Chapter 3 Early Colonial History | Camden County, NJGenWeb

The First Navigators - Royal Grants - Settlements of the Dutch, the Swedes end the English - New Jersey Established - Division of the Province into East and West Jersey.

ENGLAND, Holland and Sweden each bore a part in the discovery and colonization of New Jersey, and their claims so overlapped each other that bloodshed and diplomatic complications marked the progress of events from the first attempt at settlement within the province, in 1623, until its final conquest by the English, in 1664. The forty years intervening witnessed the coming of people representing three different nations, the conversion of the proprietorship of much of the land from the Indians to the whites, the founding of towns on either bank of the Delaware and the laying of the foundation of the civilization and enlightenment that now prevails. The English claim to the possession of this territory grew out of the voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot, who, acting under commission from Henry VII, sailed along the coast from Newfoundland to about the latitude of Cape Hatteras in 1497 -98. They bore the royal authority to plant the banner of England on any undiscovered lands, and occupy them in the name of the crown, but as they took no steps towards planting a colony to establish English dominion, the way was thus left open for the conflict of claims to the sovereignty of the territory that subsequently occurred, although the English position was sought to be affirmed in the New England and Virginia patents of King James I.

THE DUTCH. - The next claim in the order of time was that of the Dutch. On August 28, 1609, Henry Hudson, an English seaman in the service of the Dutch East India Company, entered the mouth of Delaware Bay, but did not sail up it because of finding shallow water and sand-bars, which he thought rendered navigation unsafe. He was, therefore, the discoverer of this estuary of the ocean, as well as of New York Bay and the Hudson River, and it was upon his achievements that the Dutch very justly based their claim to the regions binding upon the North (Hudson) River and the Delaware, or, as they termed it, the Zuydt (South) River.*

Hudson’s report of his expedition up the Delaware was not calculated to cause the Dutch to turn their commercial eye toward this region, and all their enterprise in this direction was turned toward Manhattan. Captain Cornelis Hendrick sailed up the bay in 1615-16 and encountered some of the Minaqua Indians in the neighborhood of Christiana, from whom he purchased some furs. This was the beginning of the trade that was soon to induce the colonization of the river-shores. The Dutch States-General in 1621 chartered the West India Company, with especial commercial privileges, and in 1623 this corporation dispatched a ship under command of Captain Cornelius Jacobse Mey, with settlers fully provided with means of subsistence, and a large stock of articles for traffic with the red men. He landed some of his people on the Hudson, and with the remainder entered the Delaware, and it is from him that Cape May takes its name.**

Mey fixed upon a place for a settlement at Hermaomissing, at the mouth of the Sassackson, the most northerly branch of the Gloucester River, or Timber Creek, "from the great quantities of curious timber," says Gabriel Thomas, "which they send in great floats to Philadelphia." (?) Here he built a stockade of logs and named it "Fort Nassau," in honor of a town in the circle of the Upper Rhine, in Germany. This was the first attempt to establish a settlement upon the eastern bank of the Delaware and in West New Jersey.***

A body of men remained at Fort Nassau to carry on trade with the natives, but contemporary records are almost a blank as to their history while there. It is probable that the fort was alternately occupied or deserted as the demands of trade required. In a legendary channel the information is conveyed that Mey succeeded in opening intercourse with the natives and that the communication between them was such as to give rise to feelings of confidence and kindness.

In 1633 De Vries found the Indians in possession of the post. The Walloons, whom they had placed there,had returned to Manhattan, (New York), having been taken off by one of the vessels which the Dutch annually sent around from New York Bay. Van Twiller, then the Governor of the New Netherlands, restored the fort and was accused of incurring extravagant expenses in this reconstruction. The Dutch made some use of it for trading purposes until 1660 or 1661, when they concluded that it was too far up the river to be of much value and so destroyed the stockades and buildings, Van Twiller ordering Commissary Arent Crossen to select the site for another structure on the river. In 1635 it was attacked by the English, who failed to capture it from its vigorous Dutch defenders. The Swedes repeatedly denied that the Dutch had any fort on the Delaware in 1638, but against their assertions can be placed the Dutch accounts of expenditure for the maintenance of Fort Nassau charged for that year in the West India Company’s books. There was certainly enough of a garrison in the fort to report at once and protest against the Swedish settlement at Christiana in April, 1638. Four years later the garrison consisted of twenty men and the fort was continually occupied thenceforward until the Dutch destroyed it.

The exact site of this historic place is not determinable and the original Indian name of the spot cannot be given, but among the tribes who surrounded it were the Arwames, who hunted game and took fish where are now the towns and farms of Camden County.

The claims of the Hollanders upon West New Jersey was weakened because they had more important business to attend to. The fur trade of the Delaware had dwindled into insignificance in comparison with the splendid spoils of conquest upon the sea and in South America. The West India Company in two years paid a dividend of fifty per cent. from the capture by its ships, which were duly commissioned as men-of-war, of Spanish silver-laden galleons. It was the era of Dutch supremacy on the ocean; the era also in which the canny and brave Hollanders invaded South America and, after the capture of Bahia and Pernambuco, in Brazil, aspired to the conquest of the whole continent. The neglect to cultivate the field open to them on the Delaware brought about very momentous consequences, one of which was no less than the entrance of the Swedes. William Usselinex, the founder of the company, was one of its very few members who did not lose sight of the rich opportunities on the Delaware in the successes of Dutch victories elsewhere. He made a failure in endeavoring to bring his business associates to his way of thinking, and in 1624 he abandoned them, and, transferring his field of endeavor to Stockholm, inspired that wise statesman, King Gustavus Adolphus, of Sweden, with the idea of forming a Swedish West India Company.

Yet all the sagacity did not depart from Holland when Usselinex went to visit the Swedish King. John De Laet, Killian Van Rensselaer, Samuel Godyn, Samuel Blommaert and other rich merchants of Amsterdam had received word from Isaac De Rasieres, secretary to Peter Minuet, predecessor of Van Twiller as Governor of the New Netherlands, that while the Dutch were being compelled, through fear of the Indians, to concentrate at New Amsterdam (New York), there was a chance for a vast land speculation on the Zuydt River. They secured from the States-General a feudal constitution, which gave them great privileges of land acquisition outside of Manhattan Island, and they formed an agreement by which Godyn and Blommaert became the proprietors of a tract of land thirty-two miles long and two miles deep, "from Cape Henlopen to the mouth of a river." They took into partnership David Pietersen De Vries, and in 1631 sent Captain Heyes to the Delaware in the ship "Walrus." The latter established on the Horekill Creek, where the town of Lewes now stands, a colony called Swannendael (the Valley of Swans), and constructed Fort Oplandt for their protection. Heyes placed Gilliss Hossett in command, and then, crossing to the Jersey shore, bought from ten chiefs there, on behalf of the Godyn and Blommaert syndicate, a block of territory extending twelve miles northward along the bay from Cape May, and the same distance inland. In May, 1632, De Vries was ready to set sail from the Texel for the Delaware, when the news was brought him that the garrison of Fort Oplandt, some thirty men, had been massacred by the Indians. Arriving off Swannendael in the following December, he found it utterly destroyed, and the remains of men and cattle mingled with the charred fragments of the block-house and palisade. He was told that an Indian chief had stolen the Dutch coat-of-arms, erected in front of the fort; that, to appease the whites, the Indians had brought them the head of the robber, and that the tribe, of which he was a member, had slaughtered the colonists in revenge. De Vries’ journal demonstrates that he placed no confidence in this story, but explained the massacre by attributing to the Dutch shocking perfidy and cruelty in their dealings with the Indians, and in the treatment of their squaws, that had provoked the latter to inflict a fearful punishment.(4*)

De Vries accepted this melancholy and sanguinary event as terminating for the time being all schemes of colonization on the Delaware, but he did what he could to restore confidence by negotiating the first treaty of peace ever concluded with the Indians and propitiating them with gifts. Trading with them for furs as he advanced, he, on January 10, 1633, cast anchor on the bar of Jacques Eylandt (Windmill Island), opposite where the city of Camden is now built. For much of the winter his ship was held in the river by the ice, and when released, in March, he ran down the coast to Virginia, and then returning to the Delaware, embarked his compatriots along its shores and turned the prow of his vessel homeward. Thus was relinquished the Dutch enterprise of colonization on this stream, and Indian possession of it remained unbroken until the Swedes came, in 1638, except for the occasional occupancy of Fort Nassau by trading parties who came southward from Manhattan. There remained nothing to show for the ambitious efforts of the West India Company except what little profit had been made in the trade in furs.

THE SWEDES. - Upon the settlement of the Swedes at Tinicum, under Governor John Prints, a few families crossed to the east side of the river and made a settlement called Elfsburg, now in Elsinboro’ township, Salem County. Another settlement was made on Raccoon Creek, in Gloucester County, where now the village of Swedesboro’ stands. This settlement became the chief post on the east side of the Delaware. It grew and prospered, and its people purchased titles to the lands of the proprietors under the grant to the Duke of York. A few families of Swedes also settled at the mouth of Woodbury Creek, but they remained there only a few years.

In the limits of what is now Camden County a few Swedes settled and remained for a short time at Fort Eriwomac, after its abandonment by the adherents of Sir Edmund Ployden, and from that time to the occupancy of the territory under the grant to the Duke of York, March 12, 1664, it remained in the possession of the Indians. A few Swedes remained in the lower part of Gloucester County.

THE ENGLISH. - The occupancy of West Jersey by the English was under Sir Edmund Ployden, who, June 21, 1634, received a letter from Charles I., King of England, for all that territory lying between New England and Maryland. In this, as in most early grants, no regard was paid to previous claims, and in 1664 it was entirely ignored by the King in the grant to the Duke of York.

The government of the territory under the grant to Ployden was vested in him, and he styled it the province of New Albion. Some of his friends, among whom were Captain Young, Robert Evelyn and thirteen traders, left England soon after the grant was obtained, and sailed for the new territory. They came up the Delaware River and landed at the mouth of Pensaukin Creek (now in Stockton township, Camden County), where were living a few families of Indians under a chief by the name of Eriwomac. At this place a fort was built, which was named Fort Eriwomac, where the settlers remained four years, expecting that Ployden would send over to them a colony of settlers. In the meantime he formed a government in England to take possession of the province. A colony, in 1636, sailed up the Delaware River about sixty miles, to near what is now the town of Salem, and settled there.

A number of "Knights and Gentlemen" chose Beauchamp Plantagenet to select a site for them to establish a colony in New Albion, and they were combined with Ployden to raise the energies of the latter’s company. To excite the greater interest, an order of knighthood was instituted, which should have for one of its objects the conversion of the Indians to Christianity. Their title was "The Albion Knights of the Conversion of the Twenty-three Kings," the designation having reference to the number of Indian chiefs supposed to exercise sway in the province. But this ambitious project came to naught, and Ployden and Plantagenet made no second visit to the Palatinate, as New Albion was officially styled. Their operations are by no means clearly recorded, but what is positively known of them invests them with a fascination for students of the secrets of history.

The settlers at Fort Eriwomac became disheartened in waiting for the earl, and after four years abandoned the fort and settled above and below it,(5*) along the shores of the Delaware.

Evelyn soon returned to England and wrote a glowing account of the country, urging the earl to visit the country and take with him "three hundred men or more, as there is no doubt but that he may do very well and grow rich." Plantagenet laid out the territory on the banks of the Delaware into manors and named them Watcessit. The manor embracing what is now Salem County was chosen and set apart for the earl. It was described by Plantagenet as being on "the Manteses plain, which Master Evelyn voucheth to be twenty miles broad and thirty long, and fifty miles washed by two fair navigable rivers, of three hundred thousand acres fit to plow and sow corn, tobacco, flax and rice, the four staples of Albion." Three miles from Watcessit lay the domain of Lady Barbara, Baroness of Richneck, adjoining Cotton River (Alloway’s Creek), "so named of six hundred pound of cotton wilde on tree growing. " The historian of Albion added that this property was "of twenty-four miles compasse, of wood, huge timber trees, and two feet black mould, munch desired by the Virginians to plant tobacco." The earl came to the manor in 1641 and remained here with him, and they "marched, lodged and cabined together among the Indians" for seven years. When he published his book, in 1648, it was with the object of furthering a project for the emigration of the "viscounts, barons, baronets, knights, gentlemen, merchants, adventurers and planters of the hopeful colony," who had bound themselves in England to settle three thousand able, trained men in the Palatine’s domain. But they failed to fulfill their contracts, perhaps because in the convulsions at home that were forerunners of the execution of Charles I. and the establishment of the Protectorate under Cromwell, enterprises in the New World were dwarfed out of sight. Nothing more is known of Ployden and New Albion, for a new class of contestants was about to fill the stage.

NEW JERSEY ESTABLISHED. - The Duke of York, on casting about for court favorites high in rank and wealth to whom to assign some fractions of the territorial succession made him by the crown, selected Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, to whom be conveyed the land specified as follows:
"This Indenture made the three and twentieth day of June, in the sixteenth year of the Raigne of our Sovereign Lord Charles the Second, by the Grace of God of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the faith - Anno Domine 1664. Between his Royal Highness James Duke of York and Albany, Earl of Ulster, Lord High Admiral of England and Ireland, Constable of Dover Castle, Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, and Governor of Portsmouth of the one part; John Lord Berkeley, Baron of Stratton, and one of his Majestie’s most honorable Privy Council; and Sir George Carteret of Sattrum, in the county of Devon, Knight, and one of his Majestie’s most honorable Privy Council, of the ether part, Witnesseth that said James Duke of York, for and in consideration of the sum of ten shillings of lawful money of England, to him in hand paid, by these presents doth bargain and sell unto the said 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: Bounded on the east part by the main sea, sad 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 the Delaware Bay, and to the northward as far as the northernmost branch of said Bay or River of Delaware, which is in forty-one degrees and forty minutes of latitude, and worketh over thence a straight line to Hudson’s River - which said tract of land is hereafter to be called by the name or names of Nova Casarea or New Jersey."

The name was given in honor of Sir George Carteret, who in 1649 was Governor of the Isle of Jersey, and had made a most gallant defense of it for the Royalists. He was treasurer of the navy and vice-chamberlain of the King’s household under the Restoration. Being detected in peculation, he was eventually expelled from the House of Commons in 1669.

The grant to Berkeley and Carteret was a conveyance of the powers of government as well as of the rights of property, and they thus became rulers as well as owners of the country. On February 10, 1664, they issued the first Constitution of New Jersey, which continued in force until the province was divided, in 1676. It was entitled "The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea or New Jersey to and with all and every of the adventurers and all such as shall settle or plant there." It provided for a government composed of a Governor and Council and General Assembly. The Governor was appointed by the Proprietors and he selected six Councillors at least or twelve at most, or any even number between six and twelve. These constituted the General Assembly, with the addition of a representative body to be chosen by the people, as follows: So soon as the proprietors’ commission should be received in the province, a writ should be issued by the Governor for the election of twelve deputies by such inhabitants as were freemen or the chief agents of others. But so soon as parishes or other divisions of the province should be made, the inhabitants or freeholders of the several divisions should by writ meet on each 1st of January and choose freeholders for each respective division, to be deputies or representatives of the same, which body of representatives, or a major part of them, should, with the Governor and the Council, compose the General Assembly. Of the general scope of the form of government thus set up, Dr. Mulford, in his "History of New Jersey," says, -
"It embodied many of the principles which belong to the most liberal institutions. It gave entire exemption to the people from all taxation, except such as their representatives should assent to, and as a further security of property, it gave to the Assembly the full control over all the expenditures of government. Freedom of conscience and worship was secured to every one who should conduct himself as a peaceable citizen. The lands of the province were distributed to the settlers for a quit-rent of half a penny per acre, not to be paid until 1670. Justice was to be administered by tribunals erected under popular authority, and an additional security against the arbitrary exercise of power was given by the concession of an unlimited privilege of appeal or petition. . . By the increase of numbers in the representative branch of the General Assembly the popular element would have finally acquired a degree of strength that must have given it a controlling influence, but the actual working of the plan did not entirely agree with its general theory."

Simultaneously with signing the "Concessions," the proprietors appointed Philip Carteret, a brother of Sir George, Governor of New Jersey, and in August, 1665, he landed at a place to which he gave the name of Elizabeth, in honor of his sister-in-law, Lady Carteret. This was the first permanent settlement in the province. He found trouble on his hands at the moment of his arrival. Colonel Nicholls, who had been placed in charge of affairs at New York by the Duke of York, had already exerted authority over New Jersey, which he had named Albania, and under his plan of settlement, parties had acquired from the Indians titles to the Elizabethtown tract and the Monmouth patent, which later was the foundation of Middletown and Shrewsbury. He entertained exalted notions of what he might accomplish in "Albania" and argued fluently with the duke for the revocation of the Berkeley and Carteret grant, and while he was compelled to surrender New Jersey, he sowed the seeds of ultimate dissension and confusion, but he could not prevent Philip Carteret from taking possession of the new settlement. Elizabethtown was made the capital of the colony; Newark was founded; flourishing hamlets appeared on the shores of the bay as far south as Sandy Hook.

From July 30, 1673, to February 9, 1674, New Jersey was again in the possession of the Dutch, in consequence of the surrender of New York to the Dutch fleet. They had just put a government in Arhter Kol, as they named the province, on a working basis when the treaty of peace between England and Holland restored the country to the former. King Charles II. issued a new patent to the Duke of York, covering the same territory as that of 1663, and the duke executed a new conveyance to Sir George Carteret, Lord Berkeley having, on March 18, 1673, sold the whole of his right and title to the province. But just previous to making the deed to Carteret, the duke gave a commission to Edmund Andros as Governor of the whole country from "the west side of Connecticut River to the east side of Delaware Bay;" and this duplicity of the duke’s, the exactions of Andros and the sale made by Berkeley gave rise to much trouble. Carteret defended his claim against Andros, but Berkeley sold his interest in New Jersey to John Fenwick, to be held in trust for Edward Byllynge.

Philip Carteret, in 1671, resumed the government of the province. He was opposed in every act by Andros, who kept the colony in an uproar. Carteret was finally arrested and taken to New York for trial. In the mean time Byllinge made an assignment of his property to William Penn, Gawen Laurie and Nicholas Lucas, who were prominent members of the Society of Friends in England. Penn and his associates applied to Sir George Carteret and secured assent for a division of New Jersey so that the interests of the Friends and that of Carteret would be separate. The line of division was drawn from the southern point of land on the east side of Little Egg Harbor to a point on the Delaware in the latitude of forty-one degrees and forty minutes. The part east of the line remained to Sir George Carteret as sole proprietor and was named "East New Jersey." The part lying between the line and the Delaware was called "West New Jersey" and passed under the control of William Penn and his associates.

Philip Carteret	1665 to 1681
Robert Berkeley	1682 to 1685
Thomas Rudyard, Deputy-Gov.	1683
Gawen Lawrie	1683
Lord Niel Campbell	1685
Andrew Hamilton	1692 to 1697
Jeremiah Basse	1698 to 1699

Samuel Jennings, Deputy	1681
Thomas Oliver, Governor	1684 to 1685
John Skein, Deputy	1685 to 1687
William Welsh, Deputy	1686
Daniel Coxe	1687
Andrew Hamilton	1692 to 1697
Jeremiah Basse, Deputy	1697 to 1699

Lord John Cornbury, Gov.	1703 to 1708
John Lovelace (died in office)	1708
Richard Ingolsby, Lieut.-Gov.	1709 to 1710
Gen. Andrew Hunter	1710 to 1720
William Burnet	1720 to 1727
John Montgomery	1728 to 1731
Lewis Morris	1731 to 1732
William Crosby	1732 to 1736
John Hamilton	1736 to 1738

Lewis Morris	1738 to 1746
John Hamilton	1746 to 1747
Jonathan Belcher	1747 to 1757
John Reading	1757 to 1758
Francis Barnard	1758 to 1760
Thomas Boone	1760 to 1761
Thomas Hardy	1761 to 1763
William Franklin	1763 to 1766

William Livingston	1776 to 1790
William Patterson	1790 to 1792
Richard Howell	1792 to 1801
John Lambert, Vice-Pres, of Council	1802 to 1803
Joseph Bloomfield	1803 to 1812
Aaron Ogden	1812 to 1813
William S. Pennington	1813 to 1815
Mahlon Dickerson	1815 to 1817
Isaac H. Williamson	1817 to 1829
Garret D. Wall (declines)	1829
Peter D. Vroom	1829 to 1832
Samuel Southard	1832 to Feb. 1833
Elias P. Seeley	1833 to 1834
Peter D. Vroom	1835 to 1836
Philemon Dickerson	1836 to 1837
William Pennington	1837 to 1843
Daniel Haines	1843 to 1844

Charles C. Stratton	1845 to 1848
Daniel Haines	1848 to 1851
George F. Fort	1851 to 1854
Rodman M. Price	1854 to 1857
William A. Newell	1857 to 1860
Charles S. Olden	1860 to 1863
Joel Parker	1863 to 1866
Marcus L. Ward	1866 to 1868
Theodore F. Randolph	1869 to 1872
Joel Parker	1872 to 1875
Joseph D. Bedle	1875 to 1878
Gen. George B. McClellan	1878 to 1881
George C. Ludlow	1881 to 1884
Leon Abbett	1884 to 1887

* The Dutch claim to what is now New Jersey was further increased by the voyages of Captain Block and Captain Jacobse Mey. When they rendered an account of their discoveries, the company by whom they had been employed caused a full report of the voyages, with a map of the countries that had been explored, to be laid before the States-General, with an application for the privileges allowed in the late edict of the State to all discoverers. Accordingly, on the 11th of October, 1614, a special grant was made in favor of the company. They were to have the exclusive right to visit the lands and navigate the streams described, "situate in America between New France and Virginia, the sea-coasts of which lie between the fortieth and forty-fifth degrees of latitude, and which are now named New Netherland."

** Dr. Mulford’s History of New Jersey" makes it appear that about the time of Hendrick’s voyage to the Delaware, Mey made a similar trip from New Amsterdam, and then named the Cape, but there is no evidence that he landed at any point, and he certainly made no attempt to found a settlement.

(4*) According to Acrelius and Ondcrdonck, the garrison remaining in Fort Nassau were also massacred by the Indians when they slaughtered the people at Fort Oplandt.

SOURCE: Page(s) 17-24, History of Camden County, New Jersey, by George R. Prowell, L.J. Richards & Co. 1886
Published 2010 by the Camden County Genealogy Project

Chapter III Early Colonial History

Chapter III
Early Colonial History