New Jersey History (1609) from The Original 13-A Documentary History of Religion in America’s First Thirteen States (Amerisearch, 2009):
<On September 4, 1609, explorer Henry Hudson, sailing for the Dutch East India Company, dropped anchor in Cape May and went ashore with 20 men to explore. The first European explorers to view the coast of New Jersey were Italian John Cabot in 1497 and Giovanni da Verrazano in 1524.
In 1610, English Captain Samuel Argall named the river and the land southwest of it “Delaware,” after the Governor of Virginia Thomas West, 3rd Baron De la Warr.
In 1620, Dutch Captain Cornelius Jacobsen Mey first sailed up the Delaware River, and in 1623 built Fort Nassau to trade fur with the Indians. This is considered the first permanent settlement in the State of New Jersey.
In 1637, Lutherans intending to settle “New Sweden” in America set sail from the Kingdom of Sweden, which in the 17th century included parts of Finland, Norway, Russia, Poland, Germany, Estonia, and Latvia. The expedition was organized by Finnish Admiral Klaus Fleming, fitted out by Dutch Samuel Blommaert, and led by German Walloon, Peter Minuit.
In March of 1638, the ships Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel arrived in Delaware Bay, an area claimed by the Dutch. They sailed past Cape May and Cape Henlopen and anchored at a rocky point on the Minquas Kill, known today as Swedes’ Landing. They built Fort Christina, named after Sweden’s Queen Christina, at the present-day site of Wilmington, Delaware.
Within a short time, 600 Swedes and Finns settled there with their Protestant Governor, Peter Minuit, who had previously been Director of the Dutch West India Company.
The area was occupied by the Lenni-Lenape tribe, part of the larger Algonquian-speaking Indians. Each with its own chief, the Lenni-Lenape were divided into three groups: Minsi of the stony north country; Unilachitgo near the ocean in the south; and Unami on the river in the center. The chief of the Unami had a reputation for keeping peace and was the leader in settling inter-tribal conflicts. The Lenni-Lenape made a treaty with Peter Minuit in his cabin on the Kalmar Nyckel and arranged the purchase of areas of Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.
The Dutch Reformed settlers protested the landing of the Swedish Lutherans, but Minuit ignored the Dutch as their military was weak at the time. After finishing Fort Christina in 1638, Minuit sailed back to Stockholm for more settlers, but died on the way, caught in a hurricane while sailing through the Caribbean to get a load of tobacco.
Finnish Lutheran Captain Mauno Kling became the second governor of New Sweden and the colony expanded on the north bank of the Delaware River, establishing the trading Fort Nya Elfsborg in 1643, near present-day Salem, New Jersey.
In May 1654, the New Sweden colony, led by Governor Johan Rising, captured without force the Dutch Fort Casimir, present-day New Castle, Delaware. It was renamed Fort Trinity. In retaliation, Governor Peter Stuyvesant of the Dutch New Netherland colony came the next year and captured Swedish Fort Trinity and Fort Christina. The Dutch allowed Swedish and Finnish Lutherans to have a fair amount of freedom.
In 1632, England’s Charles I had granted to Sir Edmund Plowden the land of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland, although he had previously granted Maryland to Lord Baltimore. In 1634, Plowden granted 10,000 acres to Sir Thomas Danby on condition he would settle 100 planters there and prevent “any to live thereon not believing or professing the three Christian creeds commonly called the Apostolical, Athanasian, and Nicene.”
In 1642, Plowden sailed up the Delaware River and founded Salem City. Disputes arose between the English, Swedes and Dutch as to who had title to the land. These disputes continued until the British defeated the Dutch in the first Anglo-Dutch War in 1654. Admiral William Penn, father of the famous Quaker convert, was instrumental in the English victory.
In 1655, Jewish fur traders had ventured to southern New Jersey.
In 1662, a small Dutch Reformed school in Bergen, now Jersey City, marked the beginning of New Jersey’s free public school system.
On March 12, 1664, England’s Charles II deeded to his brother James, Duke of York, the land of New York, New Jersey, and much of New England. In the summer of 1664 armed British vessels appeared in Dutch New Netherlands and after negotiations, the Dutch surrendered.
The British attempted to establish the Church of England, though enforced with varying degrees of intensity. The Duke of York, who later became England’s King James II, transferred New Jersey to Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. George’s brother, Philip Cateret, was made Governor and landed at Elizabeth in August, 1665. By granting a liberal form of government, settlers were attracted from England, Scotland, New England, Long Island and Connecticut. These were largely Calvinists from Presbyterian and Congregational communities.
There was no longer a “New Sweden,” yet the Swedish settlers moved further up the Delaware river and in 1669 built Fort Wicaco across the river from New Jersey. This land was later granted to Admiral William Penn’s son, who founded Philadelphia there in 1681.
The Old Swedes’ Gloria Dei Church originally was begun in 1646 on Tinicum Island, the capitol of New Sweden from 1643 to 1655. It was founded by missionary Johannes Campanius, who was one of the first to spread the Gospel among native Americans. His translation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism is the first book published in the Algonquin language. In 1677, the Church moved to a blockhouse at Fort Wicaco, now in South Philadelphia, and its new building on the same site, dedicated July 2, 1700, is the oldest Church in Pennsylvania.
In 1698, Jews settlers Aaron Louzada and his family came to Bound Brook, New Jersey.
A few Catholics lived in Woodbridge and Elizabethtown, New Jersey, in 1672, being ministered to by visiting Father Harvey and Father Gage.
Catholics were viewed with suspicion, as seen in the case of Catholic William Douglass, who was elected a representative from Bergen County but was not allowed in the General Assembly of 1668 because of his faith.
On March 18, 1673, Lord Berkeley sold his interest in New Jersey to Quakers John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge for one thousand pounds. A dispute arose and William Penn was called to arbitrate, resulting in the divisions of East and West Jersey, the East resembling New England civil government and the West resembling Virginia civil government.
New Jersey was recaptured in 1673 by the Dutch, who held the colony until the British captured in again in 1674, and Sir Edmund Andros was made the new Governor.
New York’s Assembly passed its first anti-Catholic bill in 1691, which was mirrored in New Jersey.
In 1702, Queen Anne united East and West Jersey and appointed her cousin, Lord Cornbury, as Governor. His instruction from Queen Anne was to permit liberty of conscience to all persons except “Papists.” One of the most corrupt Governors and notorious for his cross-dressing as a woman, Lord Cornbury attempted increase his personal wealth by requiring all men to join the militia or pay a fine. When Quakers refused, as their faith prohibited military service, they had to pay high fines and much of their land was confiscated.
In 1738, Lewis Morris was made Governor and in 1763, William Franklin, son of Ben Franklin, served as the last Royal Governor of New Jersey. He performed the marriage of John and Betsy Ross, and signed the charter for Queen’s College, which later became Rutgers University. The first Jewish graduate from Rutgers University was Samuel Judah in 1816.
In the 1740’s, German Moravians, called the “Church of the Brethren,” began arriving, working particularly with the Native Americans.
In 1744, Father Theodore Schneider visited the few Catholics in New Jersey. Having some skill in medicine, he traveled under the name Dr. Schneider so as not to be discovered. In 1749, Father Robert Harding arrived in Philadelphia from England and occasionally crossed the river to minister in New Jersey until his death in 1772. Father Ferdinand Farmer also visited New Jersey. Patrick Colvin, perhaps the only Catholic in Trenton in 1776, helped furnish boats to transport Washington’s army across the Delaware on December 25, 1776.
When the Revolution began, New Jersey was mostly Episcopal, Quaker and Scotch-Irish Calvinist. New Jersey was called “The Crossroads of the Revolution” as so many military engagements occurred there: Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth, Red Bank, Salem, Springfield, Elizabeth, Hackensack, and Morristown.
New Jersey’s first State Constitution, July 2, 1776, provided: “that no Protestant inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right.”
For four months in 1783, Princeton University was the nation’s Capital. It was there the Continental Congress learned the Revolutionary War had ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. The President of Princeton was Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon, who signed the Declaration of Independence and was a leading member in Congress. Originally from Scotland, Witherspoon taught 9 of the writers of the U.S. Constitution, including James Madison.
New Jersey was the 3rd state to ratify the U.S. Constitution in 1789 and the first to ratify the Bill of Rights in 1791. In 1799, St. John’s parish at Trenton, now the parish of the Sacred Heart, was the first Catholic parish established in New Jersey.
On February 15, 1804, New Jersey enacted legislation that slowly phased out slavery.
Beginning in 1846, the terrible famine in Ireland brought a great number of Irish Catholics to New Jersey. In 1848, Father Bernard J. McQuaid began pastor at Madison, New Jersey, and had missions at Morristown, Dover, Mendham, Basking Ridge, and Springfield.
He opened the first Catholic school in New Jersey at Madison. James Roosevelt Bayley was appointed the first Bishop of Newark.
The second Constitution of New Jersey, adopted in 1844, provided: “no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust; and no person shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles.”
No Civil War battles took place in the state, though over 80,000 enlisted in the Union army.
During the years 1870 to 1910, over a million Swedish Lutheran immigrants came to the United States, though most eventually went west, settling in large numbers in Minnesota. With the exception of Ireland and Norway, no other European country has had a higher percentage of its population leave for the United States.
As of 1910, State statutes prohibited worldly business on Sunday, except works of necessity or charity.
Oaths were administered to witnesses in courts by the uplifted hand or on the Bible, except where one declared himself, for conscientious reasons, to be scrupulous concerning the taking of an oath, in which case his solemn affirmation was accepted.
Blasphemy and profanity were punishable by fine. Legislative sessions were opened by prayer.
Catholic clergymen frequently officiated in both houses on such occasions.
Statutes in 1910 stated that marriages could be officiated by state officers and every “ordained minister of the Gospel” and that “a man shall not marry any of his ancestors or descendants, or his sister, or the daughter of his brother or sister, or the sister of his father or mother, whether such collateral kindred be of the whole or half blood.
A woman shall not marry any of her ancestors or descendants, or her brother, or the son of her brother or sister, or the brother of her father or mother, whether such collateral kindred be of the whole or half blood.”
In 1910, the Catholic population of the state was 500,000. According to a 2000 census, New Jersey was 46 percent Catholic and 35 percent Protestant. Since 2000, Pentacostals have had a 22 percent growth and Baptists have had a 10 growth.
The small percent of Hindus and Sikhs have also grown. New Jersey is 6 percent Jewish, making it the State with the largest Jewish population by percent. New Jersey also has the second largest Muslim population by percent, after Michigan. Immigrants include: Italian, Irish, Black, German, Polish, Slavic, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, Arab and Asian.
Though a small Jewish population existed in New Jersey since the late 1600’s, the majority of Jews arrived between 1892 and 1954, when two thirds of the 12 million Jewish immigrants who passed through Ellis Island took the ferry to New Jersey.
They founded Newark’s Beth Israel Hospital, worked in the silk looms in Paterson, baked challahs in Trento, worked as chicken farmers in Monmouth County, worked in garment factories in Roosevelt and storekeepers in New Brunswick.
Among the Jews who came to New Jersey was Albert Einstein, serving as a professor at Princeton.> 1609NJ001
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1609NJ001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). New Jersey History, beginning in 1609, from The Original 13-A Documentary History of Religion in America’s First Thirteen States (Amerisearch, Inc., 2009).
This post originally appeared at https://americanminute.com/blogs/todays-american-minute/new-jersey-history-1609