Part of the American History and
Genealogy Project
Settlers of West Jersey
The close of the seventeenth century in
England was marked, in one respect, by a widespread interest
concerning colonial affairs. The age of fable touching the
mother country's transatlantic possessions, when effort was made
to find the palm-crowned isles of the Indies at the headwaters
of the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, and James Rivers, or to
seek for gold in Virginia or silver in Massachusetts, had given
place to a period when sober, common sense was asserting itself.
Peace reigned in England, and rural and municipal industries
were thriving to the degree that the problem of congestion of
population in great centers was a factor in social life.
Charles II as prodigal with his favors of land grants to his
adherents as he was of money to the beauties of his court, had
already granted New Jersey to Carteret and Berkeley, as well as
Pennsylvania to William Penn. Having thus discharged his debts,
he left to the proprietors the burden of peopling their domains,
and of providing fit and proper governments for their lands
oversea. To accomplish these ends the owners of New Jersey and
Pennsylvania were most active. Although Carteret and Berkeley's
interests became lodged in proprietary boards, and Penn's estate
was managed by agents, the British Isles, and indeed most of
Eastern Europe, rang with the advantages of Pennsylvania and the
Jerseys as a place where man could find health and liberty and
the enjoyment of perfect happiness. Pamphlets, tracts,
circulars, broadsides, and volumes of merit spread the gospel of
colonization.
But it was West Jersey that offered to the prospective settler
the rarest advantages. The Delaware, open to the sea, and
suitable for the largest ships and the up-building of trade,
received many tributary streams, sluggish and shallow, whose
banks were loamy and fertile. Undeniably was it true that the
low and easily tilled plains which swept eastward and southward
from the Delaware, the short winters and long, hot summers, and
the supply of timber made life less rigorous along the Delaware
than it was on the banks of the rivers emptying into New York
Bay. To the southward were the tidal meadows covered with sea
fowl, in the forests game in such abundance that no man need
starve. To the settler were such alluring prospects held out,
coupled with the assurance of a stable, democratic form of
government.
The towns upon the Delaware and its streams sprang into being
under the advent of a body of settlers whose customs, modes of
life, and desires were directed toward a common object. The
Quaker brought to West Jersey a steadfast purpose, a hope, maybe
a dream, that the new colony would be a model for the world,
but, in a land of plenty and under the influence of an equitable
climate, a natural tendency asserted itself. As compared with
East Jersey, the unconscious but constant tendency was to
develop along the lines of least natural resistance, to use what
was present rather than create for the future, and to drift into
a state of existence of which the motto was laissez faire.
The most characteristic feature of the economic development of
West Jersey was the establishment of a land-owning class.
Whether or not this was designed will probably never be known,
but certain it is that those who had money or ready credit
invested heavily, as the records show, in real estate. As the
ownership of land was, at the time, an indication of wealth, the
men of the largest acreages were given a prominence which
naturally brought with it the best and most profitable
relationships in the commercial, political, and religious life
of the period. The result was the formation of a
plantation-owning aristocracy, which was perpetuated by a
certain religious tenet.
It was the rule of the Society of Friends to "marry in meeting";
that is the union of a Quaker and a Presbyterian or Episcopalian
was not only discountenanced, but was absolutely forbidden, to
the degree of religious and social ostracism. Thus it was that a
wealthy member of the Society, having a daughter, sought to
unite her in marriage to some worthy young man of another
land-owning family, and join the two estates. The result was
that thousands of acres came into the possession of
comparatively few families. There grew up a social condition not
unlike that of tidewater Virginia and Maryland, differing,
however, in the fact that amusements, diversions, and laxities
permitted in the South were absolutely prohibited in West
Jersey. But in so far that the men became wealthy farmers, and
owners of saw and grist mills, content to secure the luxuries of
life from city merchants, and to use up at home the products of
their farms, the similarity between West Jersey and Virginia or
Maryland is perfect.
Not only were the two Jerseys different in natural advantages,
but in the political and religious concepts of the settlers,
although the dominant spirit was English, there was marked
variation. In East Jersey the small towns became stirring
entities, with an intense individuality. In West Jersey the
county capitals were surrounded by small satellites. The rigors
of stern New England justice spread terror among offenders of
Newark, Amboy, and Shrewsbury. In Burlington and Salem no public
execution, so far as is known, ever took place. In the one
colony the Calvinistic ministers echoed the thunders from Sinai;
the other repeated again and again the Sermon on the Mount.
While the Calvinists cried aloud that there should be some who
would forever endure torment, cursed by original sin, the
Quakers bent in silent prayer, in the belief that no one who
repented would be lost. One kept the sacred ordinances; the
other threw them all aside. The Calvinist too often preached the
doctrine of lex talionis, the Quaker the doctrine of
non-resistance. One had its paid ministry, with glebe and a
highly developed organization of its congregations; the other
had its "accepted ministers," who received no pay, and with the
elders governed the Society. Among the Calvinists there was a
democratic sentiment, naturally engendered by the virility of
the faith; among the Quakers a constant bent toward
conservatism, which ultimately served to weaken the Society, but
which was its earliest and greatest source of strength.
But the religion of neither the Calvinist nor the Quaker was an
outward garb. With all the fanaticism and uplifting of a dogma
there was an intensity and earnestness about both that made
their denominational fervor something more than a convenience
and a mere outward show. At least, Calvinist and Quaker had one
object in common, the stamping upon the individual the full
force of their religious teaching. This applied equally to his
domestic or to his political affairs, in which latter phase both
faiths tended to strengthen the doctrine that the hope of a
nation lies in the establishment and perpetuation of a Christian
state.
Source:
New Jersey as a Colony and as a State, One of the Original
Thirteen, by Francis Bazley Lee, Associate Board of Editors
William S. Stryker, LL.D.: William Nelson, A.M., Garret D. W.
Vroom: Ernest C. Richardson, PH. D.; Volume One; The Publishing
Society of New Jersey New York MDCCCCII (1902) transcribed by
Fred Kunchick
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