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

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.