Part of the American History and
Genealogy Project
The Settlers of East Jersey
To the province of East Jersey the settlers
brought a strong spirit of political and religious independence.
Whether they came from Massachusetts, the Connecticut Valley,
from the "shore" communities of Long Island, or from the
Calvinistic centers of England and Scotland, they were filled
with that mighty purpose to create in the new land a government
where political righteousness should guide the course of the
State. In this effort, as in all attempts to establish a
community upon the teachings of a given creed, there was a
tendency toward political dogmatism. In nearly all the East
Jersey towns political preferment was based upon strict
adherence to the teachings of a particular religious society,
while the settlers of Newark went so far as to provide that only
those who were members of a Congregational church should be
allowed to hold office and vote.
While this restrictive action may be subjected to criticism, it
was quite in accord with the spirit of the age. Most of the
influential men of East Jersey had experienced the wave of
religious enthusiasm which had swept over England and Scotland,
upon the coming of Cromwell, and which flooded New England with
high resolve and concomitant austerity. It had been a time of
religious controversy, and of the establishment of new forms of
religious belief. Nor was the spirit less noticeable in West
Jersey, where the Society of Friends did not outwardly declare
the union of church and State, but where the power of the
meeting to make the careers of men was equally potent.
The English speaking colonists of East Jersey, in the main, were
of yeoman stock. Various motives underlay the action of the
settlers. The return of the House of Stuart to power, with the
re-establishment of a dissolute court and the general popular
reaction from the social, political, and ecclesiastical
severities of the Cromwellian movement, gave to the majority of
the new comers sufficient excuse for leaving England. Others
from New England hoped to find in East Jersey a land more
hospitable, where the power of the church might be further
extended. Some were moved by an evangelical spirit, wishing to
convert the Indian and to establish their faith in a land beyond
the sea; others dimly saw that there might grow up powerful
dependencies of the crown in which a certain religious faith
would be dominant, while a small number were moved by a
restlessness, and gave religious persecutions as an excuse for a
life of adventure and, mayhap, of profit.
But over all and under all ran the spirit of theocracy, which
entered into the daily acts of the entire body of emigration.
The rigidity of the local laws, the strictness of church
discipline, the slowness of assimilation with the Dutch, who, in
creed, were with them but not of them, the intense striving for
a theocratic commonwealth, gave a harshness to life, but it
likewise gave a stability to East Jersey that has been permanent
throughout all the modifications of government and the later
injection of cosmopolitan social elements.
But one instance need be cited to show the distinctively
Calvinistic type of early East Jersey life. It is in the matter
of personal nomenclature. To East Jersey the settlers from New
and Old England brought Christian names indicative of a Puritan
and in some cases Quaker ancestry. Among ancient deeds and wills
are to be found some curiosities of "given names" which
descendants have carried down to distant generations. Thus in
the family of Lippincotts, of Shrewsbury, in 1683, were living
Freedom, Remembrance, and Restore. Jedediah Allen, who lived
near by, in Neversink, had among his children Experience,
Ephraim, Judah, and Patience, while in 1688, in that portion of
Monmouth County, resided Exercis, probably a corrupt spelling of
Exercise, and Elisone Coale, daughters of Jacob. Among the names
of women appear Sybiah Dennis, Faith Hewitt, in 1691, and Safty
(Safety) Grover, the latter a daughter of James, of Middletown.
In 1697 there was Hope Bloomfield, of Woodbridge; in 1701,
Eupham, wife of John Johnston, of Monmouth County, and Bethiah
Kitchell, daughter of William, whose home, in 1683, was in
Newark. In 1694 Hephziabiah Mannin, of Piscataway, was the widow
of one of the plantation owners, and in 1697 Tidey buried her
husband, George Warren, of Elizabethtown. Comfort was the wife
of Samuel Marsh, of Rahway, while Deliverance is mentioned as a
daughter of John Throgmorton, of Middletown.
Among the children of Thomas Thomson, of Elizabeth, in 1675,
were Aaron, Moses, and Hur. In 1669 Hopewell Hull was a settler
in Woodbridge; Dishturner Ward appears in Newark in 1696; and in
1694 Barefoot Brynson is alluded to as a son of Daniel. In 1682,
or shortly thereafter, occurred the marriage of Nidemiah
Sanford, daughter of William, to Richard Berry, son of John
Berry. The respective fathers presented to the young couple as
wedding gifts several slaves. John Berry had, among other
children, Peregrine and Grace.
An examination of Christian names throughout this period shows
the strong influence of Biblical nomenclature. Aside from these
somewhat eccentric designations appear a host of names still
common. Except in a few cases, those of distinctively
Norman-French origin, and not found in the Old and New
Testaments, are extremely rare.
Toward the close of the seventeenth century there came into East
Jersey, and to a limited degree in West Jersey, particularly in
Salem, a new and valuable racial element. This was the French
Huguenot, who, bringing to the eastern division the faith of
Calvin, found, at least, a community of religious interest among
the English and Scotch.
The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV, in 1685,
drove from France no less than half a million Protestants, who,
under the name of Huguenots, sought in other lands that freedom
of conscience denied them in their own country. So bitter was
the persecution that by 1705, it is said, there was not an
organized Huguenot congregation in all France.
To these people, many of whom were of the ancient nobility and
nearly all of eminent respectability, the English colonies in
America opened an avenue of escape from the rigors of the
governmental inquiry and persecution. To nearly every seaport
between Nova Scotia and Florida they came, many selecting New
York and some Philadelphia as their new homes. From these
centers the movements of population carried certain of these
French families to New Jersey. By 1686, and even earlier,
Huguenot family names appear in the towns of the Monmouth shore.
With their coming a new element appeared in the provinces--an
element which was so distinctively Romance as to make its
presence among settlers of Germanic stock as picturesque as it
was valuable.
With but few exceptions the Huguenot had no political ambitions,
or at least had not in the early years of the eighteenth
century. He spoke not the language of his new home. Around him
lay restraints in his advancement in the political state, which
a new generation did not overcome. Yet the Huguenot social and
moral influence was early patent and has remained a power until
the present day.
To New Jersey came Antoine Pintard, Peter Bard, Pierre le Conte,
Joseph Ray, Ives Ballinger, Elias Boudinot, and Hyppolite le
Fever, names with which one could conjure in either East or West
Jersey. There, too, were the De la Fontaines, the Stelles,
Monsieur Hance, Jaques la Rue, the De Cous, John de la Valle,
and the Demarests, some of whom, forgotten, some remembered,
have impressed themselves and their families upon the history of
New Jersey.
Too few in number, too weak to sustain racial customs or
language, the children of the original emigrants contracted
marriages among those not of distinctively French ancestry. In a
few instances the Huguenot blood remained unmixed until the
Revolution, yet in the general breaking down of social lines
following the war even this characteristic became lost. No trace
of any French words which may have been contributed to the
English language, as used in New Jersey, remains.
The influence of the Huguenots in New Jersey is subjective
rather than objective. They stimulated the growth of the
Protestant, particularly the Presbyterian churches in East
Jersey, most of the Huguenots in West Jersey attaching
themselves to Saint Mary's at Burlington or joining the Society
of Friends. As large landowners, possessed of personal estate
embracing objects of value, with artistic taste, they brought
new refinements to America, and gave to their children a love
for the beautiful--a sentiment in which the English were often
lacking, by reason of environment, or which, if present, was
suppressed on account of the severity of religious discipline.
But standing clear and distinct against the early colonial
horizon, the Huguenot star shines brightly, but under the later
glow of the sun of English influence it merges into the greater
glory. Yet the star dimmed remains in its courses, even while
the sun stands in meridian.
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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