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Originally published in 1939
Some of this information may no longer be current and in that case is presented for historical interest only.
Edited by GET NJ, COPYRIGHT 2002
The Swedes came to New Jersey shortly after the New Sweden Company had built a fort and trading post in 1638 on the western shore of
Delaware River. A vast tract of land between Cape May and Raccoon
Creek was purchased from the Indians in 1640; small trading posts were
peopled mostly with Flemings, Walloons, and Finns. The enterprise was
poorly managed, however, and failed to attract many settlers.
The Dutch, who had reoccupied Fort Nassau after the Swedish arrival,
were for a time friendly enough with the Swedes on the Delaware to
unite with them against the encroaching English, whose claim was based
upon John Cabot's discovery of North America in 1497. However, the
Dutch unwisely considered Swedish competition in furs more dangerous
than England's territorial ambitions. During the autumn of 1655 Peter
Stuyvesant, Governor of New Netherland, peacefully took over the Swedish forts on the Delaware basin, thus ending the Swedish phase of the
Colony's history.
With the problems of its Rebellion and stormy Protectorate behind it,
England seriously went into the business of colonization. In 1664, Charles
II granted to his brother James, Duke of York, the Dutch domain, which
included the area now New Jersey. In the same year the English took
over New Netherland with a naval expedition. Having been treated by
the mother country as less important than the fur-bearing animals they
trapped, the few hundred Dutch and Swedish colonials in the New Jersey
section of the grant indifferently took the oath of allegiance to England.
The change in sovereigns was far more significant than the inhabitants
of Bergen, the largest settlement, could have sensed. From its experience
in Virginia and Massachusetts Bay, England was learning that permanent
settlements were commercially sounder than the trading posts established
by the Dutch and Swedes as a short-cut to riches. As an indication that
colonization was to be the English policy, the Duke of York's Deputy
Governor in New York, Richard Nicolls, immediately issued the so-called
Elizabethtown and Monmouth patents, providing for the founding of
New Jersey towns on the New England model.
While Nicolls was still at sea, the Duke of York in June 1664 created
New Jersey with a stroke of his quill. He granted the area between the
Hudson and Delaware Rivers to two of his favorites, John, Lord Berkeley
and Sir George Carteret. The area was to be known as Nova Caesarea or
New Jersey in memory of the island where in 165o Carteret as Governor
had sheltered the Duke from Puritan England. The new proprietors commissioned 26-year-old Philip Carteret, a. cousin of Sir George, as New
Jersey's first English Governor.
York's simple act not only created New Jersey but also perplexities for
the Colony for the next 40 years. Unaware of the Duke's grant, Governor
Nicolls in New York encouraged settlements at the sites of contemporary
Elizabeth, Shrewsbury, and Middletown. These settlements, as well as that
of Newark in 1666, were made chiefly by religious dissenters from New
England and by adventurous Long Islanders. Confusion began when Philip
Carteret arrived at Elizabethtown in 1665 and was surprised to find four
families under the Nicolls grant. Some of the colonists brought by Nicolls
compromised temporarily by taking the oath of allegiance required by
Berkeley and Carteret.
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