East Jersey was totally different in its topography from West Jersey.The northern half of the State is a region of mountains and lakes.As part of the original continent it had been under the ice sheet of the glacial age and was very unlike the level sands, swamps, and pine barrens of West Jersey which had arisen as a shoal and island from the sea.The only place in East Jersey where settlement was at all easy was along the open meadows which were reached by water near the mouth of the Hudson, round Newark Bay, and along the Hackensack River.
The Dutch, by the discoveries of Henry Hudson in 1609, claimed the whole region between the Hudson and the Delaware.They settled part of East Jersey opposite their headquarters at New York and called it Pavonia.But their cruel massacre of some Indians who sought refuge among them at Pavonia destroyed the prospects of the settlement.The Indians revenged themselves by massacring the Dutch again and again, every time they attempted to reestablish Pavonia.This kept the Dutch out of East Jersey until 1660, when they succeeded in establishing Bergen between Newark Bay and the Hudson.
The Dutch authority in America was overthrown in 1664 by Charles II, who had already given all New Jersey to his brother the Duke of York.Colonel Richard Nicolls commanded the British expedition that seized the Dutch possessions; and he had been given full power as deputy governor of all the Duke of York's vast territory.
Meantime the New England Puritans seem to have kept their eyes on East Jersey as a desirable region, and the moment the Connecticut Puritans heard of Nicolls' appointment, they applied to him for a grant of a large tract of land on Newark Bay.In the next year, 1665, he gave them another tract from the mouth of the Raritan to Sandy Hook; and soon the villages of Shrewsbury and Middletown were started.
Meantime, however, unknown to Nicolls, the Duke of York in England had given all of New Jersey to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret.As has already been pointed out, they had divided the province between them, and East Jersey had fallen to Carteret, who sent out, with some immigrants, his relative Philip Carteret as governor.Governor Carteret was of course very much surprised to find so much of the best land already occupied by the excellent and thrifty Yankees.As a consequence, litigation and sometimes civil war over this unlucky mistake lasted for a hundred years.Many of the Yankee settlers under the Nicolls grant refused to pay quitrents to Carteret or his successors and, in spite of a commission of inquiry from England in 1751 and a chancery suit, they held their own until the Revolution of 1776extinguished all British authority.
There was therefore from the beginning a strong New England tinge in East Jersey which has lasted to this day.Governor Carteret established a village on Newark Bay which still bears the name Elizabeth, which he gave it in honor of the wife of the proprietor, and he made it the capital.There were also immigrants from Scotland and England.But Puritans from Long Island and New England continued to settle round Newark Bay.By virtue either of character or numbers, New Englanders were evidently the controlling element, for they established the New England system of town government, and imposed strict Connecticut laws, making twelve crimes punishable with death.Soon there were flourishing little villages, Newark and Elizabeth, besides Middletown and Shrewsbury.The next year Piscatawa and Woodbridge were added.Newark and the region round it, including the Oranges, was settled by very exclusive Puritans, or Congregationalists, as they are now called, some thirty families from four Connecticut towns--Milford, Guilford, Bradford, and New Haven.They decided that only church members should hold office and vote.
Governor Carteret ruled the colony with an appointive council and a general assembly elected by the people, the typical colonial form of government.His administration lasted from 1665 to his death in 1682; and there is nothing very remarkable to record except the rebellion of the New Englanders, especially those who had received their land from Nicolls.Such independent Connecticut people were, of course, quite out of place in a proprietary colony, and, when in 1670 the first collection of quitrents was attempted, they broke out in violent opposition, in which the settlers of Elizabeth were prominent.In 1672 they elected a revolutionary assembly of their own and, in place of the deputy governor, appointed as proprietor a natural son of Carteret.They began imprisoning former officers and confiscating estates in the most approved revolutionary form and for a time had the whole government in their control.It required the interference of the Duke of York, of the proprietors, and of the British Crown to allay the little tempest, and three years were given in which to pay the quitrents.
After the death of Sir George Carteret in 1680, his province of East Jersey was sold to William Penn and eleven other Quakers for the sum of 3400 pounds.Colonies seem to have been comparatively inexpensive luxuries in those days.A few years before, in 1675, Penn and some other Quakers had, as has already been related, gained control of West Jersey for the still smaller sum of one thousand pounds and had established it as a Quaker refuge.It might be supposed that they now had the same purpose in view in East Jersey, but apparently their intention was to create a refuge for Presbyterians, the famous Scotch Covenanters, much persecuted at that time under Charles II, who was forcing them to conform to the Church of England.
