of leaders or adoption of ideas, 
 is a marked attribute to-day of the native Jerseyman. 
 
 The council of Governor Carteret were persons not 
 much known to fame, then or ever. The leading man 
 among them was a Frenchman named Robert Vau- 
 quellen, first Surveyor-General of the Province, who, 
 with his wife, accompanied the Governor in his passage 
 across the sea. The trustees of Sir George Carteret 
 could not make sale of East Jersey. After ineffectual 
 attempts at private sale they offered it at public auction, 
 and William Penn and eleven associates, most if not all 
 Quakers, bought it for ;i^3,400. It was too heavy a 
 purchase, apparently, for their management. Each sold 
 half his right to another, and so were constituted the 
 twenty-four Proprietors. They procured a deed of 
 confirmation from the Duke of York March 14th, 1682, 
 
19 
 
 and then the twenty-four Lords Proprietors by sealed 
 instrument established a council, gave them power to 
 appoint overseers, and displace all officers necessary to 
 manage their property, to take care of their lands, 
 deed them, appoint dividends, settle the rights of par- 
 ticular Proprietors in such dividends, grant warrants of 
 survey, in fine, to do everything necessary for the 
 profitable disposition of all the territory. The council 
 was always to represent one-third of the general Pro- 
 prietors. 
 
 The new Proprietors were men of rank. William 
 Penn is knoAvn to all the world. With him were James, 
 Earl of Perth, John Drummond, Robert Barclay, 
 famous, like Penn, as a Quaker gentleman, and a con- 
 troversialist for Quaker belief ; David Barclay, Robert 
 Gordon, Arent Sonmans, Robert West, Thomas Rud- 
 yard, a lawyer who had won fame in London as de- 
 fender of William Penn ; Samuel Groom, Thomas Hart, 
 Richard Mew, Ambrose Rigg, John Heywood, Hugh 
 Hartshorn, progenitor of the distinguished landowners 
 as stated near Sandy Hook ; Clement Plumsted, Thomas 
 Cooper, Gawen Lawrie, Edward Byllinge, James Brain, 
 William Gibson, Thomas Barker, Robert Turner and 
 Thomas Warne. 
 
 Robert Barclay was appointed Governor for life, but 
 with liberty to act by deputy, and Thomas Rudyard 
 was selected for this office. He came here in 1683, 
 and his council were Lewis Morris, of Barbadoes, a 
 large iron man in Monmouth, John Barr and William 
 Sanford, with others less known to fame. 
 
 Gawen Lawrie succeeded Rudyard in a very short 
 time after the latter's appointment, and under him a 
 considerable Scotch emigration took place. Under him, 
 
too, Perth Amboy was laid out, a favorite object with 
 the early Proprietors. Lawrie held his office but a little 
 while, and to him succeeded Lord Neill Campbell, a 
 brother of the Duke of Arg3le, implicated with him in 
 treasonable invasion of Scotland in 1685. He retained 
 Gawen Lawrie as one of his council. He remained, 
 however, scarcely a year, appointing Andrew Hamilton 
 as his substitute. Troubles sprung up during his ad- 
 ministration, with New York, to settle which Hamilton 
 set out for England, but on his passage was captured 
 by the French and for some time detained. 
 
 Governorships were short in the New Province. 
 Hamilton, reappointed in 1692 — and to whose care as 
 Governor, West Jersey was also confided — who was 
 likewise, during the same period, Postmaster-General of 
 America, held office no longer than 1697, England hav- 
 ing passed an act requiring that proprietar}- Governors 
 should be approved by the King, and that no other than 
 a native of England should hold an office of trust or 
 profit. The Proprietors unwillinglv ]jarted with him. 
 Jeremiah Basse succeeded him, but troubles recurring, 
 Hamilton came back in 1699, and retained the office till 
 his death in 1703. 
 
 In 1702 occurred the surrender to Oueen Anne of the 
 right of government, an event having an unintended but 
 most important effect on the extent of the proprietary 
 domain ; an effect, however, not announced, if discovered, 
 till many years had intervened. Lord Cornbury then 
 came, first Governor under the Crown. This event 
 diminished greatly the consequence of the Board. Its 
 nominee no longer gave or communicated, or was re- 
 quired to approve, the laws of the province. It became 
 what it ought to have been from the beginning, merely 
 
an association of landowners. But men of great emi- 
 nence and force still managed the body. Singularly 
 enough, as it seems to me, it was never formally incor- 
 porated. I suppose that it may, nevertheless, be a 
 corporation. While there existed much land undis- 
 posed of, the active directors of the association were 
 men who made their mark. Such were Lewis Morris, 
 John Burnet, Richard Ashfield, James Alexander, John 
 Johnston, John Parker, John Hamilton, Lewis Johnston, 
 Andrew Johnston, Joseph Murray, Samuel Nevill, Rob- 
 ert Hunter Morris, Elisha Parker, John Stevens, Walter 
 Rutherfurd, Cortlandt Skinner, William Skinner, Wil- 
 liam Burnet, David Ogden, acting for the sons of 
 William Penn, Oliver De Lancy, Henry Cuyler, Jr., 
 and William Alexander, Lord Sterling. I give the 
 prominent nanies from 1735 to 1764. 
 
 It would be gratifying could we do more than recall 
 the names of these worthies, could cry to the dry bones 
 of the slain and make them live again. But the task is 
 not within the compass of our time. Let me, however, 
 call up from the past, as well as the scant materials en- 
 able us, the forms of some of the most notable among 
 those I have named. 
 
 And first of all I mention, because of his absorbing 
 interest in proprietary rights, the distinguished James 
 Alexander. The minutes of the Council of Proprietors 
 from 1725 to 1756 are a monument of the devotion, zeal, 
 intelligence and unremitting and absorbing care of this 
 gentleman for the interests of this Association. How 
 much earlier he bestowed this attention I am not able 
 from the material furnished me to say. But during this 
 period it might be said of him that he well-nigh em- 
 bodied the Board. If he did not with his own hand pen 
 
the minutes, they must have received his particular and 
 most scrupulous supervision. They recount his history 
 and the employment of his time. They refer to incidents 
 now historical and most valuable to the general public. 
 They ought to be sought for by the State and published 
 in the collections of her archives now in course of 
 annual issue. 
 
 We form our ideas of the character of Washington by 
 studying not only his public and private correspon- 
 dence, but his minute and exact and just accounts. We 
 think him a greater Washington because we find him 
 making record of the most unimportant particulars with 
 his own hand. We increase our good opinion of him 
 by noticing the neatness, precision and clearness of his 
 handwriting, and an}' one who will peruse these minutes, 
 tiresome as he may find the task, will rise from it with 
 a conviction that James Alexander was a man of highest 
 value, and inestimably useful to the Proprietors, and 
 through them to all who under them own the land 
 composing East New Jersey. 
 
 It was not the fashion in those days, as it is perhaps 
 too much so now, to make the death of an associate the 
 occasion for eulogistic corporate action. I am not sure 
 that this huge book of minutes contains any passed in 
 relation to any other of the very distinguished gentle- 
 men who, during that period, deceased. But when he 
 died, in 1756, a letter of condc^lencc to Mrs Alexander, 
 reported by a committee composed of Robert Morris, 
 Richard Ashfield, Richard Peters and Cortlandt Skinner, 
 was addressed to the widow of their old associate in the 
 following words : 
 
 Madam : The Council of Proprietors of East New Jersey take this 
 opportunity of their first meeting since the death of Mr. Alexander to 
 
23 
 
 make you and your family their sincere and cordial condolence on this 
 mournful and unexpected event. When alive they esteemed him, they 
 trusted him, they loved him. They have reason, therefore, now that 
 he is taken from them, to bear part in your grief, having lost their 
 counsellor, their friend and their unwearied assistant. 
 
 The Council, sensible of the manifold obligations his friendship and 
 services have laid them under, think it their duty to assure the family 
 that we shall never fail to give them all the assistance in our power for 
 completing their titles or the recovering their rights to any land of his 
 in this division, or to do anything else which you shall be advised we 
 can do for your benefit. 
 
 At the same meeting his son, Wilham Alexander, 
 Lord SterHng, was made Surveyor-General in his 
 father's room, who had held the office so long that pre- 
 cedents for a commission were directed to be sought 
 for. He became such m 1716, forty years before his 
 death. 
 
 James Alexander was a Scotchman. He was out in 
 the rebellion of 171 5, in which his friend and sometime 
 associate, the afterward Rev. William Skinner, of Perth 
 Amboy, believed on best authority to have really been 
 a leader of the clan MacGregor, participated. He took 
 refuge here the next year. He was a proficient in 
 mathematics, and distinguished as an engineer. 
 
 Notwithstanding that he was a political refugee, he 
 enjoyed the friendship and patronage of the great Duke 
 of Argyle, immortalized by Scott m the " Heart of 
 Midlothian," and through him had the good will of the 
 representatives here of the house of Brunswick. Soon 
 after arriving in New York he received an official ap- 
 pointment and won distinction in it. ■ He soon obtained 
 the post of Surveyor-General both in New York and 
 New Jersey, and in 1720 Governor Burnet, another 
 Scotchman, made him a member of his council. While 
 
24 
 
 thus employed Mr. Alexander studied law, and when 
 called to the bar became rapidly eminent, not as a 
 speaker, his eulogists grant that, but for profound legal 
 knowledge, sagacity and penetration. He enjoyed the 
 good fortune, however, rare lor any lawyer, of identi- 
 fying his name with an historical cause, the trial of 
 John Peter Zenger, printer of the New York W^cck/y 
 Journal, for libel. 
 
 These colonial tim.es were now and then quite stirring. 
 Whether it was because most of the inhabitants of the 
 Provinces had been engaged in political or religious 
 disturbance at home, or because when they came here 
 the air was prophetic and inspired a love for liberty, 
 and a tendency to resist power, the history of almost 
 every Governor was one of contest with the people. 
 These were, it is true, very few, and so the fact is more 
 remarkable But whether or not it illustrated a familiar 
 vulgarism, certainly there was much tempest in every 
 Province. 
 
 The Governor of New York in 1732 adopted certain 
 unwarrantable proceedings, yet had his legislative bodies 
 with hmi. But the courts ot law refused to obey his 
 mandate. Thereupon he displaced Chief-Justice Morris 
 and appointed in his stead James DeLancey. Then the 
 people established the Weekly Jotirttnl, which took their 
 side with that energy in which newspapers seldom fail, 
 and one of its articles, which to-day would be regarded 
 as rather harmless, was singled out for prosecution by 
 information ; the Grand Jury refused to indict, and the 
 trial came on before the new Chief-Justice. 
 
 James Alexander and William Smith, another dis- 
 tinguished lawyer who had come over in the same ship 
 with Alexander, volunteered in Zenger, the editor's 
 
25 
 
 defence. Aware, evidently, of the stringent law then 
 existing, expressed in the maxim, " The greater the 
 truth, the greater the libel," these gentlemen challenged 
 the Court. They objected that their commissions were 
 during the Governor's will and pleasure, and not during 
 good behavior, as the}" should be, and took other 
 points somewhat technical in their character. When 
 they presented their exceptions the Chief-Justice warned 
 them that it was contempt. They persevered, and 
 asked next day to be heard. " We will neither hear 
 you nor allow the exceptions," said the Chief-Justice ; 
 " we must leave the Bench or you the Bar," and so he 
 struck them from the list of attorneys. An old hero of 
 the Philadelphia Bar, then, it is said, eighty years old, 
 was brought thence to take the place of the disbarred 
 victims of judicial tyranny. The trial of Zenger took 
 place before a jury in 1735. It is a State trial of great 
 celebrity, carefully reported, and probably printed by 
 himself. It is to be found in Howell's Collections of 
 State Trials, and its result is regarded not only as a 
 forensic achievement of almost unequalled magnitude, 
 but as " the germ of American Freedom, the Morning 
 Star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized 
 xVmerica." Zenger, simply asserting that what he said 
 was true, and that he had a right, therefore, to say it, 
 was not only acquitted but canonized. And the mag- 
 nificent old man, who at eighty years of age displayed 
 the fire, the energy, and the impassioned eloquence of 
 thirty-five, became the hero of the day. A magnificent 
 banquet welcomed him from the court room. He was 
 attended thither by an huzzaing multitude. He en- 
 tered his barge to go home next day with the salute of 
 cannon. The Common Council of New York presented 
 
26 
 
 him the freedom of the citv, and the gold box, enclosing 
 it with the city arms engraved, commemorated his 
 success and his merit. 
 
 Thus was old age enabled to win the crown of glory 
 of a life time — as if to bid all men perceive that so long 
 as one has life and health his exertions belong to his 
 fellow creatures. Though Mr. Alexander could not in 
 propria persona participate in the defence of Zenger, 
 yet, martyrs as they were in his cause, it is impossible 
 that they did not, behind the scenes, share the labors of 
 his counsel, and equally so that they did not enjoy a 
 large part of the popular favor which was most ostenta- 
 tiously bestowed where it was safest to give it. 
 
 While this cause was going on in New York, Mr. 
 Alexander, interested as a large Proprietor, as Surveyor- 
 General in New Jersey, and as general counsel and 
 factotum of the Council of Pro})rictors here, was en- 
 gaged in looking after the popular difficulties in New 
 Jersey which terminated in the celebrated law suit in 
 our Chancery between the Proprietors as complainants, 
 and what were called by them the Clinker Lot Right 
 men, which suit was begun by the filing of what is 
 popularly known as the Elizabethtown bill in Chancery. 
 
 Alexander here was not on the popular side. Though 
 the population of East New Jersey, at that time, could 
 scarcely have been twenty thousand, yet the feeling 
 seems to have been intense. Trespasses, ejectments, 
 riots, gaol breakings were the order of the day, and for 
 ten years, law suits, their progress and their issue, were 
 the chief employments of the hall yearly councils. 
 Eminent counsel from New York assisted. But the 
 burden of the conflict, with all its tremendous detail, 
 fell upon Mr. Alcx:indcr, aided, perhaps, at the very 
 
27 
 
 last, by Elisha Parker, of Amboy, then or soon after- 
 wards, his son-in-law, who was Solicitor of Record, but 
 died soon after the filing of the bill. 
 
 It would be difficult, indeed, to tell the story of this 
 cause, considering that the bill, the statement of the 
 case for the Proprietors, fills eighty double-columned 
 printed pages, each about eighteen inches long, and the 
 exhibits and appendices nearly ninety more, much of 
 them in finer print and containing many more words. 
 This bill is the foundation of the history of East New 
 Jersey, from the beginning up to its filing, April 13, 
 1745. Its object was to establish the title of the Propri- 
 etors against any other title up to that time alleged 
 against it, to enforce it against recusant parties, to 
 dissolve and enjoin an alleged conspiracy among the 
 defendants hostile to it, and to enjoin all waste and the 
 prosecution of certain ejectments affecting it. 
 
 The jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery on this bill 
 has, I believe, been long somewhat questioned. But its 
 object was somehow finally attained. The title denied 
 to the Proprietors and asserted in this bill founded on 
 the grants of Charles the Second to the Duke of York, 
 of the Duke of York to Berkeley and Carteret, and 
 thence to the twenty-four Proprietors and their assigns, 
 has not seriously, for over one hundred years, been 
 disputed in New Jersey. 
 
 It has, indeed, been held that adverse possession may 
 be set up even against the Proprietors, and under this 
 doctrine, in some cases, the proprietary title has failed. 
 But the title itself has never during that period been 
 impugned. 
 
 The learning, labor, ingenuity, fertility of resources, 
 competency to deal with detail, and general legal ability 
 
28 
 
 displayed in originating and carrying on this suit, entitle 
 Mr. Alexander to very high rank as a lawyer. No one 
 can doubt it who takes the trouble to study this bill, 
 especially if he will also read the minutes of the Board 
 during the ten or fifteen years of the gestation, birth 
 and maintenance of this suit. 
 
 The establishment of the northern boundary between 
 New York and New Jersey was another subject which 
 engrossed the industrious and painstaking mind of Mr. 
 Alexander, but without being finished during his life. 
 
 The fatal illness of Mr. Alexander arose from journey- 
 ing to Albany when already ill, to oppose a ministerial 
 scheme oppressive to the people. He was not only 
 distinguished as a statesman and a lawyer, but also as a 
 man of science. He is reputed the principal author of 
 the memorable report on the Indian policy of Governor 
 Burnet, and with Dr. Franklin, Francis Hopkinson and 
 others foimded the American Philosophical Society. 
 He was a constant correspondent with Halley, the 
 astronomer, and other learned men of science. About 
 1726 he married a w'ealthy widow, a Mrs. Provoost. 
 He left one son, William, Lord Sterling, a Major- 
 General in the Revolution, ancestor through one of his 
 two daughters of the eminent John Ducr, William A. 
 Duer and their descendants ; and four daughters, one of 
 whom married Peter Van Brugh Livingston, and was 
 ancestress of the family ot Keans ; Elizabeth, who 
 married John Stevens, ancestress thus of all the 
 scions of that noted Jersey family ; Catharine, who first 
 married Elisha l^arker, and on his death, without issue, 
 Walter Rutherfurd, mother thus of that equally dis- 
 tinguished race — and Susanna, who married John Reid. 
 
 Some correspondence appended to the life of William 
 
29 
 
 Livingston shows that just before he died, Alexander, 
 Cadawallader Golden, Mr. Livingston and Benjamin 
 Franklin were busy planning a scheme for uniting all 
 the colonies under one government, subordinate to the 
 Crown, a scheme not unlike that now existing in the 
 Dominion of Canada. Had it succeeded, what might 
 have been the present condition of this hemisphere ? 
 
 The length to which I have insensibly carried this 
 notice of James Alexander precludes my bestowing 
 equal attention on his very able associates in Proprietor- 
 ship. And yet I cannot wholly omit them. Of some 
 I must not speak, since I have derived from them 
 my own lineage. But no one ought to pass the names 
 of those whom I shall mention. There was Lewis 
 Morris, Governor to succeed John Hamilton, himself a 
 familiar face at the Board, appointed in 1738; he was 
 President of the Council over ten years, ending in 1735, 
 the year of the Zenger trial. He was in public life from 
 1704, when, at the age of thirty -three, he was one of 
 Lord Cornbur3''s Council. That nobleman was not 
 popular. His rather handsome face and bland manners 
 attracted at first, but his demand for two thousand 
 pounds salary for twenty years shocked the then not 
 over rich people of New York and New Jersey. '' Then 
 thee must be very needy,'' said Quaker Samuel Jennings, 
 when this demand was made. Lewis Morris had spent 
 some time in England and had been a warm advocate 
 for the surrender of government by the Proprietors to 
 the Crown, which occurred in 1702. The Lords of 
 Trade named him, then scarce thirty years old, for Gov- 
 ernor of New Jersey, but determined on uniting the two 
 Provinces, New Jersey and New York, under Cornbury. 
 
 Lewis Morris was a dashing and eccentric young 
 
man. His father, Richard Morris, activ^e under Crom- 
 well, found a refuge in New York at the Restora- 
 tion. He obtained a grant in 1661 for three thousand 
 acres on the Harlem river, where he built, calling it 
 Morrissania. He died, leaving his son a babe. Colonel 
 Lewis Morris, of Barbadoes, came to New York and 
 became guardian of his nephew. He bought four thou- 
 sand acres in Monmouth, located iron mills, and created 
 a great estate. This he gave his nephew, the future 
 Governor, who, with what he inherited, was rich. He 
 had been a wild, mischievous, prankish boy^ — had even 
 rim away from school to Jamaica. But at twenty he 
 returned, fell in love with a beautiful girl, and married 
 her. Next, no one knowing where, he studied law, and 
 and he appeared as a Judge in New Jersey, probably of 
 Common Pleas. Governor Hamilton made him one of 
 his council. He was a man of keen insight into char- 
 acter, original, a strong, direct thinker, a blunt, senten- 
 tious speaker. He did not like Lord Cornbury — 
 opposed him almost disrespectfully, and thus lost office. 
 But in 171 5 Governor Himter made him Chief-Justice 
 of New York. This post he retained under Governor 
 Burnet, another of those who sat at the Proprietary 
 Board, but Cosby, who succeeded Burnet, and he did not 
 agree. He was, therefore, removed, and DeLancey, the 
 Judge who tried Zenger, took his place. Cosby's general 
 administration was so obnoxious that, at the request of 
 many, Morris went to England to remonstrate against his 
 retention. But while he was there, annoyed with delays 
 and the " insolence of office," Cosby died, and he was ap- 
 pointed Governor of New Jersey. This was in 1738. He 
 died in ofifice, 1746. His was a stormy life, indeed, the 
 storms apparently much occasioned by his own self- 
 
31 
 
 asserting disposition. But society in New York and East 
 New Jersey was at that time in a state of ferment. 
 
 A traveller passing through New York during this 
 period gives an odd account of how he was treated. 
 He dined with some of the courtiers. " Fine times for 
 a Dutch mob to judge of progressiveness," said one. 
 "■ These Dutchmen will fancy by and by that they are 
 in Holland and treat us like a parcel of Burgomasters," 
 said another; and so the talk went on. He tried 2;oinof 
 among "no party " men, but found these were courtiers 
 too. He went to a club of both party men, and thought 
 they would have eaten each other up. He got among 
 them and found they thought the courtiers the common 
 enemies of mankind. He sought the Prudents and 
 found them bores. He took refuge with the ladies 
 only to find them the most zealous of politicians. They 
 were "courtiers and no party women, both party women 
 and Prudents, all as warm as scalloped oysters in dis- 
 cussion, though he admits they were exceptionally good 
 natured." Robert Hunter Morris, son of Colonel Lewis 
 Morris, his companion in his last visit to England, 
 Chief-Justice of New Jersey till his death in 1764, is 
 another of those whose strong, bold signature enriched 
 the volume of proprietary minutes. A strange death 
 for a Chief-Justice, — he fell dead in a dance, not a Ger- 
 man either, but apparently a Virginia reel. 
 
 William Burnet, son of Bishop Burnet, like Alex- 
 ander and several others, was a Scotchman, a man of 
 noble character and presence. " A man," said Alex- 
 ander of him, " who, bating warmth, was always without 
 a fault, and that by degrees he became nearer and 
 nearer master of, and in time, had he lived, would 
 probably have been entirely so." His coming to New 
 
32 
 
 York in 1720 was an event of great interest. Flags, 
 cannon, parades, balconies loaded with fair forms, in- 
 augurated him into office. " He was," says the indus- 
 trious and most satisfactory historian, Mrs. Lamb, " a 
 free and easy widower, large, graceful, of stately 
 presence, dignified on occasions, but usually gay, talka- 
 tive and condescending. He was reputed handsome, 
 and greatly admired by the ladies, to whom he was 
 especially devoted." A gentleman wrote : " We do 
 not know yet how the fathers and husbands are going 
 to like Governor Burnet, but we are quite sure the 
 wives and daughters do so sufficiently." Carefully 
 educated by his learned father, accustomed to highly 
 cultivated society, a travelled man, when to travel was 
 rare, full of humor and anecdote, genial and even 
 familiar, he was rapidly and continuously popular. Nor 
 was this only with Europeans ; he won the hearts of 
 the Indians, and took great interest in endeavoring to 
 civilize and improve them. 
 
 On the death of George I., Governor Burnet was 
 translated to Massachusetts and New Hampshire. But 
 he died soon after going thither. Governor Burnet 
 had his country seat in Perth Amboy, the same which 
 had belonged to his predecessor and friend, Governor 
 Hunter. It was situated on a knoll just south of St. 
 Peter's Church, one of the loveliest points, certainly, of 
 that most lovely locality. 
 
 It were hard to leave this list of worthies without 
 dwelling upon the Johnstons. 
 
 Dr. John Johnston, one of the most valued citizens of 
 the Province, a man of learning and skill, whose death — 
 it was published — was to the inexpressible loss of the 
 poor, who were always liis most particular care, was 
 
33 
 
 the first of these. His son Andrew, once President ol 
 the Board, who died in 1762, was, according to histor}^, 
 " a man of great equahty of temper, circumspection of 
 conduct, and open, yet grave, engaging mien, much 
 goodness of heart, and many virtues, both pubHc and 
 private." Dr. Lewis Johnston was another- member, 
 and son of the first named. 
 
 Equally hard is it to omit the mention of others who 
 distinguished themselves and progenitors of distin- 
 guished men ; such as Michael Keani}', whose blood 
 was in the veins of two of the nation's heroes Law- 
 rence Kearn}-, of the Navy and Phillip Kearny, of the 
 Army ; and Thomas Gordon, from whom came several 
 of his own name famous in historv ; and also the honored 
 famil)- of Hamersley. 
 
 I mention but one more of the ante-Revolutionary 
 worthies, Samuel Nevill. He was the eldest brother of 
 the wife of Peter Sonmans, a well-known early settler of 
 New Jerse}'. On her death in 1735-6, he left London, 
 where he was practicing at the Bar, and likewise edit- 
 ing the Morning Post, and came to Perth Amboy, where 
 he settled, and was distinguished, rising to the Bench of 
 the Supreme Court through membership of the As- 
 sembly and various other minor offices. He is known 
 to the profession as the publisher of Nevill's laws, and 
 was known to others as editor of a magazine published 
 at Woodbridge b}^ James Parker, the printer, the first 
 periodical in New Jersey, the second upon the conti- 
 nent. He Avas Mr. Alexander's right hand man in all 
 the litigation as to proprietary title. He died in 1764. 
 
 The Revolution of 1776 swept away the greatness of 
 Perth Amboy and the grandees of the Council of Pro- 
 prietors. The little city was for awhile under the guns 
 3 
 
34 
 
 of the British, and was then occupied by them. Several 
 of the principal citizens and Proprietors took farms and 
 lived in Hunterdon. Such was the case with John 
 Stevens and James Parker, residents of Amboy, and 
 with John Rutherfurd, and I believe with others. When 
 the war ended the glory of Amboy was gone. Its 
 greatness had departed, and the Council of Proprietors 
 no longer assembled so many distinguished persons. 
 Yet some remained. There was William Alexander, 
 Lord Sterling, of whom we have spoken, who was ap- 
 pointed Surveyor-General in 1761. There was John 
 Rutherfurd, selected for the same office in 1771. And 
 Andrew Bell came back, and in 1804 was made Sur- 
 ve3^or-Gencral, holding the office thirty-eight years, and 
 till his death in 1842. James Parker came from Hun- 
 terdon, and his son succeeded him at his death in 1796, 
 and filled the office of Register for many years. There 
 were others of note, among them a shrewd, canny 
 inhabitant of Sussex, Joseph Sharp, and a natty, com- 
 fortable gentleman from Monmouth, Robert Mont- 
 gomery, upon the whiu of whose pipe I have often 
 looked when a diminutive small boy. The most distin- 
 guished of these Proprietors since the Revolution were 
 John Rutherfurd and Andrew Bell. In speaking of 
 them I rely upon memory as well as publications. I 
 remember them both well. John Rutherfurd, son of 
 Walter and of Catharine, widow of Elisha Parker, ncc 
 Alexander, was a tall, gaunt person, very distinguished 
 in his appearance, rather pale in countenance, sedate 
 and grave in expression, yet full of intelligence and fire. 
 At this time he was of very advanced years. He was 
 born in 1760, graduated from Princeton College in 1775, 
 married Helen, daughter of Lewis Morris, a signer of 
 
35 
 
 the Declaration of Independence, a grandson of the 
 Governor Lewis Morris already mentioned, was Senator 
 of the United States from 1791 to 1793, and filled other 
 important puplic positions. He died in 1840. He 
 lived in a large mansion on the banks of the Passaic two 
 miles north of Belleville, where he had a large estate. 
 I suppose he was the largest landowner ever in New 
 Jersey. 
 
 Who that ever knew him can fail to remember An- 
 drew Bell — " Uncle Bell " as he was called by so many 
 that had no right to the appellation of his nephews or 
 nieces, that finally it came to pass that pretty much 
 evervbody adopted the endearing phrase. A fine old 
 English gentleman he was — " one of the olden time " — 
 though one must admit that, vexed as he was throughout 
 his life with painful gout, and never, so far as known, 
 having had the hardihood to own or use hunters, all of 
 the grand old song can scarcely be used in application 
 to him. Yet much of it can, nevertheless : 
 
 " He kept his fine old mansion at a bountiful old rate, 
 With a good old porter to relieve the old poor at his gate." 
 
 He was an embodiment of kindness, hospitality and 
 good will ; a scholar, a charitable, excellent old man, 
 understanding fully the duty of minding his own busi- 
 ness and letting other people's alone. He lived with his 
 charming old wife and a maiden sister until their united 
 ages exceeded 250 years — convincing proofs of the un- 
 healthiness of Perth Amboy. His early life was one of 
 excitement, in strong contrast to his later days. He 
 studied law in the office of Cortlandt Skinner, Attorney- 
 General of the Province, a Whig and a leader of Whigs, 
 till the question of armed rebellion took place, when he 
 
36 
 
 took sides with the Government to which he liad sworn 
 allegiance, and raised and commanded a brigade through 
 the Revolutionary struggle. With young Bell, in the 
 same oflfice, studied Joseph Bloomfield, afterwards 
 Governor of New Jersey. The lads parted ; Bell joined 
 the British ; was for awhile Private Secretary of Sir 
 Henry Clinton, then Commissary in the army. He 
 was at the battle of Monmouth and there encountered 
 in arms on the other side two Paterson brothers; one, I 
 believe, the distinguished William Paterson, his brother- 
 in-law. But it was difficult to believe, when one knew 
 him, that such as he had ever been in battle. In 1804 
 he became Surveyor-General of East Jersey, and died 
 in office, 1842, in the eighty-sixth vear of his age. A 
 stout, middle-sized man, with an exceedingly florid com- 
 plexion and the whitest of hair, wearing alwavs his 
 gold-headed cane, and zealously attending the ancient 
 Episcopal Church of St. Peter's, of which he was for 
 thirty-three years a Warden, gathering up its contribu- 
 tions every Sunday. No one, I think, who ever saw 
 him can forget the face and form of Andrew Bell. 
 
 \\'ith him I conclude my efforts to put before you the 
 Lord Proprietors, as they were called first, in an 
 adoption of feudal language ; later, with more or less 
 derision of the past. And yet I am tempted to give the 
 roll of Surveyors-General since Mr. Bell : beginning 
 with his nephew, Stephen Van Rennselaer Paterson, 
 twin brother of Judge William Paterson, and com- 
 prising the very capable Francis W. Brinlev, re- 
 nowned as one of the best surveyors the State ever 
 produced; in office from 1845 to 1859; his son, Edward 
 Brinley, John Rutherfurd, the second, Munro Howell, 
 and the present distinguished occupant of the post. Prof. 
 
37 
 
 George H. Cook. My audience will recognize these 
 names as worthy of high honor ; — all but the last are 
 gone. 
 
 My task is incomplete, tedious as I fear it has been, 
 without an effort to present to mental vision the manner 
 of life of the people, representatives of whom I have 
 tried to acquaint you with. 
 
 The title of the Governor in those days was some- 
 thing alarming. The bill in Chancery already mentioned 
 was addressed to " His Excellency, Lewis Morris, Esq., 
 Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the Province 
 of New Jersey and territories thereon depending in 
 America, and Vice-Admiral in the same." 
 
 In 1682 a liberal computation made the inhabitants of 
 all East Jersey three thousand five hundred. A still 
 more liberal estimate makes the number in 1693 ten 
 thousand. 
 
 In 1700 Governor Hamilton thought the males over 
 sixteen in both East and West Jersey not more than 
 two thousand — justifying the estimate of population as 
 scarcely more than seven years previous. A census 
 taken in 1725 gave the population of both Provinces as 
 32,442 ; Monmouth being the most populous county, 
 Essex the second, Burlington the third, Middlesex the 
 fourth. 
 
 Another census taken in 1737 gives the population of 
 East Jersey as 23,395 ; fifty-three years after, in 
 1790, it was 111,272. There could not have been in 
 1776 more than 50,000 people in all East Jersey. In 1745 
 about half that number. 
 
 Such a computation gives us no very grand idea of 
 
38 
 
 the importance of the lives of the really and evidently 
 eminent men whose names and characters have been 
 brought before you. 
 
 And yet luxury and display most unreasonable was 
 early the order of the day. " The style of dress," says 
 Mrs. Lamb, " was very showy and conspicuous. Gay 
 pendants were worn in the ears, costly crosses were 
 suspended about the neck, and diamonds and rich 
 brocades were esteemed essential to respectability 
 among the wealthier families ; tight lacing and wide 
 skirts prevailed, though not as extensively as a few 
 years later. The hair was frizzled and curled, and ar- 
 ranged in a great variety of fantastic ways." The 
 gentlemen outdid the ladies; they concealed their hair 
 altogether by enormous wigs, which were supposed to 
 greatly beautify the countenance. An advertisement in 
 the New York Gazette, of 1733, throws a glimmer of 
 light upon the prevailing fashion : " Morrison, Peruke 
 maker from London, dresses gentleman's and ladies' 
 hair in the politest taste. He has a choice parcel of 
 human, horse and goat hair to dispose of." And another : 
 "Tyes, bobs, majors, spencers, fox-tails and twists, 
 together with curls or tales for the ladies." Bright 
 colors everywhere prevailed. The most gorgeous com- 
 binations appeared in the fabrics for a lady's wardrobe, 
 and gentlemen wore coats and other garments that 
 came in all the hues of the rainbow. Large silver but- 
 tons adorned coats and vests, often with the initial of 
 the wearer's name engraved upon each button. Occa- 
 sionally an entire suit would be decorated with conch 
 shell buttons, silver mounted. Even coaches were 
 painted and gilded in an extraordinary manner. A 
 writer of the day, seeing the equipage of Lewis Morris 
 
39 
 
 rolling down Boadway towards the fort, speaks of its 
 silver mountmgs glittering in the sunshine, and of the 
 family arms emblazoned upon it in many places. The 
 crest was a spacious stone castle with little turrets and 
 battlements, the motto being "tandem vincitur," which 
 was supposed to declare the virtue, perseverance, mag- 
 nanimity and success of the Morris family against 
 oppression of whatever character. Even servants aped 
 their masters in style. We quote an advertisement : 
 " Ran away — a negro servant clothed with damask 
 breeches, black broadcloth vest, a broadcloth coat of 
 copper color, lined and trimmed with black, and black 
 stockings." " Ran away, a negro barber; wore a light 
 wig, a gray kersey jacket lined with blue, a light pair 
 of drugget breeches with glass buttons, black roll-up 
 stockings, square toed^shoes, a white vest with yellow 
 buttons and linings." These in 1731 and 1734. 
 
 Architecture had scarcely, perhaps, attained in this 
 country all that the era of Queen Anne exhibited in 
 London. That is reserved, it seems, for our own days. 
 But wherever the money came from (the most lucrative 
 business was the slave trade) fashion and folly made 
 most extravagant use of it as w^ll in the humbler 
 Province of New Jersey as in the ambitious city of New 
 York. Those who would have a minute conception of 
 the men and women of that day, need subtract little 
 from those of England at the same period. The pol- 
 ished periods of Macaulay, Thackera}^ and the late 
 history of The Four Georges, by Justin McCarthy, 
 will enable all to see as in a mirror the Lords Proprie- 
 tors of 1684 to 1764, their families and their mode 
 of life. 
 
4° 
 
 I was lately on the water stretching between Paiilus 
 Hook and New Amsterdam, when a marvellous sight 
 invited my admiring gaze. Up the stream, and passing 
 in front of me came a ship, a mammoth of the deep, her 
 deck containing in square feet half an acre ; her hull en- 
 closing some five thousand tens of measurement, silent, 
 majestic, swift, cleaving the pure water which seemed 
 to cling delighted to her sides ; without a sail, moving 
 against the wind, standing up like a huge house, her 
 gunwale twenty feet above the waves, while her keel 
 sank in them an equal depth ; the flag of England at her 
 peak, and a banner with stripes and stars from her naked 
 topmast ; her deck, from stem to stern, covered with 
 men and women gazing curiously, half-astonished, half- 
 delighted, on the scene around, while all about and 
 around her moved crowds of craft, each peculiar and 
 individual ; some small snorting vessels, shooting hither 
 and thither, now with great barges towed behind, now 
 with huge ships, their bows turned seaward, some 
 tortoise-shaped with windows innumerable on each side, 
 speeding across the current, some almost as large as the 
 great monster just arrived ; hastening every way, while 
 lazy ships lay anchored, ugly guns grinning through 
 their port-holes, or with shrouds and rigging filled with 
 fluttering garments hung to dry, and little boats with 
 sail or oar flitted here and there — in a word, with all the 
 variety, bustle and life of the harbor of that city, already 
 great, almost beyond compare, in no great time to be 
 the acknowledged commercial capital of the universe. 
 The mammoth whence? From Great Britain, a week 
 since, obedient to the i)anting engine and propelled by 
 th« silent screw. And still more wonderful, her depar- 
 ture, learned through lightning under the sea, while the 
 
41 
 
 news of her arrival by the same swift messenger was 
 already in London, friend congratulating- friend through 
 a mysterious clicking managed by a boy. The sight 
 was not uncommon. Nay, it was so much the contrary 
 that only here and there among the throngs who blocked 
 each other's way upon the shore on either side did 
 scarce one care to waste a thought on so ordinary an 
 occurrence. And the crowds upon the monster's deck 
 were soon jostling each other on their way ashore, seek- 
 ing the strange iron rail and the smoking, tireless iron 
 horse, to speed them thence to their destinations 
 throughout the country, thousands of miles, some of 
 them, away, where natural and artificial wonders were 
 the daily enjoyment or sustenation of millions upon 
 millions of industrious, happy people. 
 
 Two centuries ago one of your forefathers or mine 
 stood upon the shore gazing excited over the same 
 expanse upon a ship which was making its way into the 
 port of Perthtown, then surveyed and mapped out, in- 
 deed, but a hamlet with " ten or twelve houses thirty 
 feet long, sixteen or eighteen wide, ten feet betwixt 
 joint and joint with a double chimney made with timber 
 and clay," as the manner of the countr)^ was to build. 
 Forests lined each shore, and from the headlands peered 
 forth here a corfee-colored face, there one of European 
 origin, by no means joyful, yet curious at the unusual 
 sight. Such an one, indeed, had never before saluted 
 vision there. Here was a ship of three hundred and 
 fifty tons, loaded with weary, hungry, sick, destitute, and 
 many enslaved human beings, the remnant of a company 
 
42 
 
 which set sail months before and nearly half of whom, 
 seventy out of 200, from pestilence, starvation, storms 
 and cruelty, had succumbed to misery and found a watery 
 grave. Of the two hundred, one hundred and thirty 
 were taken from prisons, where they were held for dis- 
 obedience to laws interdicting religious liberty, and ac- 
 cepted banishment with more or less willingness, to 
 escape greater misery at home. With what sad eyes did 
 they gaze upon a land onl}^ welcome as an exchange for a 
 prison, and where to pay the cost of their journey they 
 were to be slaves for a term of years ! With these were 
 others who sought the wilderness with hope and to ac- 
 quire freedom ; but such were few among the many. 
 This was the ship's company — the freight of the Henry 
 and Francis, the first emigration induced by the Lords 
 Proprietors, the earhest settlers direct from the parent 
 countr}', of the Province of East New Jersey. And 
 now while the then hamlet, whose attractions were the 
 theme of Scot, of Pitlochie, is still far behind in the race 
 of cities, her beautiful shore looking out to sea, over her 
 magificent bay, still unappreciated by the capital and 
 taste of the century, her many natural advantages passed 
 strangely by, while other less favored spots are greedily 
 appropriated ; yet around and about her is a population 
 of millions, happier, or at least, having the right to be 
 happier, than all the world beside ; the descendants of 
 the miserable wanderers of 1685, scattered everywhere, 
 most of them utterly ignorant of their origin, contribu- 
 ting to the strength and felicity of this broad land, whose 
 freedom excels all other freedom because it is the 
 freedom of God's truth. 
 
43 
 
 Vainly do we guess, as we look back these two hun- 
 dred years, what a change a like period hereafter may 
 produce. Profitless indeed is the thought. Yet, medi- 
 tating on the progress of the past, what may not be 
 expected ? Not, indeed, that the event we celebrate this 
 day will ever again have its centennial. The work of 
 the '' Council of Proprietors " is all but done. They 
 must hereafter be not title-makers so much as title- 
 keepers, or better yet, as once they gave up to sover- 
 eignty the reins of government, they will do best to sell 
 and Government will be wise to acquire from them 
 their remaining claims of right and the custody of 
 their records. This done, the mission of the Council 
 of Proprietors of East New Jersey will be accomplished. 
 
Prof, Cook's Explsnrtory Statements 
 
 AND MAPS. 
 
 New Jersey is a part of that country granted by 
 King Charles II. to his brother James, Duke of York, 
 on the 1 2th of March, 1664. It was described as cov- 
 ering " all the land from the west side of Connecticut 
 river to the east side of Delaware bay." On the 
 20th of June, 1664, the Duke of York sold to John Lord 
 Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, " all that tract of 
 land adjacent to New England, and lying and being to 
 the westward of Long Island and Manhitas Island, and 
 bounded on the east part by the main sea and part by 
 Hudson's river, and hath upon the west Delaware bay 
 or river, and extendeth southward to the main ocean as 
 far as Cape May, at the mouth of Delaware bay ; and 
 to the northward as far as the northermost branch of 
 the said bay or river of Delaware, which is 41° 40' of 
 latitude, and crosseth over thence in a straight line to 
 Hudson's river in 41° of latitude; which said tract of 
 land is hereafter to be called by the name or names of 
 New Ce^serea or New Jersey," (Leaming and Spicer.) 
 
 The grant to the Duke of York was made when the 
 country was in the possession of the Dutch, and in a 
 tmie of peace. The English fleet sent out to take pos- 
 session of the grant accomplished its object on the 26th 
 of April, 1664, and the ownership of the country was 
 
46 
 
 quietly transferred from the Dutch to the English. As 
 all the business relating to this description of the 
 country and its transfers was transacted in England, and 
 before the English had any accurate knowledge of its 
 geography from their own occupation, it is probable 
 that they were guided by the Dutch maps, for which 
 that people had been acquiring material ever since the 
 arrival of Henry Hudson, fifty-six years before this time. 
 A copy is here inserted of the map published by 
 Adrien Van der Donck'^' in 1656, and intended to accom- 
 pany his description of the New Netherlands. The 
 
 *Adrien Van der Donk was a Hollander of education and a lawyer by 
 profession. He came out to America in 1642, and was settled in Albany as 
 Sheriff of Rensselaerwyck. He afterwards purchased lands along the Hud- 
 son between Spuyten-duyvel and Saw-mill creek. His neighbors called 
 him Jonker, which is the Dutch for gentleman, and the present Yonkers, 
 which is on the ground formerly owned by him, was probably named 
 from this title of his. He was the only lawyer in the Dutch Colony, 
 and the authorities refused to allow him to appear in court, as there was 
 no one to oppose him. The second edition of his " Description of the 
 New Netherlands," with this map accompanying it, was published at Am- 
 sterdam in 1656. 
 
 There are in existence several old Dutch maps of the country now 
 covered by New Jersey and the adjoining parts of New York. They 
 were published by different authors at dates varying from 1650 to 16S0, 
 but are, evidently, all copies of one orignal, or possibly printed from the 
 same plate. I have taken the map first from Van der Donck's, because 
 he was long a resident here, but have compared it with Vischer's map 
 of 1659, and have drawn the meridians and parallels from the latter, as 
 it is said to have been the one used by the Commissioners in settling the 
 partition line in 1769. Both maps are in the library of the New York 
 Historical Society, and Van der Donck's is reprinted in Vol. I of the New- 
 York Historical Society Collections, Vol. I, New Series. The copy of the 
 map inserted here is of the exact scale of the original, and I have drawn 
 on it the northern line of the province in 1664, and the quintipartite line 
 of 1676. G. H. C. 
 
47 
 
 map is without the ordinary hnes for latitude and longi- 
 tude, but in his description he says that it extended 
 from latitude 38° 53' to latitude 42° along- the coast. 
 The author says that the Dutch have traveled inland 
 "210 to 240 miles, and have trade with Indians who 
 came more than ten or twenty days journey from the 
 interior." His map shows New York and Esopus, now 
 Kingston, and on the Delaware Fort Elsinboro, at the 
 mouth of Salem creek, and Fort Nassau at the mouth of 
 Timber creek. The Delaware river has the Schu3'lkill 
 on its right bank, and on its left bank is the Musconnet- 
 cong and Lake Hopatcong, and strangely enough this 
 lake is connected with the Wallkill, which runs north- 
 east and joins the Rondout creek and the Hudson at 
 Kingston. Still farther up the Delaware we see the 
 Navesink extending towards the northeast and joining 
 Rondout creek, to flow into the Hudson. The latter is 
 now the line of the Delaware, and Hudson Canal. In 
 both these the heads of the streams are really separated 
 only by short carrying places. The upper Delaware 
 itself is shown only as an insignificant part of this stream. 
 There was a Dutch settlement at Kingston in 1614, and 
 settlers entered the valley of Rondout creek and passed 
 from that over to the Delaware, and a good road was 
 opened into the valley of that river in Sussex and War- 
 ren counties before the English took New York. 
 
 If we assume that this was the best map of the times, 
 and used for locating the grant of New Jersey, the 
 straight line from the most northerly branch of the 
 Delaware may be drawn from the mouth of the Nave- 
 sink (which is 41° 40' of the map), to the Hudson just 
 south of Spuyten Duyvel creek (which is 41° north, of 
 the map), and this line, with the Hudson, the Atlantic 
 
48 
 
 and Delaware bay and river, were the boundaries of 
 New Jersey as then understood. 
 
 The Province was held as the joint property of Lord 
 Berkeley and Sir George Carteret till after the war 
 with the Dutch in 1673. In March 18, 1674, John 
 Fenwick obtained for himself and Edward Byllinge the 
 right of Lord Berkeley in the Province of New Jersey. 
 (N. J. Archives, Vol. I, p. 185.) 
 
 The first recorded notice of a division of the Province 
 is in July 28 and 29, 1674, when the Duke of York re- 
 newed the title to Sir George Carteret, and gave him 
 " individually all the Province north of a line drawn 
 from a certain creek called Barnegat to a certain creek 
 in Delaware river next adjoining to and below a cer- 
 tain creek in Delaware river called Renkokuskill." 
 (Leammg and Spicer, p. 47.) This division, however, 
 does not appear to have been generally recognized. 
 
 In 1675 John Fenwick, who, with Edward Byllinge, 
 had succeeded to the rights of Lord Berkeley, settled 
 in Salem, but no evidence beyond this appears for a 
 division of the Province.* 
 
 *In the " Journal of a voyage to New York and other American Colo- 
 nies in 1679-80, by Jasper Bankers and Peter Sluyter, Hollanders," it 
 is said that " the east side of the river (Delaware), which is now entirely 
 in the possession of the Quakers, has never been claimed by anyone, 
 although here and there lived a Swede, as also among the Swedes here 
 and there dwelt a Hollander. But when the whole country, in 1664, 
 came to the crown of England under the Duke of York, the Duke or the 
 King gave the land lying between the two rivers, namely the North 
 river and the South river, the easterly part to my Lord Carteret, and the 
 westerly part to my Lord Berkeley, but without a boundary line between 
 them. This remained so a long time, when Mr. Byllinge, a brewer of 
 London failed there, Berkeley, who was a great friend of his — asw ell as 
 many other courtiers — and frequented his brewery daily, came to his 
 
49 
 
 The terms of agreement for a division were, how- 
 ever, made, probably in London, on July i, 1676, between 
 Sir George Carteret on the one part, and William Penn, 
 Gawen Lawrie, Nicholas Lucas and Edward Byllinge 
 on the other part. By this agreement Sir George Car- 
 teret was to have the easterly part, which was to be 
 henceforth known as East New Jersey, and Penn and 
 his associates to have the w^esterly part, henceforth to be 
 known as West New Jersey. This "Quintipartite Deed" 
 described the division line as a straight line drawn from 
 the most northerly point of the Province to the most 
 southwardly point of the east side of Little Egg Harbor. 
 The wording of the deed is that " one equall moyety or 
 half part" (Leaming and Spicer, p. 61), belongs to each 
 party. If we take Van der Donck's map and draw a 
 straight line from the mouth of the most northerly 
 branch of the Delaware to the north side of Little Egg 
 Harbor Inlet, and draw the northern boundary from 
 the same point to the Hudson in latitude 41° on the 
 map, the parts of the Pi-ovince, as showm by the map, 
 will be nearly equal in area, if Staten Island is included 
 in East Jersey. Staten Island is plainly in the original 
 grant. (Proc. N. J. Hist. Soc, Vol. X.) 
 
 Settlements increased rapidly after this division, and 
 
 brewery and told him that as he, the brewer, was a broken man, he 
 could advise him how to recover his fortune; that if he could furnish him 
 a sum of money he would, by authentic writings, make over to him a 
 tract of land which the King had given him. This suited the brewer 
 very well, who succeeded in obtaining the money from his friends, and 
 this land was accordingly transferred to him. But as the affairs of the 
 brewer would not permit him to act himself, he had a friend named 
 Fenwick, also a Quaker, who was to transact the business in his own 
 name for him, the brewer, in consideration of which Fenwick was to 
 enjoy a tenth of the whole westerly part." 
 4 
 
5° 
 
 it soon became necessary to survey and mark the parti- 
 tion line. This was undertaken by the Surveyor- 
 General of East Jersey, George Keith, in 1687. He 
 began at Little Egg Harbor and surveyed a straight 
 line for sixty miles, and untill it met the south branch of 
 the Raritan near Three Bridges.'" This line was un- 
 satisfactory to the Proprietors of West Jersey, and was 
 not surveyed any further. It is still well known, and is 
 marked as the division line between Ocean and Bur- 
 lington counties. But it evidently runs to the west of 
 any proposed division line, though the course run by 
 Keith is correct for dividing New Jerse}' as given in Van 
 der Donck's map into two equal parts ; but the map was 
 not correct, and hence came difBculties in making the 
 division. In 1688, Robert Barclay, Governor of East 
 Jersey, and Daniel Coxe, Governor of West Jersey, 
 both living in England, proposed to have the partition 
 line of Keith, as far as surveyed, adopted, and then to 
 continue the line across the south branch of the Raritan 
 in a northeasterly direction to the north branch of the 
 Raritan ; then up this branch to its north end, and 
 thence in a straight line eastward to the nearest point of 
 Passaic river, and thence down that river to its junction 
 with Pequanac river, and u]) the latter as long as it runs 
 northerly or northwesterly, to the bounds between the 
 
 *This line was run " North & by West & 3 degrees & 5 minutes more 
 Westerly (N 14 20' W) according to the needle or Magnetic position; 
 and by natural position North North West and 50 minutes more westerly 
 (N 23 20' W) according to the Agreeipent betwixt the Governor [and 
 the] proprietors of both Provinces; the variation of the needle in this 
 place of the world being nine degrees westerly." (Liber O., p. i, Surv.- 
 Genl's Office, Perth Amboy.) 
 
51 
 
 Provinces, or until it reaches 41° of latitude, and then 
 to run due east to Hudson's river. (N. J. Archives, 
 Vol. II, p. 34.) This proposal was not accepted by the 
 Proprietors of East Jersey, but it has given rise to 
 serious differences in locating surveys in the two divi- 
 sions. This proposed division line is indicated on the 
 map at the end of this paper, by a dotted line. 
 
 After many other attempts to settle upon a satisfac- 
 tor}' partition line, a commission from East and West 
 Jersey and New York was appomted in 17 19, with au- 
 thorit}" to ascertain the latitude of 41° 40' on the Dela- 
 ware river. (Laws of N. J., 17 19, Nevill, Chap. 27, p. 
 ']']'.') This point was found and marked and accepted by 
 the New York Commissioners as the westerly end of 
 the New York and New Jersey boundary, and by the 
 \Vest Jersey Commissioners as the northern end of their 
 partition line. (Book D2 Deeds, p. 280, gives report, 
 and G2 Deeds, gives map ; Sec. State's Office, Trenton.) 
 It did not meet the final confirmation of the New York 
 authorities, but it still remains as the established 
 northern point of the partition line between East and 
 West Jersey. The monuments can still be found at 
 Cochecton, on the Erie Railway, about thirty miles 
 above Port Jervis. The line, however, was not finally 
 acceptable to the Proprietors of West Jersey, and the)' 
 did not join in having it surveyed. 
 
 The Proprietors of East Jersey, however, finally em- 
 ployed John Lawrence, a surveyor in Upper Freehold, 
 Monmouth county, to survey and mark the line, which 
 Avork was done in the Fall of 1743. 
 
52 
 
 TiiK boundary line of New York and New Jersev was 
 long a subject of contention.* A number of patents 
 were granted by the State of New York for lands in 
 New Jersey, and the Proprietors of East Jersev made 
 grants of land which New York claimed to be within 
 her bounds. The East Jersey Proprietors claimed the 
 straight line joining the point of 41° north latitude on 
 the Hudson to 41° 40' on the Delaware, to be the just 
 partition line. The Province of New York first claimed 
 that the proper division would be made by a straight 
 line from the head of Connecticut river to Reedy 
 Island, at the head of Delaware bay. This preposterous 
 claim was drawn from the wording of Charles II.'s 
 first grant. It was, however, soon abandoned. It then 
 claimed that a point opposite Yonkers, on the Hudson, 
 should be the east end of the division line, and that it 
 should run from there to the forks of the Delaware 
 where the Lehigh joins that stream at Easton. After- 
 wards the line from opposite Yonkers to Minisink 
 Island, in the Delaware, was proposed. 
 
 The question was finally submitted, by both Prov- 
 inces, in 1763, to the decision of the crown, and Com- 
 missioners for the purpose were appointed in October, 
 1 767. They were Charles Stuart, John Temple, and Peter 
 Randolph, Surveyors-General for the District of Quebec 
 and of the Northern and Southern Districts of America 
 respectively ; Andrew Elliot, Receiver-General of the 
 quit-rents in the Province of New York ; Chambers 
 Russell, Judge of the Court of Vice Admiralty for the 
 
 * A movement was made for the defining and marking of this line in 
 1685 or 16S6. See deposition of Governor Lewis Morris, Book F2, 
 Deeds, p. 435, Sec. State's Office, Trenton, N. J. The line as indi- 
 cated by Governor Morris, is marked on the map here inserted. 
 
53 
 
 Province of Massachusetts ; William Allen, Chief-Justice 
 of Pennsylvania ; Samuel Holland and William De 
 Brahm, Surveyors-General of lands in the Northern 
 and Southern Districts of America ; Andrew Oliver, 
 Secretary of the Province of Massachusetts ; Charles 
 Morris, Surveyor of lands and one of the Council ol 
 Nova Scotia ; Peyton Randolph, Attorney-General and 
 one of the Council of Virginia ; Benjamin Franklin, of 
 the Province of Pennsylvania ; and Jared Ingersoll, of 
 the Colony of Connecticut. John Jay was their Secre- 
 tary. The Commissioners met in the rooms of the 
 Chamber of Commerce, New York, on the i8th of June, 
 1769, and continued their sessions until- October 7, when 
 their decision was rendered. 
 
 Their decision was " that the boundary or partition 
 line between the said colonies of New York & New 
 Jersey be a direct & straight line from the fork at the 
 mouth of the river Mahackamack in the latitude of 
 forty one degrees, twenty -one minutes and thirty seven 
 seconds to Hudson's river at the [marked] rock, m the 
 latitude of forty one degrees." 
 
 This line did not satisfy either of the parties inter- 
 ested, and there was much talk of rejecting it, by both. 
 But after a time more conciliatory counsels prevailed, 
 and it was accepted, and was confirmed by George HI. 
 in 1773, and surveyed and marked in 1774. 
 
 The changing of the western termination of the New 
 York and New Jersey boundary from 41° 40' of latitude 
 to 40° 21' 37", which is a point considerably farther east 
 than the former one, created among the West Jersey 
 Proprietors a desire to have the partition line between 
 the two parts of the State re-surveyed and run as a 
 straight line from Little Egg Harbor to the mouth of 
 
54 
 
 the Nevesink at Carpenter's Point. They contended 
 for this line many years, but it was never surveyed and 
 marked. And in a lawsuit in regard to lands in the in- 
 terval between Lawrence's line and this proposed line, 
 which was decided by the Supreme Court of New 
 Jersey in 1855, Lawrence's Ime, as marked by him, was 
 declared to be the true division line [between East 
 and West Jersey, (i Dutcher, pp. 1-40.) 
 
 Staten Island, which is plainly within the bounds of 
 New Jersey as described in the grants from the Duke 
 of York to Lord Berkeley and Carteret, was early 
 claimed by New York. Governor Philip Carteret 
 claimed it for the New Jersey Proprietors, and it was 
 one of the causes which led Governor Andros, of New 
 York, to take Governor Carteret prisoner and convey 
 hnn to New York for trial. Governor Carteret was 
 sustained in his government. The question of jurisdic- 
 tion was not settled finally till 1833, when, by mutual 
 agfreement between Commissioners from the two States, 
 Staten Island was included within the boundaries and 
 jurisdiction of New York, This agreement was never 
 confirmed by any action of the Proprietors of East 
 Jersey. 
 
 The Commissioners to settle the partition line in 1769 
 had a map of New Jersey and the adjoining parts of 
 New York prepared for their use by Lieutenant Bernard 
 Ratzer, of the British army. This map cannot now be 
 found, though the other papers of the Commission are 
 in the library of the New York Historical Society. A 
 certified copy of the map, which was prepared at the 
 time for the use of Lord Sterling, one of the East 
 Jersey Proprietors, is also in the same library. Another 
 certified copy of the same map is in the library of Har- 
 
55 
 
 vard College. This latter map was prepared for the 
 advocates of the claims of New York, and it has on it 
 the several partition lines which were proposed by that 
 State. A reduced copy of this map is reproduced here, 
 and I have drawn on it the line surveyed by George 
 Keith in 1687; that surveyed by John Lawrence in 
 1743 ; and that proposed by West Jersey after the New 
 York and New Jersey partition line was established. I 
 have also indicated on it by a dotted line the division 
 between East and West Jersey proposed by Governors 
 Barclay and Coxe in 1688, and have also dotted hues to 
 show the course of the Raritan and Passaic rivers in 
 New Jersey, and of Rondout creek in New York. 
 
 The more accurate survey of the State shows that the 
 division line adopted in the Ouintipartite Agreement 
 and run out by John Lawrence, does not divide it into 
 " two equal moietys," but West Jersey is much the 
 largest in area, containing 4,595 square miles, while 
 East Jersey has only 2,981 square miles, which is less 
 than two-fifths the area of the State. The gore claimed 
 by West Jersey after the New York and New Jersey 
 boundary was settled, contains 648 square miles, and, if 
 allowed, would have made West Jersey to contain more 
 than twice as much land as East Jerse}^ The gore 
 claimed by East Jersey, but which was set off to New 
 York by the Commisioners in 1769, contained 291 
 square miles. Staten Island contains fifty-eight square 
 miles. 
 
 The boundaries of East Jersey are now well ascer- 
 tained and defined by the courts and by legislation. 
 But the difficulties which have attended their settle- 
 ment furnish remarkable instances of the controversies 
 which arise from the use of incorrect maps. 
 
The Influence of the Proprietors 
 
 In Founding the State. 
 
 Mr. President, Geiitlenieii of the Board of Proprietors, 
 Ladies and Gentlemen: 
 
 "We, the people of the State of New Jersey, grateful to Almighty 
 God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted 
 us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to 
 secure and transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations, do 
 
 ordain and establish this Constitution." 
 
 These words are the ordaining clause of the present 
 constitution of New Jersey, which was adopted in 1844. 
 They are not the introduction to the terms of an agree- 
 ment ; they begin no compact. They are a creative 
 fiat ; they call into being a law of laws for the common- 
 wealth ; they institute a government. But the people 
 who thus ordain, who exercise this highest original fac- 
 ulty, are not themselves the product of a single creative 
 act. The self-government here in full activity, the only 
 real counterpart of the people, was a growth, to whose 
 perfecting many agencies contributed. 
 
 The nature of an act done by an absolute monarch 
 and that of 'the ordaining act of a self-ruling communi- 
 ty, are nowhere more clearly contrasted than in the 
 feelings of interest with which we regard the two. The 
 former excites no curiosity as to the origin of its pro- 
 
clucing power. It has the same source as the commands 
 of a wilful child, and is as single in motive ; whereas the 
 sovereign act of a people leads us to inquire by what 
 process the many individual wills have been wrought 
 into the one will, which, with a mature consciousness, 
 imposes laws upon itself. The enduring constitution of 
 a free people, always implies a historical growth in that 
 people. 
 
 The political life of the people of East New Jersey 
 embraces five periods of varying length. The first, ex- 
 cluding the discovery and the taking possession of the 
 territory, begins with the grants of 1664, respectively 
 Irom the King to the Duke of York and from him to 
 Berkeley and Carteret, and ends in 1682, the date of 
 the transfer of soil and rights of government to the 
 twenty-four Proprietors — a period of eighteen years. 
 The second period was twenty years long, to 1702, the 
 date of the surrender of powers of government to the 
 Crown. The third })eriod was that of the royal govern- 
 ment from 1703 to 1776. The fourth from 1776 to the 
 adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 
 1788. The last, the national period of ninety-six years. 
 
 Which one of these was the period distinctively forma- 
 tive of the political character of the people of New 
 Jersey ? The answer to this question does not lie upon 
 the surface of the events of these divisions of the past, for 
 strongly marked as are the lines which separate these 
 periods, there is but one growth, in which they are all 
 necessary factors; so complete is the unity of contmu- 
 ous life, that the history of one involves the considera- 
 tion of all. Our investigation brings us face to face 
 with this fact, that all these separate stages are vitally 
 essential to the complete development, therefore in one 
 
59 
 
 sense equally essential, yet we are cheered in our 
 further search by the reflection that there must have 
 been a time whose peculiar relations to its past and fu- 
 ture were more fully determinative of political charac- 
 ter than those of any other period. Is there not in the 
 life of every people a time, when the motives and 
 thoughts and all the lines of social life of the past come 
 together, and then all lengthen on into our present, so 
 that if we trace them back they seem to have radiated 
 from that point and further back all radiate toward 
 that point, so that viewed as a whole, the influences and 
 causes and effects of the remote and intervening past 
 there intersect? This is true of the great world history. 
 The ancient nations are all merged in the Roman 
 Empire ; out of Rome all modern nations have emerged. 
 The period of Roman supremacy was the point of inter- 
 section where the lines of all human activity crossed. 
 Something of the same sort is true of this State commu- 
 nity, whose formative point is to be found in the time 
 of the Proprietors ; the active principle in this case, 
 however, was not Force, the world-conqueror, but the 
 quiet beginnings of home rule. 
 
 The grants of 1664 and the "concessions" from the 
 Proprietors, Berkeley and Carteret, began the work of 
 founding the separate community. The grants fixed the 
 boundaries of the future State as a distinct part of the 
 realm, owing allegiance and having a right of appeal to 
 the English Crown, Do we value the separate exist- 
 ence of our State? Let us be grateful then for the 
 timeliness of the grant. Had it not come at this time, 
 in all probability it would never have come. The 
 concessions besides granting as it were by grace, cer- 
 tain freedoms and immunities, particularly religious 
 
6o 
 
 rights, establish a general representative assembly. The 
 legislative powers granted to this assembly were ade- 
 quate to all the needs of the community, comprising 
 the power to appoint a time for the meeting of the 
 assembly and its adjournment, to enact all laws neces- 
 sary for the government of the Province, provided 
 they were agreeable to the English constitution and 
 not against the interest of the Proprietors or the con- 
 cessions. The assembly had the further power to 
 erect courts and determine their jurisdictions, the pow- 
 er of taxation, of dividing the Province for local pur- 
 poses, war powers and the power of naturalization. 
 But these powers were not to be exercised independent- 
 ly of the assent of those who represented the Proprietors 
 — namely, the governor and a council appointed by 
 him. The governor and his council were thus con- 
 stituted a co-ordinate branch of the legislature and 
 they received by the concessions some important 
 executive and legislative functions to be exercised 
 independently ; and as though implying that they might 
 exercise powers not expressly delegated, they were 
 prohibited from acting contrary to the laws of the 
 Province, and a section taken from the Magna Charta 
 and the Petition of Right forbade their imposing any 
 tax without the consent of the General Assembly. The 
 concessions thus formed a fundamental law adequate 
 to the settlement and government of the Province. 
 They gave a guarantee of some of the most imj^ortant 
 rights and they left to the people a large control of 
 their local concerns. They were very important in 
 that they began in New Jersey the process of differ- 
 entiating English self-government. Back of all, was 
 the King and the Parliament — the English constitution. 
 
6i 
 
 but there was a wide field for special law-making, 
 which the orders of the King and the acts of Parliament 
 did not enter. In this field the New Jersey General 
 Assembly had somewhat of the dignity of Parliament. 
 There was an implied recognition of a difference in the 
 political life of the Province, in that but one of the vital 
 parts of the English constitution as found in the Petition 
 of Right was lodged in the concessions — the principle 
 of taxation by the legislative power alone. 
 
 It was further prophetic of a new era that Carteret, 
 who had held the Island of Jersey against the Parlia- 
 mentarians to the very last, should, with Berkeley, 
 another Royalist, adopt this most important principle 
 which the Revolution had gained as a part of the primal 
 law of the new Jersey. 
 
 This earliest constitution was in the nature of a com- 
 pact with the individual settlers, and afterwards, as 
 they came to be represented in the assembly, with the 
 people as a body. But something else was needed to 
 constitute the people within the bounds of New Jersey 
 a body politic, in whom original political power might 
 be said to inhere. This something was not the mere 
 act declaring and establishing independence, but the 
 generating and gradual growth of a spirit to which 
 independence, in the fulness of time, should be not an 
 unnatural act but a part of the regular process of 
 development. The beginnings of such a growth Avere 
 not directly supplied by the concessions which came 
 from without. The new life must have its source in the 
 people themselves. 
 
 The first evidence of an original political life in the 
 people was in their restlessness under the operation of 
 the concessions. The representatives in the assembly 
 
very early insist upon a joint session with the gover- 
 nor and council, where tiieir power from their superior 
 numbers must over-rule that of the governor and his 
 council. By successfully resisting this effort the repre- 
 sentatives of the Proprietors secured to New Jerse}' in 
 the earliest assemblies the manifold advantages of two 
 houses in legislation. 
 
 The next display of the popular spirit was in the 
 refusal to pay the quit-rents stipulated in the conces- 
 sions. This opposition was in the strictest sense illegal; 
 so far as the concessions were building up the Province, 
 it was disorganizing — the so-called disorganizing Assem- 
 blies of 1 67 1 and 1672 going so far as to seek a virtual 
 overthrow of the properly constituted provincial au- 
 thority through the choice of James Carteret as presi- 
 dent of the country. But the value of this illegal resist- 
 ance in awakening and strengthening in the people the 
 power to perfect an organic law was two-fold ; first, the 
 imposition of quit-rents, even though sanctioned by the 
 fundamental law, had something of a feudal nature, and 
 it called up that spirit which the feudal system of the 
 middle ages universally awakened, the spirit of resist- 
 ance, a personal resistance, a defiance on the part of 
 the individual. The tendency, then, was to strengthen 
 individualism, individual character on its good side as 
 well as its bad we shall find if we follow this influence 
 far enough. The devotion to public liberty of New 
 Jersey, like that of Virginia, has ever been infused with 
 a marked zeal for personal freedom. This spirit in the 
 southern State ma}^ be attributed in part to the isola- 
 tion in which the planter lived. In New Jersey the 
 series of early events connected with the Elizabethtown 
 grants, the harassing influence of the demands for the 
 
^3 
 
 quit-rents and like causes, contributed also to the forma- 
 tion of the same characteristic. But as individualism 
 grew, the sense of the value of government was not, in 
 the end, impaired, and individual responsibility for it 
 was quickened. A second result of the differences 
 between the government of the first Proprietors and the 
 people was the development of the town as an essential 
 factor in the Province. Almost from the first these 
 political units of the State had, through the grant of 
 large prudential powers from the governor and council, 
 a vigorous life. As distinct and integral political organi- 
 zations the towns, whether together in the assembly or 
 in their separate town meetings, were made the instru- 
 ments of opposition to the representatives of the 
 Proprietors. 
 
 The various immediate objects of opposition to the 
 governor and council were not gained either by the 
 individual man or by the towns, and this failure was not 
 without influence in teaching them real self-government. 
 They learned that it was not the caprice of the indi- 
 vidual, nor the shifting opinion of all within the circle, 
 whose centre was the one market place. True, the 
 towns had by grant from the Proprietors their special 
 privileges, but these could not form a body of law for 
 the Province, nor supersede its necessity. So men and 
 the towns find their way back to the concessions. The 
 deputies to the General Assembly are still in opposition 
 to the governor and council in 1681, but now they 
 insist that the concessions are to be taken according to 
 the letter, without any interpretation whatsoever ; that 
 the constituting of courts by governor and council, 
 and the explanation of the concessions made in 1672 by 
 Berkeley and Carteret, are a breach of the concessions, 
 
64 
 
 and the deputies declare the inhabitants of the Province 
 not obliged to conform themselves thereunto." 
 
 The assembly for the first time in the history of the 
 Province was then dissolved by the governor, an act 
 which the deputies unanimously protested w^s contrary 
 to the concessions and an innovation of the government. 
 The beginnings of the power and the spirit of complete 
 self-government were here manifest. They deliberately 
 chose the concessions as the basis of their political life. 
 
 In 1683 the deputies attempt to " disown " the conces- 
 sions, but now the governor and council are strict in 
 their adherence to the " foundation of Government." f 
 Thus the concessions, alternately favored and opposed, 
 are rooted more firmly, just as that tree is more firmly 
 rooted, upon which the wind blows from various 
 quarters. 
 
 A happier evidence of the beginnings of the higher 
 political life of New Jersey as a distinct community, 
 was afforded in 1680. The spirited opposition of the 
 deputies to the governor of New York, when he at- 
 tempted to usurp authority over the Province of New 
 Jersey, the manly resistance of Governor Carteret to the 
 same usurper, and particularly his letter in which he de- 
 nies a right of levying duties, in the interest of the Duke 
 of York, without the consent of the New Jersey assem- 
 bly, unite for the time being, all the forces, to render an 
 enduring service in the making of the State. The service 
 was the greater, because of the simultaneous action of 
 West Jersey for the same noble end.:|; This effort of the 
 
 * N. J. Archives, I., 355, 356, 359. 
 
 f Record of Governor and Council, p. 80. 
 
 J Smith's History of New Jersey, p. 117. 
 
65 
 
 two Provinces, successful in vindicating their rights to 
 freedom from taxation was a triumph for the agencies 
 which would one dav demand independence for the re- 
 united halves of New Jersey and for the united Colo- 
 nies, while the influence of the victory for equal 
 commerce lived in New Jersey until the adoption of 
 the Constitution of the United States. The action of 
 Carteret in defending the jurisdiction of New Jersey 
 against the encroachments of Andros, aroused a hostility 
 to the latter in England, which brought about his recall 
 and helped to awaken the spirit which later in England 
 defended the cause of America. 
 
 In the first period, then, this much had been done to 
 form a new people. Under the concessions, the Prov- 
 ince began to be settled ; individualism as a necessary 
 part of self-government gains greater significance ; 
 town government is begun and influences the growth 
 of the embryo State, while the Province as a 
 whole begins to be something more than a mere name ; 
 it is a part of the English realm, but a distinct part and 
 not a dependency of New York. 
 
 When the rights of soil and of government were trans- 
 ferred to the twenty-four Proprietors in 1682, many of 
 the conditions which are of universal value in the 
 making of a State, were present. The time, the last 
 quarter of the seventeenth century, was one of general 
 political formation. The Thirty Years' War had run 
 its disastrous course ; William of Orange fought abso- 
 lutism on the Continent, and the Revolution of 1688 
 began a new era in England ; the Great Elector, after 
 the battle of Fehrbellin, was laying the first foundations 
 of Prussia. Only France was given over to absolutism, 
 but by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes she gave 
 5 
 
66 
 
 in the Huguenots some of the best of formative elements 
 to South CaroHna. Massachusetts and the New- 
 England colonies began a new career, when the attempt 
 at centralization by James II. failed and their charters 
 were restored. In 1684, many of the colonies joined 
 in a defensive league against the savages, the second of 
 the minor prophecies of the great Union to come. 
 
 The young community shared in the influences of the 
 general movement ; and there were special conditions 
 which favored her growth. A law of the General As- 
 sembly of 1676 speaks of the Province as being "in its 
 minority." * Like a pnnce one day to be a sovereign, 
 who attains his majority at the age of eighteen, so New 
 Jersev after the first period of eighteen years, was ready 
 to begin the work which should fit her for the higher 
 duties and powers. Here was a people beginning to 
 prosper, but hopeful rather than contented ; of conflict- 
 ing motives, but the motive to union always in the end 
 prevailing ; in close relations with nature, w^ho imparted 
 to them qualities which they could never lose but must 
 transmit to their posterity. She gave them rich prom- 
 ises; "here is a brave country," writes Rudyard, the 
 first Deputy Governor under the new Proprietors ; 
 •' here is a gallant, plentiful countiy," writes Lawric, his 
 successor. Penn took a view of the land and said he 
 had never seen such before in his life. " The people," 
 said Rudyard, " are generally a sober professing people, 
 wise in tlieir generation, courteous in their behaviour, 
 and respectful to us in ofifice among them/'f The 
 people in accepting the early concessions, had " expecta- 
 tion," so they said in West Jersey, "of some increase of 
 
 * Learning and Spicer, I20, 122. f Smith, 169, 170, 179. 
 
67 
 
 those freedoms and privileges, enjo3'ed in " England, 
 and the expectation grew with the growth of the Prov- 
 ince and with the change of the proprietaries. It was 
 a tendency that could not be stayed until the people 
 were, in their own phrase, "■owners of their liberty^ ^' 
 Ho\v was this tendency met by the twenty-four Propri- 
 etors ? Whatever their theory was as to the necessity 
 of a firmness of administration to gain their pecuniary 
 rights, in other respects their conduct harmonized with 
 the wishes of the people. In "a brief account of New 
 Jersey, published in 1682, by the present Proprietors, 
 for information of all inclined to settle in that country," 
 they say that in the concessions, provision was made for 
 liberty in religion and property in estates, and " we," 
 they continue, " shall be ready and desirous to make 
 such further additions and supplements to the said Con- 
 stitution, as shall be thought fit for the encouragement 
 of all planters and adventurers, and for the further 
 settling the Colony with a sober and industrious 
 people." + Whatever change, then, the Proprietors 
 might make in the organic law could only be construed 
 in the light of this promise, the spirit of which as well 
 as the letter, bespoke the largest liberty for the emigrant. 
 So too, the seal of the twenty-four Proprietors, as they 
 undertook the duty of government, was in keeping with 
 this natural character of the Province and of its people. 
 Every official act of the twenty-four Proprietors received 
 the stamp of this seal, on which were exquisitely en- 
 graved the emblems of plenty and of even-handed 
 justice. Surrounding the emblems were these legends ; 
 '' Righteousness exalteth a nation. Its God giveth in- 
 
 *Ibid, 120, 124. f Smith, 542. 
 
68 
 
 crease." Thus every act of theirs testified to their 
 recognition of a God-given increase of the fundamental 
 law as well as of the fruits of the earth. 
 
 The letter in which the Proprietors announced to the 
 people their purchase of the Province, breathes the 
 same spirit. " We desire nothing more than to approve 
 ourselves as you may find yourselves happy." " Your 
 interest is now so bound up with ours that we cannot 
 suffer if you prosper, nor prosper where you are m- 
 jured." And they promise " everything that may be 
 needful toward the good government and advan- 
 tage of the Colony."* 
 
 The seal of the Proprietors was further mdicati ve of the 
 character of the new government. The seal of Berkeley 
 and Carteret bore their coats of arms and thus sug- 
 gested a personal government. The seal of the twenty- 
 four was absolutely impersonal, so far as men were 
 concerned ; God alone was recognized as the author of 
 the growth and exaltation of a nation. ; It was almost 
 as though human direction were .withdrawn, and ab- 
 stract principles, free from the impress of the mind even 
 of great men, were left to work their own work among 
 the people. The Proprietors were rather the servants 
 than masters controlling the principles of government 
 which were becoming active in New Jersey. " It is not 
 possible for you to understand," so writes Lawrie, the 
 Deputy Governor, to the Proprietors, " what is for the 
 good of the Province as I do that am here,"t and in re- 
 sponse, the Proprietors adopt the act of the first of 
 August, 1684, in which they acknowledge the necessity 
 " that there be full ami ample poiver constituted hi some 
 
 * Learning and Spicer, 167. f Smith, 178. 
 
69 
 
 persons in the Province, to do all things that may contribute 
 to the good and advancement of the sained This instru- 
 ment transfers immediate supervision of the Proprie- 
 tors' interests and rights from England to commission- 
 ers in America.* 
 
 Another act, giving ampler powers and more practi- 
 cable conditions to the new American Board of Proprie- 
 tors, and freer self-direction to the people, was adopted 
 a few months later, and two hundred years ago to-day.-f 
 It is fitting that those who hold the power of the State 
 in trust and representative citizens from all parts should 
 commemorate these acts, for they were significant in 
 the founding of the State. They were as important to 
 the development of political power in eastern New 
 Jerse}^ as "the vote, " two generations before, by which 
 in the transfer of the Massachusetts Company to Ameri- 
 ca, " a commercial corporation became the germ of an 
 independent commonwealth. ":|: Under these acts, the 
 first full exercise within the borders of the State, of the 
 proprietary power of revising legislation took place two 
 hundred years ago the coming Thanksgiving day. " To 
 all Christian people and others to whom these presents 
 shall come," the American Board of Proprietors address 
 their act confirming the laws of the past two years. || 
 In the volume of seven hundred pages, containing these 
 early laws and constitutions, it is the only act so ad- 
 dressed. We may readily infer that the Deputy Gov- 
 ernor and his fellow Proprietors who signed the act, were 
 conscious that it indicated a new adjustment of political 
 
 * Learning and Spicer, 195. f Learning and Spicer, ic 
 
 :]: Bancroft, Hist, of U. S., Cent. Ed. I, 275. 
 II Learning and Spicer, 2S1. 
 
70 
 
 forces. The Proprietors become as far as possible 
 identified with the Province. The new Board share 
 Avith the people in the making of the law, while with all 
 citizens they are equally subject to the provincial law.* 
 But we arrive at the full measure of the importance of 
 this assimilation of proprietar}- and popular government 
 when by the study of the events of the next half genera- 
 tion, we learn to know the principle of government, 
 which the Board of Proprietors grew more and more to 
 represent. It was neither of the three historic forms, 
 monarchy, aristocracy or democracy. It stood for 
 essentially the modern principle of the non-interfer- 
 ence of government, the laissez faire, the hands-off 
 theory, the least government the best. It gave the 
 opportunity for the action of a self-determining power 
 within the four bounds of New Jersey, by virtue of 
 which, the inhabitants of that portion of the globe could 
 as one body say with truth, a century and a half later, 
 " all political power is inJurcnt in the people."+ It is 
 true, the twenty-four Proprietors had prepared for the 
 Province a new organic law— the so-called Fundamen- 
 tal Constitutions, which, though sanctioning in part, 
 were designed to supersede the concessions, and they 
 instructed their Deputy Governor to " order the new 
 scheme of government to be passed in an Assembly.":}: 
 But they tacitly acquiesced in its rejection. In a con- 
 ference of the deputies with the governor and his 
 council on the 19th of April, 1686, Governor Lawrie 
 made inquiry " of what answer " they gave touching the 
 scheme of government laid before them a few days })re- 
 
 * Scot's model in V^hitehead's East Jersey under the Props. , 398, 447, 449. 
 f Constitution of 1844. :j: Learning and Spicer, 175. 
 
71 
 
 viously. The deputies answer " tJiat tJicy apprehended 
 the same did not agree with the Constitution of this Prov- 
 ince, and that thev understood that the same were nozuise 
 binding, except passed into a lazu by the General Assembly^ 
 The s^overnor's council had already given it as their 
 sense " tJiat the same did not agree zvitJi the Constitution 
 of these America)! parts."'^ 
 
 The governor did not press the matter, nor did the 
 Proprietors further insist on it, and in this simple way 
 the great act was done, at once asserting and confirming 
 the ordaining power. The people of East New Jersey 
 had determined that by their own authority their 
 organic law should be. 
 
 By refusing the fundamental constitutions and plant- 
 ing themselves on the concessions, the people secure all 
 that had been gained in the first period, and the Pro- 
 prietors, sharing in this essentiall}^ ordaining act of the 
 people, the rights of self-government became indefeasi- 
 ble. It was only natural, then, that in an act passed 
 thirteen years later, declarative of rights and privileges, 
 many rights and privileges should be included, which 
 had hitherto never found expression in the Province. f 
 The people were creating the organic law. It was a 
 solemn act. " The wJiole Honsc of Representatives,'' so 
 runs the record of the governor and council, "-came be- 
 fore this Board and gave in the Bill of Rights * '^ 
 passed their Honsc, which was read here and passed this 
 Board.\ This act, including man}- of the provisions of 
 the concessions, has also many features in common with 
 the government which the people ordained in 1776. 
 
 * Record of Governor and Council, 125, 126, 128, 131. 
 
 f Learning and Spicer, 368. 
 
 X Record of Governor and Council, 219. 
 
72 
 
 With this act, which bears the date ol the 13th of 
 March, 1699, together with that of the 19th of April, 
 1686, the work of the I^roprictors in helping to lay the 
 legal foundation of the State was complete. It was an 
 anomalous government. An idea grew up after the 
 revolution of 1688 that it was no rightful government. 
 King William contested its title, and the people of East 
 New Jersey petitioned the Crown against the Proprie- 
 tors, and factions sprang up among themselves. Of the 
 original Proprietors, but/<^;//r were left in 1702 to sur- 
 render what they admitted in the instrument of sur- 
 render was a pretended right to government, but the 
 fact remains, that better than they, or those about them, 
 knew, they built for all time. 
 
 Three-quarters of a century must pass before inde- 
 pendence was declared, but the people of New Jersey 
 were already capable of an independent political life. 
 In fact, from 1689 to 1692 there was no general govern- 
 ment. The local administration of law secured the 
 peace and welfare of the whole Province. In the con- 
 test with the royal governor, Lord Cornbury, in 1707, 
 the representatives of the people reject with abhorrence 
 the charge of the council that they purpose throwing off 
 their allegiance and revolting from the Crown of Eng- 
 land. So they abhorred the thought, even after the 
 War for Independence was begun, but they were no 
 less capable of independence had it come two genera- 
 tions earlier. We may note that in this same reply to 
 the complaint of the Lieutenant-Governor and the 
 Council to the Queen, the people do not disclaim the 
 right to judge, as was charged, whether royal orders 
 conformed to law.* The right of self-rule, which they 
 
 * Smith, 347, 3S6. 
 
73 
 
 had gained in the time of the Proprietors and under the 
 influences of their government, they kept until all the 
 Colonies were equallj^ read)^ to assert with them that 
 this right should be national in America. 
 
 But we find evidences elsewhere than in the growth 
 of the fundamental law, that under the influence of the 
 Proprietors the State, as we know it, was gradually 
 forming. 
 
 No stronger influence moulds the life of the people of 
 a State than that which comes from its minor political ^ 
 
 divisions. The town and the county have shaped the 
 life of the States of the Union. In this respect there 
 are three classes of States ; those in which the town is 
 the political unit — the six States of New England ; 
 the second, those in which the county is the unit — 
 the States of the South ; the third, those of the " com- 
 promise system,'' as it has been called — a mixed organi- 
 zation of county and township prevailing in the Middle 
 States and the West. 
 
 Town government sprang into a vigorous, self- 
 directing life at the time of the first Proprietors,"- and 
 county government had its feeble beginnings ; f but it 
 was only in the time of the second proprietary govern- 
 ment that the two organizations grew into a composite 
 whole. 
 
 The temptation is great to dwell upon the history of 
 this phase of State development from this time on ; to 
 
 * During this period local government was exercised by virtue of 
 charter rights in seven towns, namely : Bergen, Elizabeth, Newark, 
 Middletown, Piscataway, Shrewsbury and Woodbridge. 
 
 f By a law of the General Assembly of the 13th of November, 1675, 
 the towns were grouped into counties with no very definite limits, and 
 with the sole purpose of erecting courts. Leaming and Spicer, 96. 
 
74 
 
 show how the functions of tlie two local divisions were 
 adjusted ; to point out the unconscious beginnings of 
 the forms and harmonics which exist to-day, but the 
 present purpose of our study Avill not admit of a state- 
 ment of its every result. Only in general, it may be 
 said, that to this period is due the founding of that 
 system which, more than any other influence, gives 
 individuality of character to the self-government of the 
 State.*- 
 
 The constituting of courts is another important forma- 
 
 *A view of the methods of taxation, as found in the tax laws of the 
 Proprietary period, will, perhaps, best show the germination and gradual 
 growth of local government in New Jersey. 
 
 CONCESSIONS. 
 1664. — By the Concessions the General Assembly has power to lay 
 taxes upon lands or persons within whatever local divisions it may erect 
 within the Province. (Learning and Spicer, 16.) 
 
 LAWS OF GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 
 
 May. 166S — First tax, thirty pounds — five pounds to each to7i.'n — in 
 country pay to be delivered by inhabitants to Jacob Mollins, of Eliza- 
 bethtown. (L. and S., 81.) 
 
 November, 1675. — Towns and plantations grouped into counties ior the 
 sole purpose of erecting courts. These counties have no very definite 
 bounds, and they receive no names. (L. and S., 96.) 
 
 December, ibi^.— I^rovincial Treasurer appointed, to whom to'wn con- 
 stables are to bring in the rate. (L. and S., 103, 104.) 
 
 December, 1675. — Assembly proposes to raise fifty pounds. Governor's 
 arrears, by subscription to be paid to constables of tomans. (L. and 
 S., 104.) 
 
 April, 1676. — Three select men to be chosen by the freeholders of every 
 to7vn to assess Governor's arrears not subscribed. (L. and S., 117.) 
 
 October, 1676. — Constables of every to'on to receive and compel pay- 
 ment of rates levied by the General Assembly. (L. and S., 121.) 
 
 1678. — Country rates levied upon land. Governor's salary paid by 
 poll taxes. (L. and S., 129, 130, 125.) 
 
 March, 1682. — " For the better governing and settling courts," in the 
 
75 
 
 tive element. An authority not lightly to be questioned 
 says that Lord Cornbury " is entitled to the credit of hav- 
 ing laid the foundation of our whole judicial system "* 
 But the beginnings of it seem to date from the legislation 
 of this period. Here we have the Common Law Courts 
 in town f and county,:}: a Supreme Court for the Prov- 
 
 Province, the General Assembly divides it into four counties, which 
 receive names and definite bounds. (L. and S., 229.) 
 
 1682. — Justices of County Court of Quarter Sessions impowered to as- 
 sess tax for building a jail in each county and a pound in every town, and 
 to appoint collectors and receivers of this tax. (L. and S., 26S. Com- 
 pare AUinson's Laws, 14.) 
 
 December, 1682. — Tax of fifty pounds, apportioned among the counties, 
 to be assessed in each county by six men appointed by the Assembly, 
 upon improved lands and stocks. Town constables to act as collectors, 
 and to pay the sums collected to the Treasurer of tlie Province. (L. and 
 S., 274.) 
 
 In 1684 the West Jersey Assembly impowers each tenth to lay and 
 levy road taxes, and to choose six assessors and two collectors of a 
 general tax. (L. and S., 494.) 
 
 April 19, 1686. — Four or five assessors to be chosen by the people of 
 each town to levy rates for highways laid out by County Commisioners 
 (named by the General Assembly, L. & S., 256), and taxes for all other 
 public charges within the respective limits of the tozuns ; the rates and 
 taxes so made to be presented to the Court of Quarter Sessions in the 
 respective counties. The Justices of the Court to approve, amend and 
 confirm them with the consent of the majority of the assessors. (L. 
 and S., 294.) 
 
 The aDove act, in a large sense the beginning of combined toion and 
 
 * Field's Provincial Courts, Coll. of N. J. Hist. Soc, Vol. III. 
 
 f An elective Court in every town having cognizance of cases to the 
 value of forty shillings, a Justice of the Peace to be one of the Court. 
 Leaming and Spicer, 99, 100, 229. 
 
 X In every county. Courts of Sessions or County Courts, whose sessions 
 were at first annual and afterwards bi-ennial and quarterly. Leaming 
 and Spicer, 96, 230, 268, 347. 
 
76 
 
 ince," distinctions between law and equity jurisdic- 
 tion ; t provisions for appeals on account of errors or 
 other grounds,:}: for regular prosecutions and issuing of 
 processes! — in short, a systematization of the administra- 
 tion of justice. 
 
 Other influences came from the people cff that day to 
 determme what the people of this day should be. The 
 very homelines of much of the legislation of those 
 twenty years shows that self-rule was thrusting out its 
 roots into the best of soil, and yet on the other hand, 
 the General Assembly of this feeble Province could 
 rise to the dignity of enacting in a separate law, the 
 
 county action in the matter of taxation, was passed on April ig, 1686, the 
 same day on which the Deputies refused the Fundamental Constitutions. 
 
 The birth of the mixed town and county system, the special form of 
 New Jersey local rule, was thus coincident with the birth of self-govern- 
 ment in the Province as a whole. (Record of Governor and Council of 
 East Jersey, 1682-1703, pp. 131, 132.) 
 
 This act was modified nine years later, 1695, but only to facilitate its 
 operation. It was, therefore, thereby virtually confirmed. (L. and S., 
 355; Compare inter al Allinson's Laws, pp. 14, 35, 60, 115; P.evised 
 Statutes, Sec. 12, p. 129.) 
 
 May, 1688. — To withstand invasion of the French, specific tax on land, 
 cattle, horses, swine, and poll tax on male persons of sixteen, to be 
 levied and collected by County Commissioners appointed by the As- 
 sembly. Constables of each tozvn to receive estimates of taxable prop- 
 
 * A Court of Common Right with original and appellate jurisdiction, 
 to have cognizance " of capital, criminal, or civil causes of equity, to be 
 the Supreme Court of the Province," with quarterly sessions. Learning 
 and Spicer, 232. In W. J., 1693, a Supreme Court of Appeals, Leaming 
 and Spicer, 517, and a Court of Oyer and Terminer, Learning and Spicer, 
 520. 
 
 f Leaming and Spicer, 232, 34S. % Leaming and Spicer, 232. 
 
 II Leaming and Spicer, 253. 
 
77 
 
 thirty-ninth and fortieth chapters of the great Charter; 
 " the essential clauses," as Hallam calls them.* 
 
 In the formation of this body of law, there were 
 many conflicts ; there was turbulence at times in the 
 Province, but the greatest of living historians has said, 
 that " all progress comes through conflict." Is it not 
 true, indeed, that peace has her victories, because war 
 has had hers. A recent address f before the New York 
 Chamber of Commerce is most suggestive in this regard 
 in respect to our national wars. Does not the same 
 hold true in the smaller sphere ? 
 
 On the freedom of religion, the concessions allowed 
 no restriction, not even by " any law or statute or clause 
 contained, or to be contained, usage or custom of the 
 realm of England," but the people in their Law of 
 Rights in 1699, follow the leading of the English 
 
 erty, and deliver them to their respective County Commissioners. Taxes 
 to be paid by the inhabitants to the respective County Treasurers ap- 
 pointed by this act for the first time by the General Assembly. (L. and 
 S., 30:.) 
 
 1692. — Method of levying and collecting tax similar to that of 1688. 
 (L. and S., 321.) 
 
 In this year the West Jersey Assembly empower each county court to 
 appoint County Collectors of a poll tax. (L. and S., 510) 
 
 1693. — The county growing in importance. Each to^un \r\ the county 
 was impowered to choose one or more men to join with the justices of 
 the county court annually, to adjust the debts of the county and assess 
 taxes for their payment. (L. and S., 333-) 
 
 1693. — King's tax for defence against the French. Twenty men to be 
 raised proportionately from the five counties. To maintain these soldiers 
 a tax of four hundred and thirty pounds in specifics to be raised. This 
 
 * Learning and Spicer, 240. 
 
 f That of Mr. Evarts, at the one hundred and sixteenth anniversary 
 dinner of the New York Chamber of Commerce. 
 
78 
 
 Bill of Rights of 1689, and decree intolerance 
 of the Roman Catholic religion. In the Constitu- 
 tion of 1776, too, civil rights are guaranteed to Protest- 
 ants alone. Only in the Constitution of 1844 has New 
 Jersey turned to the times of the Proprietors and 
 brought back again the fearless spirit of complete re- 
 ligious liberty. 
 
 For education, the earliest town charters granted by 
 the Proprietors, provided ; in Woodbridge, one hun- 
 dred acres were to be laid out for the maintenance 
 of a free school," and school lands were to be exempt 
 from quit-rents. The towns established schools, and 
 laws of 1693 and 1695 provided for rates and the 
 regulation of schools by selectmen. f 
 
 act appoints one Commissioner for each fo-.oit, who receives from the 
 town constable estimates of all ratables in the town. These Commis- 
 sioners meet in a body at Perth Amboy and equalize the assessment. 
 The taxes collected by Cotinty Receivers appointed by this act. (L. 
 and S., 334.) 
 
 October, 1694. — Act for the appointment of County Treasureis . The 
 justices of each county court to appoint at their discretion a County- 
 Treasurer to disburse county funds in paying for the destruction of wolves, 
 providing for the poor and orphans, and defraying the county debts. 
 (L. and S., 350.) 
 
 1695. — One hundred and fifty pounds in silver, proportioned among the 
 towns of the Province and the counties of Monmouth and Somerset, to 
 be levied upon all estates, real and personal, as each toum and the two 
 counties named shall adjust the rates. General Assembly appoints the 
 collectors, vacancies among whom are to be filled by the town, or in the 
 case of Monmouth and Somerset by the county. (L. and S., 353.) 
 
 1698. — An act for making town rates to defray town charges. Each 
 to-tvn chooses three men to assess for (i) representatives' wages, (2 
 charges about highways, (3) rates for the poor, (4) constables' wages, (5) 
 
 * Whitehead's East Jersey under the Proprietors, 287. 
 f Leaming and Spicer, 328, 358. 
 
79 
 
 We must not leave out of sight the uifluence of the 
 Proprietors in gathering this i)rovincial population from 
 many parts — from New and Old England, from Scot- 
 land, from Ireland, to join them to the Dutch already 
 here to make the one people. 
 
 The latest writer on American Colonial History sa3"s 
 that the colonists of New JeTsey had a strong respect 
 for vested rights.* May we not attribute the feeling to 
 the experience, which grew out of the early and safe 
 system of the proprietary grants, and, on the other hand, 
 of the disputes, in some parts, which enforced the 
 necessity of secure titles ? 
 
 The contest the people had to establish their funda- 
 mental law, taught them the value of a written constitu- 
 tion and the absolute need that law should conform 
 thereto. Though it grew up in part by legislative 
 enactment and though the constitution of 1776 carries 
 the implication of possible legislative amendment, yet 
 in a spirit, born as we may believe in those early days, 
 and certainly expressed in the earliest constitution of 
 
 killing wolves, (6) repairing burying places, (7) schools, (8) pounds, (9) 
 clerks' wages. This assessment to be presented to any justice of the 
 peace of the county, who may approve or amend the same with the con- 
 sent of two of the three persons chosen as above. (L. and S., 372.) 
 
 1698. — General tax of six hundred and seventy-five pounds. The act 
 introduces a system of taxation on real estate by polls and specifics 
 nearly identical with that later adopted by the State Legislature. (Com- 
 pare Gordon's Gazetteer, pp. 57, 58; also Laws of West Jersey, 1684, 
 1685, 1693, 1696, 1697, 1700; L. and S., 494, 505, 521-2, 549, 561, 574.) 
 
 By this act an assessor or commissioner was named by the Assembly 
 for each toiini. These assessors to meet in the capital of the Province to 
 equalize assessments. They also serve as collectors and receivers. (L. 
 and S., 376.) 
 
 * Lodge's English Colonies in America, 278. 
 
So 
 
 West Jersey, Chiel-Justice Brcarly in 1780, gave a de- 
 cision of prime historical importance. Other States 
 than New Jersey have been called the formative centres 
 of the various influences which have combined to bring 
 about the one great result — this mighty union ; but 
 New Jersey has at times shown the way. This decision 
 of her Supreme Court was the first of the series which 
 established the principle and at last made it a part of 
 the Constitution of the United States, that an unconsti- 
 tutional law is no law and it is the function of the 
 judiciary to say so."^' 
 
 The second occasion when New Jersey showed the 
 way to her sister States, was when she sent her delegates 
 to the Annapolis Convention in 1786. This convention 
 was called to secure uniform regulations of commerce in 
 the Articles of Confederation, then the Constitution of 
 the Union. New Jersey was not unmindful of the strug- 
 gles she had had, in the times of the Proprietors to secure 
 from New York a commerce rightfully her own, but ris- 
 ing from that consideration, to her perhaps more import- 
 ant than to any other State, for she was like a cask flowing 
 at both ends, tapped by New York and by Philadelphia, 
 she suggested that the amendment should include, be- 
 sides a power over commerce, " other important mat- 
 ters." The convention caught at the suggestion, and 
 Hamilton, the herald of the better union, proclaimed it 
 as the basis of the call to the Convention at Philadel- 
 phia, which gave us the Constitution of the United 
 States. 
 
 In the times of the Proprietors, we do not find in 
 
 * The decision is referred to by Ch. J. Kirkpatrick, in State vs. Park- 
 hurst, IV^ Halstead, 444. 
 
8i 
 
 New Jersey many germs of an American Union, though 
 in one or two cases, the assembly, " sensible of broth- 
 erly love to our neighbors, '' voted men and money for 
 the war on the frontiers against the French. This 
 spirit was with New Jersey of somewhat later growth ; 
 it came in royal times, but in the war for Independence, 
 New Jersey ranked with Connecticut next to the first in 
 the number of men she furnished, and other evidences 
 were not wanting of a zeal for the good of the whole 
 Union. But in the formation of the " more perfect 
 union," she represented rather the principle of local- 
 ism ; the home rule of those early days had grown 
 into the idea of the indestructibility of the State This 
 idea she brought into the federal convention and around 
 the banner of the " Jersey Plan," Livingston and Pater- 
 son and Brearly fought for it. When the existence of 
 the principle was assured by the grant of equality of 
 State representation in the Senate, how gladly did these 
 her champions leap forward to give to a nationalism 
 based upon localism, ample powers for the greatest 
 work that ever fell to the lot of one people. 
 
 The Legislature of New Jersey had been the first m 
 America to apply to the Union, the phrase of Montes- 
 quieu — " a Federal Republic." Unanimously her people 
 ratified the Constitution of the United States, in which 
 it was made real. 
 
 The States of Greece, which one may call the creative 
 States, those which made her the leader of the civiliza- 
 tion ot the world, had together nearly the same area as 
 New Jersey. By the coast line and the lines of the 
 hemming mountain ranges, the forces of their life were 
 turned inward ; so New Jersey was confined by careful 
 bounds, and her life grew from the forces concentrated 
 6 
 
-%^ i\ 
 
 82 
 
 within her borders. When absolutism swept down 
 upon Greece from the East, she repelled the Persian 
 invader on the plain of Marathon. On the plain of 
 Monmouth, the humble commonwealth, aided by her 
 sister States, fought, if not the decisive battle, yet the 
 one prophetic of the final overthrow of English absolu- 
 tism ; for after it Frederick the Great said, " Americh 
 is lost to England." But the destroyer of Greece came 
 from the West. The self-government ot Greece, which 
 was her glory and the cause of her power, was engulfed 
 in the imperialism of Rome. When the imperial idea 
 arose in the Western Hemisphere, promising a new 
 nation of gigantic proportions, and with the possibilities 
 of unbounded Continental strength, with the aid of the 
 other pent-up States, all but one proprietary. New Jersey, 
 in the Federal Convention, lodged in the foundation of the 
 indissoluble Union the integrity of the individual State. 
 New Jersey was never enrolled among the World- 
 States, but happier than Greece, she insured to herself 
 an unending future. She made her continued existence 
 the condition and the cause of imi)erial strength 
 Largely through her influence and further back, the in- 
 fluence of her founders, local and national self-govern- 
 ment are blended, yet each keeps its identity. The 
 fruits we enjoy grow on the tree of this self-rule : 
 
 the one great tree, that up from old time 
 
 Growing, contains in itself the whole of the virtue and life of 
 Bygone days, drawing now to itself all kindreds and nations, 
 And must have for itself the whole world for its root and branches. 
 
 P "07 
 
BI-dEWTEWWIAL (JELEBRATIOW 
 
 OF THE 
 
 BOARD OF 
 
 ^mericait pr^j^rleforfi 
 
 OF 
 
 East Nbw Jersey, 
 
 At Perth Aiiiboy, Tuesday, NoA^emlier 25, 1884. 
 
 NEWARK, N. J.: 
 Press ok the Advertiser Printing IIolse. 
 
 1885. .