WHEN cannon fire and musket shots rang through the streets of Perth Amboy, few civilians were present to hear them.
The town’s commanding position, overlooking the Raritan River and Bay, made it a garrison for British and American forces in turn.1 And when Continental commanders learned the King’s army had control of Staten Island, just across the narrow tidal strait known as the Arthur Kill, they gathered their troops into the former provincial capital, anticipating invasion from that quarter. An Anglican missionary and British army chaplain described the result:
they crowded in 6 or 7000 men into this little town, filld all the houses with soldiers, and took the Church and made a barrack of it, they at last gave out an order that any person that had any connexions or acquaintances upon Staten Island should quitt the place. Upon this the greatest number of the inhabitants were obligd to leave town.2
Although Perth Amboy saw no pitched battles in the course of the war, and counted comparatively few military or civilian deaths, the scattering of its population left the town supremely vulnerable to destruction. Those who returned found houses in ruins, church windows shattered, gravestones broken or in disarray. Fired on from a temporary breastwork in St. Peter’s churchyard, passing British vessels had fired back, leaving scars yet seen to this day.3
A few remnants of the defenses thrown up by both sides were visible in 1823, the year 13-year-old William A. Whitehead moved with his parents to Perth Amboy, and some could be made out even a quarter century after that.4 But rebuilding and the passage of time had mostly erased the evidence of devastation: there was little in the physical environment still to point to, many who would have recorded the course of the war had not stayed to witness it, and the voices of others were stilled.
A comprehensive retelling of Perth Amboy’s experiences in the Revolution was therefore no longer possible. Nevertheless, by sifting through scattered documents, assembling brief mentions in earlier histories, and interrogating the few survivors who had been old enough to remember events in detail, Whitehead compiled as full an account as could probably then be achieved.5
Surely he would have been capable of a narrative more complete and satisfying, if another war less remote in time, perhaps even one fought in his own day, could have caught Perth Amboy in its crosshairs.
In fact, one had.
From Amboy’s beginnings as a colonial center, the oyster had been among its chief attractions. Thomas Rudyard, East New Jersey’s first deputy governor, wrote of this commodity in unusual detail and with disarming enthusiasm:
one thing more particular to us, which the others want also; which is vast Oyster banks, which is Constant fresh Victuals during the winter, to English, as well as Indians.… There are Oysters of two kinds, small as English, and others, two or three morsels, exceeding good for roasting and stewing. The people say, our Oysters are good and in season all summer. The first of the third Month I eat of them at Amboy very good.6
Rudyard’s successor, Gawen Lawrie, likewise exulted in Amboy’s “abundance of brave oysters” such as “I think would serve all England….”7 Sixty years later, a traveler pronounced them “the best oysters I have eat in America.”8 But almost from the start, demand exceeded supply. As early as the second decade of the eighteenth century, the beloved bivalve was known to be a diminishing natural resource in need of legislative protection, at least from the ravages of outsiders. Eventually, in 1820, the New Jersey legislature prohibited nonresidents from taking oysters in Jersey waters.9
By this time, however, seed oysters transplanted from the Hudson, the Chesapeake and elsewhere, and left to grow to a marketable size on Raritan beds, had largely replaced natural production. The capital investment needed for these operations inevitably fueled conflicts over control of the beds and the oyster supply.
In the case of Arnold v. Mundy (1821), brought by a Perth Amboy farmer who had planted “several boat loads” of seed oysters on tidal flats adjoining his land, and staked off the beds as private property, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that oystering on lands washed by the tides was a common right, like fishing on the sea and in navigable rivers.10 The Board of Proprietors of East New Jersey, however, had given the plaintiff a warrant to survey the flats, implying that title to the grounds had formerly been theirs. Thus, the issue became one not simply of private or public property, but of whether soil washed by tidal and navigable waters belonged to the state in common right, or had been conveyed with the royal grant of New Jersey and, through the proprietors’ subsequent purchase, was theirs to sell.11
The legislature in 1824 arrived at a kind of compromise, permitting New Jersey oystermen to lease from the state tidewater flats at the Raritan River mouth. A three-man commission marked out areas “as proper for the planting and growing of oysters thereon,” and in 1826 a newly chartered “Oyster Company of Perth-Amboy” secured a twenty-year lease to 48 acres of tide-washed lands.12
Baymen residing mainly across the Arthur Kill, and so having no prospect of a stake in such a concern, looked askance at this reservation of prime oyster-growing ground to private individuals. In September 1829, they unleashed a coordinated attack from Staten Island on the company’s beds. Canoes and small craft (reaching, by a company estimate, “more than one hundred and fifty” in number) spread themselves out over the 48-acre lot. Under cover of larger vessels “armed with swivels, guns, and other weapons of offence,” the men proceeded at intervals during the next two weeks to take away all the planted oysters “worth the taking up….”13
A four-pounder set up on the shore momentarily frightened the Staten Island “marauders” from the beds with ball and grapeshot, as the arrival of a militia company from New Brunswick intensified “the appearance of war….”14 But the soldiers soon retired, and the plunder resumed. Further efforts to halt the destruction led, or so claimed the company, only to “threats of retaliation … even to the burning of the good city of Perth Amboy, to the great terror and dismay of its peaceable inhabitants.”15
Complaining of “incalculable injury … and the loss of their property of more than thirty thousand dollars,” the oyster company nonetheless planted the beds anew, only to have the Staten Islanders reprise their poaching of the year before. This time, after clearing the company grounds the plunderers set upon others. “If they succeed in taking off the oysters planted on the shore,” fretted the rector of St. Peter’s, “they will ruin some of our most industrious workingmen.”16
In the Perth Amboy oyster wars, simmering throughout the following decade and periodically boiling over, a number of strong currents of conflict had merged into a perfect storm. They included New Jersey’s law barring nonresidents from oystering in its waters; the title claimed by the East Jersey proprietors, headquartered in Amboy, to unallocated tidewater lands; the exclusive claims of individual oyster farmers, and of a state-chartered company, to the fruits of the Raritan oyster beds; pressure on the state to protect the industry, and to seek the extradition of offenders from New York; and at the back of it all, a supply hopelessly outstripped by demand.
While not, in its origins, a dispute over sovereignty between two neighboring states, the struggle was from the outset, and often, so framed.17 Young William A. Whitehead, a living witness to events revolving about his hallowed Perth Amboy, and a future champion of New Jersey’s deserved eminence in the ranks of the states, could be thought to have nourished a keen interest in the ebb and flow of war over Amboy oysters. Yet it doesn’t appear to be so.
In stark contrast to his painstaking, not always productive inquiries into the Revolutionary conflict, none of his known writings mentions or alludes to a war he could easily have documented, as he heard and saw it play out before him. But that was Whitehead’s way. With age, he became more conscious of living through historical events; rarely, however, will a detail escape to help us chronicle his own period, and then almost invariably it is designed to lend color to a more distant past.
Another conflict, however, coinciding with his early years at Perth Amboy, proved one more challenging to disregard, for it impinged directly on the sovereignty and independence of his native state.
As a result of the landmark case Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), New York had had to forfeit its pretended right to grant a steamboat monopoly on waters touching New Jersey’s shores. But it continued to insist that New Jersey territory extended no further east than those shores at high-water mark. In other words, the waters of the Hudson, New York Bay, the Arthur Kill and even Raritan Bay were claimed in their entirety by New York, which repeatedly tried to obstruct the building of wharves or other “improvements” on the Jersey side. New Jersey couldn’t accept a claim that effectively denied it the use of its coastal waters north of Sandy Hook. But efforts to bring its more powerful neighbor to the bargaining table, or to allow the matter to be heard by the nation’s highest court, were unavailing.18
In another act of doubtful constitutionality, New York had instituted a tax on individuals landing at its ports. In 1826, the law required payment of two dollars for each passenger arriving in the port of New York, or the posting of sufficient bond that those landed would not become a public charge. New Jersey imposed no such tax, and Perth Amboy was close enough to present an attractive alternative for ships’ captains not caring to abide by New York’s costly requirements.19
In July 1826, officers acting in the name of the Mayor and Corporation of New York City took into custody the captain of a British brig, then lying just off the shore of Perth Amboy where he had recently landed cargo and “a considerable number” of passengers. Most of those who disembarked were thought to be Irish emigrants. At the head of the men sent to arrest the captain was Josiah Mersereau, Deputy Sheriff for Richmond County (Staten Island).20
James Parker of Perth Amboy had been involved in every attempt of the last twenty years to reach an amicable settlement of the water boundary with New York. When he learned of the captain’s arrest, he deemed it a violation of an 1809 law prohibiting an officer of any other state from serving a process in New Jersey. A few days later, finding that Mersereau was again in Amboy “as we supposed, for the purpose of making further arrests,” Parker had him apprehended and taken to the jail in New Brunswick.21
If convicted under the 1809 law, Mersereau faced a stiff prison sentence and fine. A Perth Amboy correspondent wrote this to the New-York Gazette:
the only regret is, that the great offenders, those who had estimulated him thus to violate the laws, and to expose his person to such imminent hazard, have not been found within our jurisdiction, and been subjected to the merited punishment: but the day of retribution is at hand; and the interposition of a higher authority (that of the United States) must be restored [resorted] to, to restrain all such acts of oppression and arbitrary power.22
Newark’s Sentinel of Freedom gave further expression to New Jersey outrage: “Such high handed conduct on the part of a sister State is insufferable. … Jerseymen have rights, and they have spirit enough to defend them.” The Fredonian of New Brunswick showed rare restraint: “we deem it improper to say more than is barely sufficient to a proper understanding of the subject–nothing extenuating, nor setting down aught in malice.” The New York papers, predictably, considered the matter trivial, although Mersereau’s arrest and release would cost the city of New York more than $7,000 in fees, indemnities and compensation to his sureties.23
Swayed by their governor, DeWitt Clinton, who declared the matter a “controversy much to be regretted,” the New York legislature agreed to name commissioners–for the third time in twenty years–to meet with a group of counterparts from New Jersey. James Parker, thrice a commissioner for his home state, later recalled to Whitehead the whole course of the controversy, and summarized the three parleys as follows:
The first Commission had commenced by writing, resorted to talking and did nothing. The second, commenced with talking then went to writing and also ended in nothing. I suggested therefore that this time nothing should be put in writing until the whole affair was concluded upon and the terms fixed.24
By the resulting compact, ratified in 1834, the water boundary between the two states was fixed at the middle of the Hudson River, New York Bay and Arthur Kill. New York was given exclusive jurisdiction over all the waters of the river and bay, and retained jurisdiction over all the islands in those waters; New Jersey received, on the westerly side of the boundary, exclusive right of property in underwater lands, exclusive jurisdiction over wharves and other improvements, and the exclusive right to regulate fisheries. The jurisdiction and rights granted to New Jersey on the river and bay were given to New York on the Arthur Kill, and vice versa.
A complex, hard-won treaty, and no stranger to litigation since, the 1834 compact has yet proved one of the more enduring settlements of an interstate boundary. As Whitehead was to learn, however, some questions are never allowed to die. That after three decades, with the nation just beginning to bind up the wounds of a fratricidal war, the 28th Attorney General of New York should think to bring back “from a sleep of years” the vexed boundary question, could have sprung, he was sure, from nothing but the mischief of “enquiring, mercurial spirits….”25
For New Jersey’s rights to be called once more into question, not on a battlefield or in a court of law, but in a paper read before a meeting of historians and the historically inclined, made the proposition for Whitehead no less grave an affront. The offending parties, moreover, were not above impugning the honor of New Jersey or the honesty of Whitehead himself. Sheer duty “to himself and historic truth” meant carrying the standard of “New Jersey, New Jersey institutions, and New Jersey writers” onto a field of battle where no blood, but much ink would be shed.26
Copyright © 2025-2026 Gregory J. Guderian
Last revised 2026.01.18
[1] The bluff at Amboy “gave to it in a military point of view an importance which neither were disposed to overlook.” William A. Whitehead, Contributions to the early history of Perth Amboy and adjoining country, with sketches of men and events in New Jersey during the provincial era (New York 1856; hereafter “Whitehead, Contributions”) 325.
[2] Rev. John Preston, Perth Amboy 2 January 1777, to the Secretary of the Society, Letter books, American material, 1701-1786, Papers of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, vol. 24, ff. 765-766. The text in Whitehead, Contributions 231, was from a set of copies and extracts made by Francis L. Hawks, now to be found in New Jersey Manuscripts, Francis Lister Hawks Collection, Archives of the Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas. (For Whitehead’s use of the Hawks transcripts, see Whitehead, Contributions 212 note 8, concluding on 213.) Hawks’s (and so Whitehead’s) text of Preston’s letter reflects some very minor departures from that of the Bodleian letterbook copy, including the substitution of “greater” for “greatest” in the last sentence.
[3] James Chapman, Historical notices of Saint Peter’s Church, in the city of Perth-Amboy, New-Jersey. Contained in two discourses delivered in the said church, June 19th and 26th, 1825, shortly after the erection of a marble tablet in the east wall of the church, in memory of the first benefactors of the same; with some additions (Elizabeth-town, N.J. 1830) 18, quoted with some alterations in Whitehead, Contributions 230-231. The punctured monument for Gertrude Hay (d. 1733) and her two children and the truncated headstone of Captain William Bryant (d. 1772) have been regarded as Revolutionary War casualties, the latter in print at least as early as Timothy Alden, A collection of American epitaphs and inscriptions with occasional notes (5 vols. New-York 1814) Pentade 1, 5:224-225. Whitehead largely accepts enemy fire as the cause of the Bryant stone’s “dilapidated” condition, narrows the date to the summer of 1776, and offers further insight: “The ball, which left its mark in the east end of the old church, was fired from a vessel lying the other side of Billop’s Point. The English kept a vessel almost constantly there for the convenience of traders; and it is said some of the ancestors of the present population derived considerable profit by trafficking with this vessel in a neutral character.” Whitehead, Contributions 330-331, and see ibid. 145; cf. [William A. Whitehead, ed.] The papers of Lewis Morris governor of the Province of New Jersey, from 1738 to 1746 (Collections of the New Jersey Historical Society, 4. New-York 1852) 46n.
[4] Whitehead, Contributions 337.
[5] Joseph Marsh and William Dunlap, who were 13 and 9 respectively at the outbreak of hostilities, shared with Whitehead (and with a far wider audience, in Dunlap’s case) their “vivid recollections” of wartime Perth Amboy. See Whitehead, Contributions 328 and n.8; cf. ibid. 332-333, 339, 343, 347.
[6] Thomas Rudyard, East Jersey 30 May 1683, to a Friend at London, in [George Scot,] The model of the government of the province of East-New-Jersey in America; and encouragements for such as designs to be concerned there. Published for information of such as are desirous to be interested in that place (Edinburgh 1685; hereafter “Scot, Model”) (146-154) 148, 152; repr. in 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) 279, 280, (Newark 18752) 411, 413.
[7] Gawen Lawrie, Elizabeth Town 2 March 1684/5, to the Proprietors at London, “abstract” in Scot, Model (160-166) 163; repr. Whitehead, East Jersey (18461) 285, (18752) 418.
[8] Carl Bridenbaugh, ed. Gentleman’s progress. The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton 1744 (Chapel Hill, N.C. 1948) 39.
[9] Samuel Lockwood, “The oyster interests of New Jersey,” in: Fifth annual report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries of New Jersey, for the year ending October 31st, 1882 (Trenton 1883; printed separately as The American oyster: its natural history, and the oyster industry in New Jersey) 226. “An Act for the preservation of clams and oysters,” §6, in Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton 1821) 758.
[10] Arnold v. Mundy, 6 N.J.L. 1 (1821); cf. William Halsted, Jr., Reports of cases argued and determined in the Supreme Court of Judicature of the State of New-Jersey 1 (Trenton 1823) 2.
[11] Proprietor James Parker saw the perils of allowing the Arnold decision to stand, writing: “‘Obsta Principiis’ is an old adage that well applies to this Case. Our rights are boldly attacked and if we give way we are gone forever.” James Parker, Amboy 17 February 1821, to John Rutherfurd, New Jersey State Archives, General Board of Proprietors of the Eastern Division of New Jersey, Miscellaneous Records, Box 5. The proprietors pressed their claim to ownership of land under water for several more years, but the U.S. Supreme Court eventually decided against them, upholding the public trust doctrine in Martin v. Waddell’s Lessee, 41 U.S. 367 (1842). See Bonnie J. McCay, Oyster wars and the public trust. Property, law, and ecology in New Jersey history (Tucson, Ariz. 1998) 45-68.
[12] “An Act to incorporate certain tenants holding oyster lots under this state upon rent,” in Acts of the Fifty-first General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey, at a session begun at Trenton, on the twenty-fourth day of October, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-six (Trenton 1826) 75-78.
[13] [The Oyster Company of Perth Amboy,] Memorial. To the honorable the Legislature of the State of New-Jersey [n.p. 1829] (hereafter “Oyster Company, Memorial”) 5-6.
[14] “Oyster beds,” Bergen County gazette, and Jersey-City (N.J.) advertiser 26 September 1829 2:3-4; James Chapman, Perth Amboy 11 September 1829, to Thomas N. Stanford, Thomas Naylor Stanford Papers, MC 608, Special Collections and University Archives, Alexander Library, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J. (hereafter “Thomas Naylor Stanford Papers”). Cf. “War,” Commercial advertiser (New York, N.Y.) 11 September 1829 2:1.
[15] Oyster Company, Memorial 6.
[16] James Chapman, Perth Amboy 4 October 1830, to Thomas N. Stanford, Thomas Naylor Stanford Papers. A night-time spiking of the Amboy cannon was assumed to be the work of New Yorkers, but Rev. Chapman attributed the act to “some of our own citizens who are opposed to the Oyster Company of New Jersey.” “Oyster war,” Commercial advertiser 15 September 1830 2:5; “Oyster war,” New-York (N.Y.) evening post 15 September 1830 2:3; James Chapman, Perth Amboy 22 September 1830, to Thomas N. Stanford, Thomas Naylor Stanford Papers. The “marauders” in the previous year’s assault were said to be “from Bergen [i.e. Jersey City], the North side of Staten Island & N. York”: James Parker, Amboy 2 September 1829, to Garret D. Wall. Garret D. Wall Collection, C0467; Manuscripts Division, Department of Special Collections, Princeton University Library, Box 4/1. See also “Canal meeting,” The Fredonian (New Brunswick, N.J.) 16 September 1829 2:3-4 (hereafter “‘Canal meeting’”).
[17] See “Canal meeting”; “State rights,” Niles’ weekly register, ser. 4, 1:4 (19 September 1829) 49. Already in its 1829 memorial to the legislature, the Oyster Company of Perth Amboy portrayed the destruction of its beds as as an attack on the state: “Thus from time to time, in open day, and in the most public manner, has the domain and territory of New-Jersey been invaded, its prerogatives trampled upon, its peace disturbed, the sanctity of its laws violated, its processes set at defiance, and property, both public and private, to a vast amount, plundered and despoiled by a lawless banditti….” Oyster Company, Memorial 8.
[18] The nineteenth-century conflict over jurisdiction originated in early waterfront development at Paulus Hook, later incorporated as Jersey City. Commissioners appointed by the two states met in Newark the following year, but could reach no agreement. The substance of their arguments is laid out in Report of the commissioners on the controversy with the State of New-York, respecting the eastern boundary of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton 1807; repr. 1826). After several unsuccessful attempts to break the stalemate, New Jersey would bring suit against New York before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1829. New York was brought back to the bargaining table in 1833.
[19] That this was common practice is evident from the testimony of an emigration agent in Lower Canada, the brother of the British consul in New York, before a select committee of Parliament in 1826: “Those ships intended for New York, which have a very low description of emigrants, instead of coming up to New York, go to Amboy in the State of Jersey, and enter at the custom-house there, where no such bonds are required; they then come up in the packet-boats to New York.” “Report from the Select Committee on Emigration from the United Kingdom,” in Reports from committees: three volumes … Session 2 February to 31 May, 1826 ([London] 1826) 4:184. Fifteen years before, New York City had raised with New Jersey the issue of such evasions; see Minutes of the Common Council of the City of New York, 1784–1831 (19 vols. New York 1917. Hereafter “New York City Common Council, Minutes”) 6:760-762 (27 November 1811). In 1838, New Jersey authorized local governments to impose a tax from one to ten dollars for “each and every alien passenger” legally landed within their jurisdictions. “An Act relative to alien passengers arriving in this state.” Acts of the Sixty-second General Assembly of the State of New Jersey, at a session begun at Trenton on the twenty-fourth day of October, eighteen hundred and thirty-seven. Being the first sitting (Trenton 1838) 77-78. Such taxes were deemed unconstitutional attempts to regulate commerce in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1849 Passenger Cases ruling.
[20] “State rights,” Sentinel of freedom, and New-Jersey advertiser (Newark, N.J.) 18 July 1826 3:1 (hereafter “‘State rights’”). Recapitulations of the affair are found in New York City Common Council, Minutes 15:529-536 (31 July 1826), 19:308-314 (25 October 1830).
[21] Thirty years after these events, Whitehead interviewed Parker, writing down the “substance” of his recollections of the New York–New Jersey boundary commissions and the Mersereau case. This document (“Boundary question between New York & New Jersey. Substance of conversation with Mr. Parker June 17, 1856,” hereafter “‘Conversation with Mr. Parker’”) is now in the James and William Alexander Papers, Manuscript Group 70, New Jersey Historical Society, Box 13. Whitehead subsequently read Parker’s decidedly less personal account before the New Jersey Historical Society; it was published as “A brief history of the boundary disputes between New York and New Jersey,” in “New York boundary dispute,” Newark (N.J.) daily advertiser 22 January 1858 2:1, and in Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society [ser. 1] 8:3 (1858) 106-109; cf. ibid. 92. The still later assertion that the deputy sheriff “was himself arrested by Mr. Parker, in person, as Mayor of Perth Amboy,” may be questioned; it appears in the memorial tribute of Richard S. Field, “Address on the life and character of the Hon. James Parker, late president of the New Jersey Historical Society … read before the Society, January 21, 1869,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society, ser. 2, 1:3 (1869) (109-139) 121-122. Whatever the circumstances, New Jersey’s governor commended Parker for “the laudable part which you have taken in support of the rights & laws of the State.” Isaac H. Williamson, Elizabeth Town 25 July 1826, to James Parker, in Parker Family Papers, Manuscript Group 18, New Jersey Historical Society, Box 5/8. Parker remembered (or Whitehead recorded) the name of the arrested sea captain as Cochran or Cochrane, while contemporary sources give it as Curry or Curran: see New-York (N.Y.) advertiser 14 July 1826 3:4; New-York evening post 15 July 1826 2:4; New York City Common Council, Minutes 19:308-312 (25 October 1830).
[22] New-York advertiser 14 July 1826 3:4.
[23] “State rights”; “A serious affair,” The Fredonian (New Brunswick, N.J.) 19 July 1826 2:4. A writer in the New York papers was somewhat too sanguine about the consequences: “The whole object, however, is the jurisdiction, provided the Sheriff executed his process within his usual limits–if not, it is an unfortunate affair of his own. It is said to be a few rods from Amboy–that may very well be, and yet be in the territory of his state and Richmond county; and if it is, this State will see to it.” New-York evening post 15 July 1826 2:4; New-York (N.Y.) spectator 18 July 1826 2:3-4.
[24] “Conversation with Mr. Parker.”
[25] The controversy was ignited by Attorney General John Cochrane, who in April 1865 communicated his view of the water boundary to the Chamber of Commerce of New York State. He delivered a paper on the same subject before the New-York Historical Society on 6 June, and this was followed by addresses and articles on all sides, among them a “review” of Cochrane’s paper by Whitehead. Henry B. Dawson published these in successive issues of his Gazette (Yonkers, N.Y.) and in Papers concerning the boundary between the states of New York and New Jersey, written by several hands (The Gazette series, 3. Yonkers, N.Y. 1866). Cf. W. A. W.“The waters between New York and New Jersey,” Newark daily advertiser 13 June 1865 2:3-4; William A. Whitehead, “Eastern boundary of New Jersey. A review of a paper on the waters of New Jersey, read before the Historical Society of New York, by the Hon. John Cochrane, (Attorney-General of that State,) and a rejoinder to the reply of ‘A member of the New York Historical Society’,” Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society [ser. 1] 10:2 (Newark 1866) 89-158 (hereafter “Whitehead, ‘Eastern boundary’”).
[26] Whitehead, “Eastern boundary” 113, 150.
An attractive presence 