New Jersey State Facts & Information
New Jersey, state in the Middle Atlantic region of the United States. Its long eastern coast faces the Atlantic Ocean. To the northeast and north it is bordered by the Hudson River and New York. To the west lies Pennsylvania. New Jersey is separated from Delaware on the south and southwest by Delaware Bay and the Delaware River. Trenton is the capital of New Jersey. Newark is the largest city.
New Jersey is the fifth smallest state but one of the most diversified. Lying between New York City and Philadelphia, in the heart of the highly urbanized area called a megalopolis by some population experts, it is the second most urbanized state, behind only California, and the most densely populated. New Jersey is the only state in which all 21 counties are officially classified as “metropolitan” by the census. Yet it has wilderness areas, in the mountains of the northwest and the sparsely settled southern tidelands. New Jersey is in the forefront of industrial research and development, but the continuing importance of farming is reflected in its nickname, the Garden State. New Jersey’s ready access to the markets of New York City and Philadelphia led to an early specialization in fresh fruits and vegetable production. As early as the 17th century, colonists described the area as a garden because of its agricultural bounty.
Proud of its status as the third state to ratify the Constitution of the United States, entering the Union on December 18, 1787, New Jersey traces its history back more than 350 years. Its name derives from the island of Jersey in the English Channel, the birthplace of Sir George Carteret, a co-owner of New Jersey in the 17th century. The state contains many well-preserved monuments commemorating the American Revolution (1775-1783), many of whose battles were fought on New Jersey soil, including George Washington’s famed crossing of the Delaware River in December 1776, to defeat the British at Trenton.
Search New Jersey Historical Records - Databases include Court, Land, Wills & Financial Records; Birth, Marriage & Death Records; Voter Lists & Census Records; Immigration & Emigration Records; Obituary Records; Military Records; Family Tree Records; Pictures; Stories, Memories & Histories; Directories & Member Lists and much more....
List of New Jersey Counties
Select a county from the table below to to view more information on genealogical information & records pertaining to each county.
The State of New Jersey is divided into twenty-one counties in which are recorded transfers of land, estates, court, and other records. Each county is governed by a Board of Freeholders, whose records should not be overlooked. Other useful county records may be located in the courthouses or at the New Jersey State Archives, including Justice of the Peace Dockets; tavern, peddler's, and shopkeeper's licenses; road books; and slave births and manumissions.
Some New Jersey counties have established or are establishing county record centers and archives, to which older records are transferred for better preservation and use by researchers. Such facilities, in one stage or another, exist in the counties of Bergen, Cape May, Hudson, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Ocean, and Somerset. Most clerks still retain custody over such material and should be contacted first about the location and access to a particular record.
Most municipal records are still in the townships, boroughs, and cities, but some are at the state archives and the New Jersey Historical Society. These list earmarks (although some are also found in county records), indigents, elected officials, stray animals, and so forth. Choose from the counties below to view the county information.
New Jersey State History
The Official State Website is http://www.state.nj.us/.
After Henry Hudson’s initial explorations of the Hudson and Delaware River areas, numerous Dutch settlements were attempted in New Jersey, beginning as early as 1618. These settlements were soon abandoned because of altercations with the Lenni-Lenape (or Delaware), the original inhabitants. A more lasting settlement was made from 1638 to 1655 by the Swedes and Finns along the Delaware as part of New Sweden, and this continued to flourish although the Dutch eventually gained control over this area and made it part of New Netherland. By 1639, there were as many as six boweries, or small plantations, on the New Jersey side of the Hudson across from Manhattan. Two major confrontations with the native Indians in 1643 and 1655 destroyed all Dutch settlements in northern New Jersey, and not until 1660 was the first permanent settlement established—the village of Bergen, today part of Jersey City.
Of the settlers throughout the colonial period, only the English outnumbered the Dutch in New Jersey. When England acquired the New Netherland Colony from the Dutch in 1664, King Charles II gave his brother, the Duke of York (later King James II), all of New York and New Jersey. The duke in turn granted New Jersey to two of his creditors, Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. The land was named Nova Caesaria for the Isle of Jersey, Carteret’s home.
The year that England took control there was a large influx of English from New England and Long Island who, for want of more or better land, settled the East Jersey towns of Elizabethtown, Middletown, Piscataway, Shrewsbury, and Woodbridge. A year later, migrants from Connecticut founded Newark. In 1685 a large group of Scots came to Perth Amboy, but they were not part of the great wave of Ulster-Scots who in the 1720s began their immigration to the New World, including New Jersey. For a brief period, from 1673 to 1674, the Dutch regained control of New Jersey and New York, but it soon reverted back to the English.
The King renewed his agreement with Carteret for control of the northern part of the colony, but not with Berkeley, who was forced to sell his interests in the southern part to Quaker John Fenwick. When Carteret died, his widow sold his interests to another group of Quakers, which included William Penn, who in 1676, forced the setting of a boundary that divided the colony into two provinces, East and West. These provinces were controlled by proprietors, with capitols at Perth Amboy and Burlington, respectively. The poorly surveyed boundary cut diagonally across the state in such a way that all of the southern part fell in West Jersey, and the northern in East Jersey.
For two years beginning in April 1688, New Jersey was, with New York, part of the Dominion of New England, but no significant records of New Jersey seem to have been generated in its capital of Boston. The proprietors of both provinces gave up their right to rule in 1702 but continued to control first sales of the land. (The West Jersey Proprietors still hold this right today, although unappropriated parcels are rare; the East Jersey Proprietors dissolved in 1998.) New Jersey was then under united rule by the royal governor of New York and New Jersey until 1738, after which New Jersey had its own royal governor.
Significant migrations and immigrations continued into the eighteenth century, including the French Huguenots, who fled France. New Yorkers, mostly from Long Island, Staten Island, and New York City, settled throughout New Jersey, constituting the majority of the population in many counties. A large Dutch migration formed the basis of settlement in Bergen and Somerset counties, and contributed to the peopling of Middlesex and Monmouth counties. Some of the Palatines who immigrated to New York in 1709 came to New Jersey, as did Germans who entered through Philadelphia throughout the 1700s. Descendants of some of these families migrated to northwestern New Jersey.
New Jersey was a major battleground during the Revolutionary War, with more battles fought on its soil than in any other colony. Both American and British troops ravaged much of New Jersey as both armies passed back and forth from New York and Pennsylvania, which caused some destruction of records. New Jersey residents were quite divided by the war, and a large number of Loyalists left for Canada.
Throughout the nineteenth century, the state continued to grow through increased development of transportation, including the completion in 1834 of a canal connecting the Delaware and Raritan rivers that enabled faster travel between Philadelphia and New York. Since New Jersey is completely surrounded by water, with the exception of its forty-eight-mile border with New York, the canal remained one of its major means of transportation until the Civil War.
The years immediately before and following the war saw the coming of the railroads and development of roadways, which today make New Jersey the major corridor between the northeast and the south. The 1800s also saw New Jersey develop industrially, starting with the establishment of the nation’s first factory town at the site of present-day Paterson. New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the country, with many of its families moving back and forth, to and from—and many of its residents commuting to work in—the neighboring states of New York and Pennsylvania.
New Jersey Counties with Burned Courthouses
The destruction of courthouses greatly affects genealogists in every way. No only are these historic structures torn from our lives, so are the records they housed: marriage, wills, probate, land records, and others. Once destroyed they are lost forever. Even if they have been placed on mircofilm, computers and film burn too. The most heartbreaking side of this is the fact that many of our courthouses are destroyed at the hands of arsonist. However, not all records were lost.
Below is a list of New Jersey Counties and the years the Courthouses were subjected to a disaster. This does NOT mean that ALL RECORDS were lost. Often, folks took their documents again in for recording after a disaster and later deeds will contain long chains of title, etc.
- Somerset County - Courthouse burned in 1799
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