NOT until the end of its second century could New Jersey’s oldest permanent English settlement and first seat of government begin to call itself, officially, the City of Elizabeth. Through a referendum and an act of the state legislature in the 1850s, the Township and Borough of Elizabeth came together at last under a unified name. On the more remote origins of the place, consensus has turned out to be more elusive.
Surveying the first two hundred years of its existence, William A. Whitehead found that “very little original matter” had come to light since the appearance, in the mid-eighteenth century, of two engines of lawyerly combat: A Bill in the Chancery of New-Jersey, printed in 1747, and the rejoinder thereto, An Answer to a Bill in the Chancery of New-Jersey, which appeared a full five years later. The dauntingly technical case that engendered these twin tomes penetrated to the very bones and sinews of New Jersey’s complex past. To their respective authors Whitehead professed that “all writers on our history are more or less indebted.”1
As for the beginnings of what its inhabitants knew as Elizabethtown, the volumes related “almost every important circumstance on both sides….” But here was the dilemma. On behalf of the respective parties in the suit, the authors of the Bill in Chancery on the complainants’ side, and those of the Answer for the defendants, told very different stories. Not just the interpretation but the very materials of history were split in two. The Bill and Answer didn’t so much choose opposing viewpoints of the same events, as crystallize a dichotomy that was there from the start. The bifurcation went back to the sources themselves.
On two facts, at least, there was no apparent disagreement: Philip Carteret was commissioned in February 1665 as governor of the province of “New Cæsarea or New Jersey,” and that summer reached the shores of Achter Kol or Kull (as the Dutch referred to the land west of Hudson’s River) at the top of a channel still called by an Anglicized version of that name, Arthur Kill.
But, just as Carteret sets foot on dry land, the narrative begins to divide. On what terms has he come to this place? Who accompanies him? Whom does he meet here?
The texts of documents he must have borne with him suggest how he would have understood his position. The owners of the province by royal grant, Lord John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret (the latter a distant cousin), had appointed Philip to govern it in their name. His responsibilities would include patenting lands to those who would occupy and “improve” them and, after a few years, collecting the rent of a half penny on each acre per annum. In these and other duties, he was to follow and enforce the Concessions and Agreements, a framework with which the lords proprietors equipped him on the same day they named him governor.2
Philip surely came prepared, but perhaps less prepared to find an English colony effectively established before his arrival.
Carteret’s vessel, aptly bearing the name Philip, had stopped first in New York, in order to make him and his commission known to governor Richard Nicolls, whose government had, until a few months previous, included New Jersey. The preceding autumn, Nicolls received a petition from six men who after forsaking New England for Long Island found themselves there “destitute of habitations,” having been “obstructed by the then ruling Dutch….” They asked Nicolls for “Liberty to purchase and settle a parcel of Land to improve our Labour upon,” on the river called Arthur Cull Bay.3
Because indigenous people were then recognized as owners and not just occupants of the land, Nicolls granted permission to negotiate a purchase from native leaders. Three of them–Mattano, Manamowaone and Cowescomon of Staten Island–granted to the New Englanders what became the Elizabethtown Tract. Nicolls’s confirmation of the deed named as grantees “Captain John Baker, of New York, John Ogden, of North-Hampton, John Baily, and Luke Watson, of Jamaica on Long-Island”; to these four individuals Nicolls added the words, “and their Associates….”4
The Elizabethtown purchase, running “West into the Country twice the Length as it is broad,” was immense, thought to have comprised half a million acres. While the precise extent of the tract would become a matter of dispute over time, its eastern and southern limits, the Arthur Kill to the east and the Raritan River south, were secure. The Indians received a first payment in cloth, guns, powder and other trade goods, and were promised “four Hundred Fathom of white Wampum,” to be delivered a year after the Englishmen were settled on their lands.5
Much of New Jersey’s subsequent history as an English province turns upon how Philip Carteret first took the measure of these settlers and the validity of their claim to the land. But the moment of their encounter is cloaked in obscurity. The parties, remarks Whitehead, were here “brought for the first time in contact, but not in collision; the differences were an after growth.”6 Yet, in Elizabethtown and other settlements founded on Indian purchases, those differences would emerge soon enough.
The obscurity could in some measure–and with some measure of skepticism–be blamed on a mysterious disappearance. The Answer to a Bill in Chancery affirmed that the pioneer settlers had “provided themselves with a Book, the first that ever was made in the Province of New-Jersey….” In this book they duly inscribed their names and the names of associates who joined them later. They detailed their regulations for settlement, and recorded the divisions of land agreed on.7
Such a “Town Book” surely existed into the early years of the next century, but did it still? The defendants claimed that it had “to their great Disappointment” gone missing, while the complainants were convinced that their rivals, not wishing the truth to be known, had concealed or destroyed it.8 Without the proofs that the Town Book was alleged to contain, the combatants were left to argue from their own predispositions and other, often weaker evidence about what Philip Carteret found on his arrival, and what took place within his first several days in New Jersey.
As the proprietors had meant lands to be apportioned according to the Concessions and Agreements, it benefited the proprietary party to credit Carteret as the true founder of the colony, while minimizing whatever had been accomplished prior to his landing. Therefore the complainants to the Chancery suit reckoned that those who came on Nicolls’s authority were “no more than four Families settled”–a trifling number, which the Bill seldom repeated without a parenthetical “if so many,” to diminish it further. By the time of Carteret’s appearance, the Bill contended, the newcomers had yet to pay the Indians the agreed compensation. And their settlement was referred to by various names, but never “by the Name of Elizabeth Town till Governor Carteret’s Arrival,” when he christened it in honor of the wife of his cousin, the lord proprietor.9
The compilers of the Bill didn’t stop there. Philip came, they said, “with above thirty People, … and several Goods of great Value, proper for the first planting and settling of New-Jersey….” He paid the Indians “the greatest Part” of what was owed them under the deed. Then, declaring that he and his retinue had been sent expressly to encourage the “Peopling and Planting” of New Jersey, he proceeded to send envoys into other colonies who would “invite People to come and settle there,” enticing many to migrate from New England and from across the sea.10
The original “four families (if so many),” according to the Bill, recognized the better terms of the Concessions and Agreements, as well as the uncertainty of their title to the land, and so joined with Carteret, his company and those who followed “upon the footing of the Concessions aforesaid,” agreeing “with him and them” about the terms of settlement, the number of families to be admitted, and the division of land.11
To refute the charges in the Bill and defend the claims of the Elizabethtown associates, the authors of the Answer returned often to the missing Town Book. It would have proven that Baker, Ogden, Baily, Watson “and their Associates” weren’t four but “four-score, or near that Number, as these Defendants have heard and believe”; the idea that only four contributors to the Elizabethtown purchase would elect to settle there was “a very unlikely and strange Supposition.”12 Presumably the lost records would also have revealed that the purchasers, not Philip Carteret, named the place, that this occurred “before, or soon after” his arrival, and was intended, not to honor the wife of a proprietor, “but in Memory of the renowned Queen ELIZABETH….”13
The Town Book would have shown, too, how allotments were made, in proportion to each associate’s share of the purchase price; how the settlement had thrived thanks to their own industry; how Carteret supported their claims and approved their arrangements, even going so far as to purchase a share and become an associate himself.14 The people of Elizabethtown had settled and improved the country “with the Sweat of their Brows, and at the Risque of their Lives.” And the governor, it was remembered, had on his arrival walked alongside them, from the landing place up to the town, “carrying a Hoe on his Shoulder, thereby intimating his intention of becoming a Planter with them….”15
Recognizing the homely appeal of this last image, Whitehead adopted it to illustrate Philip’s “simplicity of manners” and lack of ostentation before a company of plain yeomen.16 He could not, however, regard it in the way the authors of the Answer seemed to, as a sign that Carteret relinquished the authority he meant to exercise over them. While cognizant of the partisan nature of the Bill in Chancery, Whitehead found much to admire in it: the skillful management of its claims, he wrote, “cannot fail to afford entire satisfaction of their justness and propriety.”17 He had no equivalent compliment for the authors of the Answer, whose arguments he seems to have found hopelessly deficient in proof.
The Answer did testify to the vitality of “an active and influential party” in the colony, “sometimes controlling, always shaping or modifying” New Jersey’s politics and “social relations,” according to Whitehead. This anti-proprietary movement must figure in any attempt to understand or explain the later history of the province. But to comprehend “the true position of affairs” in 1664 demanded an appreciation of “the prevailing principles of law and government” at the time. To read the convulsions of the proprietary period as the first flickerings of a democratic flame was, in Whitehead’s words, to judge “the doings of the seventeenth century … by the maxims of the nineteenth.” Where historians disagreed about the earlier period, they did so less from an immersion in the conflicts of those times than out of a tendency to judge them by the standards of their own.18
Around the time of its incorporation, the city of Elizabeth added to its fast-growing population a former New York publisher named Joshua Augustus Dix. Once a valuable employee of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Dix in 1853 had co-founded the firm of Dix, Edwards and Company, notable for taking over Putnam’s Weekly Magazine and shepherding Herman Melville’s later stories into print.19
Elected to the council of his adopted city, Dix offered a resolution for a new city seal, backed by a brief “communication from Mr. William A. Whitehead” that included a rough sketch and a description of the proposed design. The Elizabeth city council agreed “that a die be cut and presented to this Board, representing the device as described in the communication,”20 and Whitehead’s design was formally adopted by an ordinance of 1866.21
As explained in his written statement, Whitehead hoped to give the seal “a historic character” by alluding to the circumstances of the city’s origins and naming. Its close association with the Carterets–the Lady Elizabeth, her husband Sir George and his cousin Philip–merited inclusion of the family’s armorial bearings (as well as its motto, Loyal Devoir). “And the circumstances of the arrival of the Governor,” he continued, “I would also seek to perpetuate by a representation of the ‘Ship Philip’ at anchor before the settlement of four families indicated by four houses in the landscape which fills the back ground, with the date 1665 below.”22
The ordinance of 1866 followed Whitehead’s design in all its details: in the foreground the Philip, drawn as a three-masted vessel at anchor in the bay, a rowboat betwixt the Philip and the shore; in the background “a wooded landscape, with four houses”; a shield suspended at the center, “charged with the arms of Carteret, the founder of Elizabeth”; a ribbon bearing the words of the family motto; all “within a border, inscribed with the legend Seal of the City of Elizabeth.”23
It’s not known what prompted Whitehead to submit this design, or Dix to introduce it. But it’s fairly easy to discern the “historic character” with which it was imbued. Despite some minor alterations over the years, all its elements persist in the Elizabeth city seal to this day, however its meaning is now understood, or whatever residue of sympathy may be left for its intentions.
Copyright © 2024-2025 Gregory J. Guderian
[1] The contest over Elizabethtown’s beginnings–and much else–is laid out in these works: A bill in the Chancery of New-Jersey, at the suit of John Earl of Stair, and others, Proprietors of the Eastern-Division of New-Jersey; against Benjamin Bond, and some other persons of Elizabeth-Town, distinguished by the name of the Clinker Lot Right Men … (New-York 1747. Hereafter “Bill in Chancery”), compiled chiefly by James Alexander; and An answer to a bill in the Chancery of New-Jersey, at the suit of John Earl of Stair, and others, commonly called Proprietors of the Eastern Division of New-Jersey, against Benjamin Bond, and others claiming under the original Proprietors and Associates of Elizabeth-Town … (New-York 1752. Hereafter “An answer”). “Both the Bill and answer, however, call for considerable study,” cautioned Whitehead, “to relieve the truths they embody from the obscurity thrown around them by legal technicalities, or the peculiar presentation of facts which the skillful management of the suit rendered necessary or advisable.” W. A. Whitehead, “A review of some of the circumstances connected with the settlement of Elizabeth, N. J.,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society ser. 2, 1:4 (1869) (153-176; hereafter “Whitehead, ‘A review’”) 156.
[2] Philip Carteret’s commission and instructions as governor and the Concessions and Agreements from the lords proprietors are printed in William A. Whitehead, ed. Documents relating to the colonial history of the State of New Jersey. 1. 1631-1687 (Archives of the State of New Jersey, ser. 1, 1. Newark 1880. Hereafter “NJA, ser. 1, 1”) 20-25 and 28-43.
[3] “Application for Elizabethtown grant,” in NJA ser. 1, 1:14-15.
[4] The 1664 Indian deed and Nicolls’s confirmation are printed in NJA ser. 1, 1:15-19.
[5] Bill in Chancery 25-26. Disputes over the tract were inevitable if the dimensions were indicated as remembered almost a century later, “by a small Stick laid down for the North and South Line; and the Length of the said Purchase, by placing the said Stick at Right Angles with the first Line; and extending it Westward twice as far as the first Line, from North to South, to represent the Extent of the said Purchase into the Country.” An answer 48.
[6] Whitehead, “A review” 158; cf. William A. Whitehead, East Jersey under the Proprietary governments: a narrative of events connected with the settlement and progress of the province, until the surrender of the government to the Crown in 1702 [1703] (Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society, 1. Hereafter “Whitehead, East Jersey”) ([New York] 18461) 37-39, (Newark 18752) 42-45.
[7] An answer 20; cf. Bill in Chancery 73.
[8] The Bill’s authors were convinced that this book had been long extant: from it, the defendants would “from Time to Time” produce pieces of evidence, certifying them as true copies. The defendants maintained that the book had been placed in the safekeeping of “one or more Persons, who claimed Shares of Propriety Rights, in like Manner as the Complainants do,” in order to protect their title. Destroying the book, “no Man in his Senses can presume they would do.” Bill in Chancery 33-34; An answer 22.
[9] Bill in Chancery 28-29, and cf. 66, 67. The details of Carteret’s arrival, especially the assertion that there were only four families “on the ground” when he arrived in August 1665, were based on three affidavits sworn in London in 1675 and 1676 “by three apparently disinterested individuals,” said Whitehead, one of which he printed in full (Whitehead, “A review” 162-163; NJA ser. 1, 1:183-185) as presenting “the closest approximation to the truth now attainable.” On the number of founding families see also note 23 below.
[10] Bill in chancery 28. On Carteret’s payment to the Indians, see note 12 below.
[11] Bill in chancery 27, 28, and cf. 33, 65, 73. The Answer maintained that apportionment of land into “first, second and third Lot Rights” entailed no laying aside of settlers’ rights under the Indian deed and Nicolls’s grant, and that it was done with the consent of Carteret as one of the associates, “not as in Virtue of his being Governor….” An answer 20, 23. That only Mattano of the three Indian grantors signed the deed, and that he had deeded the same lands to Augustine Herman, a Dutch subject, thirteen years previously, clouded the grantees’ title. See Bill in Chancery 26-27, 29, 66; cf. Whitehead, East Jersey (18461) 38-39, (18752) 44.
[12] An answer 29. The associates also reserved the right to expand their number to a hundred, “according to their Discretion, for the Good and Benefit of the said Town, as to them shall seem fit”: An answer 23. They paid the Indians the balance due, equivalent to “154 Pounds, and upwards,” in November 1665: An answer 7. But Whitehead believed that the arrival of Carteret, “placing at once at the disposal of the purchasers the means of meeting their engagements,” was “the most probable explanation of the prompt payment of the stipulated consideration to the Indians.” Whitehead, “A review” 161, 163.
[13] An answer 20.
[14] An answer 21, 27. The authors of the Bill in Chancery pointed out that, “not only conniving at, but openly a Party” to unauthorized purchases of Indian lands, the governor may have violated the Concessions and Agreements. Concern among the late Sir George Carteret’s trustees led to a 1682 “Act to regulate treaties with the Indians.” Bill in Chancery 54; cf. An answer 41.
[15] An answer 20, 23.
[16] G. P., “Glimpses of the past in New Jersey. No. VII.–Gov. Carteret,” Newark (N.J.) daily advertiser 2 April 1842 2:1-2 (hereafter, “G. P., ‘Glimpses of the past, No. VII’”) ; Whitehead, East Jersey (18461) 39 and n.21, 84-85; (18752) 44-45 and 45 n.1, 107. The circumstance of Carteret carrying a hoe onto the shore had no authority but the Answer, of which the only copy known to Whitehead was in his own possession. Consequently the incident “had never before been noticed by any historical writer” (W. A. Whitehead, Newark 17 March 1876, to Benson J. Lossing, Benjamin John Lossing Collection, Syracuse University Libraries, Box 3), but it was soon accepted as fact. See Benson J. Lossing, Our country. A household history for all readers, from the discovery of America to the one hundredth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (3 vols. New York 1875-78) 1:274 and F. O. C. Darley’s illustration ibid. 1:275; Edward S. Ellis, The people’s standard history of the United States from the landing of the Norsemen to the present time (5 vols. New York 1895) 1:240 and F. C. Martin’s illustration ibid. 1:241. Whitehead conceded that the first settlers and Carteret evinced “a harmonious co-operation” in the first few years of the colony’s existence, but doubted any supposed democratic inclinations on the part of the governor. “A much more likely cause for the unanimity that prevailed,” he thought, was that the “inconsiderable portion” occupied at first, of a vast territory “where vacant land was so plentiful and easy to be obtained,” would not have seemed to the settlers a source of future discord.
[17] Whitehead, East Jersey (18461) 86-87; (18752) 115. Of “an entire relinquishment by Carteret of the claims of those he represented,” Whitehead found “no evidence other than the exparte statements in the ‘Answer’ to the Bill in Chancery. In that document, of course, everything is denied that can possibly favor the case of the Proprietors….” Whitehead, “A review” 158n.
[18] Whitehead, “A review” 155, 158. Loosely informed by such anachronistic analysis was George Bancroft’s indirect suggestion that Elizabethtown, one of “a semicircle of villages” from Bergen to Shrewsbury established “without the knowledge of the proprietaries,” predated the English conquest. George Bancroft, History of the United States, from the discovery of the American continent. Vol. II (Boston and London 18371) 316. See G. P., “Grahame and Bancroft, on the early history of East Jersey. No. I,” Newark daily advertiser 12 March 1840 2:4; Whitehead, East Jersey (18461) 181-183, (18752) 265-267. For Whitehead’s criticisms of the anti-proprietary bias manifest in Bancroft’s work, see my previous posts 085–Light sufficient, 086–Seeds of dissension and 088–Dark matter.
[19] See, for some biographical information about Dix, Annual report of the Board of Education and of the Superintendent of Public Instruction of New Jersey, with accompanying documents, for the school year ending June 30th, 1895 (Trenton 1896) 237-238; F. W. Ricord, ed. History of Union County New Jersey (Newark 1897) 317-320.
[20] “Proceedings of the City Council meeting [20 October 1862],” New-Jersey journal (Elizabeth, N.J.) 21 October 1862 2:4; “The seal of Elizabeth city,” Newark daily advertiser 7 November 1862 2:1.
[21] “Seal of Elizabeth, N.J.,” Elizabeth Public Library files. Previously the city had adopted for its seal the image on the eagle side of a half dollar.
[22] “Seal of the City of Elizabeth, N.J.,” typewritten transcript, undated, in the files of the Elizabeth Public Library. According to this transcript, Whitehead’s manuscript description with “a drawing of the proposed seal” was preserved at the New Jersey Historical Society. A photograph showing the original drawing was featured in the Newark (N.J.) evening news of 31 December 1915, with a caption locating the document in “the library of the society in West Park street.” Whether it remains in the Historical Society’s collections has yet to be determined.
[23] “Seal of Elizabeth, N.J. An Ordinance To establish the City Seal,” 1866, typewritten transcript, in the files of the Elizabeth Public Library. Whitehead, many years earlier, had made plain his belief in Philip Carteret as Elizabeth’s true founder, with a picturesque narrative of “the good ‘ship Philip,’ freighted with all suitable commodities for the small company thus sent out to take possession of an unknown wilderness…. How vast the domain! how limited the population!” G. P., “Glimpses of the past, No. VII”; cf. Whitehead, East Jersey (18461) 36, (18752) 40-41. Elizabethtown minister Nicholas Murray, an associate of Whitehead’s in the New Jersey Historical Society, considered the settlement Carteret found in 1664 comparatively insignificant: “He came to Elizabeth-Town when there were here but four houses, and these but log huts; and in 1682, when he died, there were residing here one hundred and fifty families.” Nicholas Murray, Notes, historical and biographical, concerning Elizabeth-town, its eminent men, churches and ministers (Elizabeth-Town 1844) 22. Edwin Hatfield regarded the “three or four huts or cabins” as “a somewhat vague tradition,” and later scholars have followed him in attributing more importance to what Whitehead termed an “embryo town.” See Edwin F. Hatfield, History of Elizabeth, New Jersey; including the early history of Union County (New York 1868) 37-42; A. Van Doren Honeyman, ed. History of Union County New Jersey 1664-1923 (3 vols. New York and Chicago 1923) 1:18; Theodore Thayer, As we were. The story of old Elizabethtown (Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society, 13. Elizabeth, N.J. 1964) 16-17.
An attractive presence 