Edited by GET NJ
Copyright 2003

The terminal points for the Northern Boundary were also the subjects of controversy very soon after the first settlements were begun; the proprietors of East and West Jersey and the patentees of land in the adjoining parts of New York having different views in regard to the extent of each other's rights. The eastern extremity of the boundary was first determined to be at the mouth of Tappan Creek, afterwards it was claimed that it properly began opposite the mouth of Spuyten Duyvil Creek, and still other claims were presented for its location at various points between these extremes. The western end of the boundary was proposed by some to be fixed at the head of Delaware Bay, and by various others at the mouths of the Lehigh, the Nevesink, the Popaxtun and the Mohawk branches of Delaware river, and at the lower end of Minisink Island. Many attempts were made to reconcile these conflicting claims and to ascertain and mark the line.

Among these is the following, which is on record in the office of the Secretary of State of New Jersey, Book F, 2 Deeds, p. 435.

"By His Excellency Lewis Morris, Esq., Captain General and Governorin Chief of His Majesty's Province of New Jersey and Territories thereon depending in America, and Vice Admiral in the same &c.

"I do hereby certify that sometime in or about, as I believe, the year 1685 or 1686, Colonel Thomas Dongan then Governor of New York with some of the gentlemen of the Council of New York and others, met with Gawen Lawrie then Governor of New Jersey and some of the gentlemen of the Council of New Jersey and others, at a place nigh which stood afterwards the house of Col. William Merret on the west side of Hudson's River, where an observation was there made of the latitude, and marked with a pen knife on a beech tree standing by a small run or spring of water that runs down on the north side of the place where, I think, Merret's house afterwards stood. Some time early in the beginning of the year 1691, I went and remarked the said tree, but do not remember what was the latitude that was marked thereon. They went afterwards to a house to the southward of a place called Verdrietige Hook, and from thence southerly to a farmer's house to the northward of the Tapan meadow, at the bottom of the Bay. I cannot particularly remember whether observations were made at one or both these places, but I was told they then did agree that the mouth of Tapan Creek, should be the point of partition on Hudson's River between the Province of New York and that of New Jersey.

LEWIS MORRIS.

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