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This database currently indexes over 75,132 land records held by the New Jersey State Archives, containing over 381,354 name entries. It references many of New Jersey's earliest extant deeds and surveys found in over 120 record books.
- New Jersey in Pre-European History
- Early European Explorers
- English Rule and The “Birth” of New Jersey
- The West (South) Jersey Proprietors
- The East (North) Jersey Proprietors
- Realigned Boundaries (Keith Line) and Reunification of Governance
- New Jersey Land Riots
- Using Proprietor Records For Genealogical Research
- Sources, Resources, and Further Reading
The earliest settlements in New Jersey date from 11,000 to 10,500BC, with evidence of settlements forming from South to North in line with the movements of retreating glaciers. From roughly 1000 BC to 1000 AD, the native population along the interior rivers of the American continent thrived. This period, called the Hopewell Tradition, formed the ba...
In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the Eastern coastline, including Sandy Hook and the straits that now bear his name, on behalf of France. Eighty-five years later, in 1609, English explorer Sir Henry Hudson explored the Delaware and Raritan Rivers, the Newark and New York Bays, and the Hudson Valley on behalf of the Dutch East India Company....
After the transition to English rule, King Charles II gifted his younger brother, James, Duke of York, all the land between New England and Maryland. James (later crowned James II) in turn subdivided his lands and granted to Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley — two British noblemen who supported the monarchy during the English Civil War — t...
Berkeley and his Quaker successors divided West Jersey into small fractions of voting shares — with 3,200 shares in all. This allowed individuals to purchase titles from the Proprietors on a small scale, for smaller pieces of property, and own the titles outright. This distribution of a large number of shares allowed for greater, more egalitarian, ...
Carteret took a very different approach to the distribution of lands under his dominion, allowing East Jersey to be apportioned into only 96 voting shares. These shares were distributed to a handful of wealthy Proprietors, 24 in total, called the General Proprietors. In turn, the General Proprietors asserted their right to collect annual quit-rents...
Although the East-West division was set forth in 1664, it was not until twelve years later that, based on an additional deed between Carteret’s and Berkeley’s successors, the line was officially plotted. In 1687, a complication arose when a new survey discovered that the original boundary was drawn incorrectly. The new map (the Keith Line) shifted ...
The evolution of land boundaries in New Jersey — from “frontier” (already inhabited by native peoples, some of whom deeded land directly to settlers and which pre-date colonial governance), to Royal Colony, to American state — was a long and complex one, and issues on boundaries continued well into the 1800s. But for the common farmers, miners, and...
Deeds and documents from this era can contain invaluable, and sometimes surprising, information for genealogical researchers including details on family relationships and neighbors, diagrams of lan...
The West Jersey Proprietors still exists as an official entity operating in Burlington, NJ. In 2005, the Proprietors sent their archival holdings to the State Archives in Trenton. The East Jersey Proprietors was dissolved as an entity in 1998, ceding all remaining “Green Acre” properties to the State of New Jersey and their records to the NJ State Archives. As such, the NJ State Archives now holds all the archival materials from boththe East and West Proprietors under one roof. A monumental e...
Special thanks to Joseph Klett of the NJ Archives and to Genealogical Society of New Jersey for sponsoring his talk on NJ Proprietary Records — which inspired this article.
Mr. Klett’s highly-detailed guide (PDF link below) is an invaluable resource to anyone researching families or land transactions in this era and contains a comprehensive timeline, glossary of terms, and a list of indexes, abstracts, transcripts, and databases for the collection. A Guide to Using the Records of the East and West Jersey Proprietors, by Joseph R. Klett, NJ State Archives (PDF): http://www.state.nj.us/state/archives/pdf/proprietors.pdf Executive Director of the NJ State Archives,...
Almost a century passed before colonization began with the arrival in 1609 of the English navigator Henry Hudson, who sent a party to explore Sandy Hook Bay. The first permanent European settlement was established by the Dutch at Bergen (now Jersey City) in 1660.
In the 17th century, the New Jersey region came under the control of the Swedes and the Dutch, resulting in a struggle in which the Dutch proved victorious (1655). However, the English seized the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, renaming it the Province of New Jersey.
The New Jersey State Archives (NJSA) Project to process, conserve, index, and digitize New Jersey’s earliest land records is a multi-year project and is well underway. The NJSA regularly adds the processed documents and updated indexes to the their existing database of Early Land Records.
Peter O. Wacker. Introduction. Of all the original thirteen colonies, New Jersey's historical resources are perhaps the most varied. A major reason for this is that New Jersey was, without question, the most culturally diverse of the European North American colonies.
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New Jersey is a state within the United States of America that lies on the north eastern edge of the North American continent. It shares a land border with the state of New York along the north, ratified by both states after the New York – New Jersey Line War , which is its only straight line border.
