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Timeline

Native Jersey Residents – Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians of the Eastern Algonquin Confederacy

 

1524  Giovanni da Verrazano, under French flag, explored the eastern coast of New Jersey and New York Bay
 

1609  Henry Hudson and John Colman, Dutch West India Company, explored the Hudson River and the west side of Staten Island and discovered Newark Bay and the Passaic and Hackensack Rivers
 

1610  Virginia's Captain Samuel Argall explored Delaware Bay and named it after Baron De la Warr
 

1614   Dutch captain Cornelis Mey explored lower Delaware and named it Cape May
 

1618    Dutch fortification on site of Jersey City
 

1624    Dutch settlement of Fort Nassau
 

1626    Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam
 

1630    Dutch settlement of Pavonia
 

1638    New Sweden founded
 

1642    Swedesboro (Raccoon)
 

1643    Swedish settlement of Fort Elfsborg (near Salem)
 

1655    Dutch conquest of New Sweden
 

1660    Dutch settlement of Bergen
 

1664-1702  Proprietary Rule by English

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1664    James, Duke of York, granted proprietary of New York (Maine to St. Croix) by Charles II
 

Jun 1664    James, Duke of York, gifts New Jersey to John, Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret
 

Aug/Sep 1664    James’s small fleet forces the surrender of New Netherland to England
 

Sep 1664    Richard Nicolls, having sailed with the fleet, becomes James’s appointed Governor
 

Sep 30, 1664    Governor Nicolls grants the petition to Associates to purchase lands beyond the Hudson (site of the Elizabeth Colony)
 

Oct 28, 1664    The Associates (Elizabeth Colony) purchase all the lands between the Raritan and Passaic Rivers from the Indians
 

Nov 1664    Settlement of Elizabethtown, the first English town in New Jersey
 

Apr 8, 1665  Governor Richard Nicolls signed the grant known as the Monmouth Patent for lands that include what is now Monmouth County and parts of Ocean and Middlesex Counties
 

Feb 10, 1665    Concessions of Agreement signed by Proprietors Lord John Berkeley and Sir Geroge Carteret
 

Jul 29, 1665    Arrival of Philip Carteret, first Proprietary Governor of the Providence of New Jersey or Nova Caesarea. He makes Elizabethtown his capital
 

1665    Settlement of Shrewsbury – part of the Monmouth Patent
 

1665    Settlement of Middletown – part of the Monmouth Patent
 

1666    Settlement of Woodbridge – Purchase of roughly half of the Elizabethtown Patent - Town charter June 1669
 

1666    Settlement of Piscataway – Purchase of 40,000 acres from a Woodbridge associate Daniel Pierce
 

1666    Settlement of Newark
 

1675    Settlement of Salem – Fenwick’s Colony
 

1677    Settlement of Burlington
 

May 29, 1668  First meeting of the first General Assembly of New Jersey at Elizabethtown
 

1673    Dutch recapture New York and New Jersey
 

1674    Cession of New Netherlands to England – Treaty of Westminster
 

1676 and 1687    Formal division into East and West Jersey
 

Mar 3, 1677    Laws, Concessions, and Agreements by William Penn, West Jersey
 

1679    Settlement of Trenton
 

1680    First meeting of Assembly at Burlington – West Jersey
 

1680    Lady Elizabeth Carteret, proprietor of East Jersey
 

1682    Settlement of Gloucester
 

1683    Settlement of Greenwich
 

1683    Settlement of Woodbury
 

1683    Settlement of Perth Amboy (capital of East Jersey 1686)
 

1693    Settlement of Freehold
 

1682    Settlement of Bordentown
 

1682    Settlement of Moorestown
 

1685    Settlement of Town Bank
 

1702    Union of East and West Jersey under one governor with capitals at Perth Amboy and Burlington

 

References

  • New Jersey History Committee, Outline History of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, N.J.), 1950.

  • Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Happen, editors, Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, N.J.), 2004.

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