Note:
The Star Ledger article incorrectly refers to the records deposit
as a gift and donation.
GIFT TO
JERSEY: BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Thursday, December 15, 2005
BY TOM HESTER
Star-Ledger Staff
It was an early holiday gift and added to a run of good fortune
that has spread good cheer throughout the New Jersey historical
community.
Thousands of
important documents related to the settlement of Colonial West Jersey
in the 1600s and 1700s -- some bearing the rare signatures of William
Penn, the Duke of York (later England's King James II) and Sir George
Carteret -- were donated to the State Archives in Trenton yesterday
by an organization that traces its roots to the founders of the
province.
The jewel of
the collection is a 1677 document archivists describe as the constitution
of West Jersey. They maintain it served, in part, as a basis for
the U.S. Constitution.
Titled "Concessions
and Agreements of the Proprietors, Freeholders and Inhabitants of
the Province of West Jersey in America," it calls for, among
other things, equal rights for women, the education of girls, trial
by jury and fair treatment of Native Americans.
"If you
asked me 10 years ago if I thought it would be possible to obtain
both the East and West Jersey proprietary records and that they
would be available in the State Archives, I would have said no,"
said Joseph R. Klett, the archives chief. "This is a wonderful
gift from the West Jersey Council, and the collection adds immeasurably
to the State Archives."
This is the
third major acquisition related to Colonial New Jersey the state
has obtained in the past seven years. On June 21, it bid $656,760
to obtain 11 rare maps and documents that detail the early European
settlement of New Jersey, which were being auctioned at Christie's
in New York. In 1998, the now-defunct East Jersey Proprietors donated
thousands of their records, which also date back to the 1600s.
Included among
the yellowed and frayed but neatly hand-written parchment documents
obtained yesterday were:
 An
agreement conveying land to William Penn, a founder of West Jersey,
which bears his seal in red wax, a rare example of that identification
mark, as well as his signature, still clearly visible. Penn was
the founder of Pennsylvania.
A
lease signed simply but boldly "James," as in the future
James II, granting "New Jersey" -- actually West Jersey
-- to Carteret and John Lord Berkeley in 1664.
A 1719 surveyor's map fixing the location of the three-way border
where West Jersey met East Jersey and New York at the Delaware River;
it highlights a Lenape Indian village at the riverbank. West Jersey,
settled mainly by Quakers fleeing persecution in England, extended
west and south of a line that ran from that point to the southern
end of Long Beach Island. East and north of that line was the province
of East Jersey. Together they became the state of New Jersey in
1776.
A tattered book contains the minutes of the Council of Proprietors
of West New Jersey from 1688.
Maps,
record books, land surveys and newspapers.
In all, the
archives received 11 large parchment documents from 1664 to 1763;
55 bound volumes of minutes, surveys, warrants and other records
dating from 1676 to 1909; surveys from 1680 to the 1900s; and 52
boxes of rolled maps and plans dating to the 1700s.
Robert S. Haines,
the Proprietors' president who negotiated with Klett for two years,
said the documents include the original papers for virtually every
piece of property in West Jersey. He said the safety of the documents
and making them available to researchers were strong considerations
in the decision.
"The archives
has state-of-the-art security and care we could never duplicate,"
he said. "These documents are so important and precious, they
need the best of care, something that we could never afford."
The 330-year-old
Proprietors Council is the legal successor to Lord Berkeley and
had protected the documents in a steel and concrete vault at its
headquarters in Burlington City. The organization is still approached
by lawyers, surveyors and real estate agents to help settle land
disputes, according to William H. Taylor of Haddonfield, the Proprietors'
surveyor general.
Klett said the
documents will be examined to determine the need for repairs by
professional conservationists, catalogued and made available to
researchers. He said reproductions of especially historic papers
will eventually be exhibited for the public.
© Star-Ledger
|
Historical Archives Changes Hands in New Jersey -
14 December 2005 [©WPVI-TV, Philadelphia, www.6abc.com]
