Historical laws in one place
In anticipation of tomorrow’s Genealogy and the Law day — the annual seminar of the Genealogical Society of Bergen County in Mahwah — The Legal Genealogist has been poking around the old law books again.
This time, New Jersey’s old law books.
You see, in some respects, New Jersey researchers have it tough.
Although the Garden State began as one of the original colonies and has a rich and deep history, it too has suffered records loss. As in, just as a few examples, the 1790, 1800, 1810 and 1820 United States census records for New Jersey, all of which are missing in action.1
However, as if to make up in part for that sort of records loss, what New Jersey researchers have as a plus are the legal resources of the New Jersey State Library, which has gathered together in one place all of the online resources for New Jersey’s historical laws.
A Garden State researcher should start out at the entry page for New Jersey Historical Laws, Constitutions and Charters at the New Jersey State Library website. And from there… oh, from there… well, the choices make a law geek like me drool.
Here’s an overview of the goodies you can find:
• New Jersey Charters and Treaties, starting with the 1664 Grant to Berkeley and Carteret and 1664 Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors and going through to the 1756 treaty between New Jersey and the Indians.
• New Jersey Colonial Ordinances, ranging from a 1704 catalog of fees to a 1728 Ordinance for Establishing the Remedies for Abuses in the Practice of the Law.
• New Jersey Constitutions — all three that New Jersey has had: 1776; 1844; and 1947. But more than just the text of the Constitutions, there are reports of the constitutional conventions, journals of proceedings and more.
• The Historical Compilations collection pulls together all of the compiled statutes from colonial times, ranging from an index of colonial laws from 1663, the laws and ordinances of New Netherland and New Jersey’s Provincial Statutes up to the modern New Jersey Statutes, for which an online link is not available.2 Most of the law codes are available in digitized versions through Rutgers University or one of the online services like Google Books, HathiTrust or Internet Archive.
• New Jersey Session Laws are available online starting with the statutes of 1776 and continuing right up to today. Most of the resources are offered by Rutgers University; modern session law information is from the New Jersey Legislature.
• For court cases, the Reporters collection, reports of court decisions published in the New Jersey Law Reports series, volumes 1-96, 1816 to 1922, the New Jersey Equity Reports series, volumes 1-91, 1836-1920, and the Atlantic Reporter regional case reports, volumes 1-116, 1885-1922.
• You can also find historical information about New Jersey’s lawyers and judges in the New Jersey Lawyers’ Diary and Bar Directory collection from 1904 through 1916 and the New Jersey State Bar Association Yearbook collection, spanning the years from 1900 through 1921.
And even that extensive list isn’t everything the site has to offer! There are treatises and a legislative manual and Journals and Minutes of the Legislature… and… abd…
So go ahead, go poke around.
Good things await you in those musty old books…
SOURCES
- FamilySearch Research Wiki (https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/), “New Jersey,” rev. 4 Nov 2014. ↩
- Current New Jersey statutes are available at the New Jersey Legislature website. ↩
Ha! That doesn’t quite make up for the lost census data, though of course it is interesting information when taken separately.
I’ve got a gggg-grandfather who emigrated (vague and sometimes conflicting sources say) to the US via Massachusetts circa 1780 and married in Bergen County in the early 1790s, then died in 1826, completely hidden for the duration of his American life behind that census veil. So sad.
The census loss is sure problematic, Patrice, but I’d be willing to bet he’s not completely hidden. Tax records would be my first stop!
There is an easier to track that down. Bergen County was founded by Davis Des Marist with a charter from Peter Styvesandt who made many of the land grants in Eastern NJ Later changed to David Demerast. Mr. Demerast was a French Hurgonaut who belonged to the Dutch Reformed Church. In fact most of NJ was settled by the Dutch Reformed. In 1770 much of North Eastern NJ was under control of the Hessian troops who Burned Bergen County and imprisoned some of the Demarist on Manhattan during the war. They were later released and Bergen was rebuilt. The Key church (Mother Church) was the Schraalenburgh Church in Dumont or Bergenfield. There was an area called German Valley in Morris and Sussex County. That was land William Allen granted through indenture. Mr Allen gained this land from a Partner who acquired a land grant from William Penn. The settlers often seem to form new Dutch Reformed Churches when they had theological doctrine disputes. Mr Allen founded Allentown and was the First Chief Justice of the PA Supreme Court and his papers, including the indentures, are archived at the University of Pennsylvania Museum and Library. During the Flight of the Earls from Ireland, one of those was William Campbell who may have taken the title from his brother Duncan Campbell. He married one of the Demarist Daughters in 1670ish. There is a question as to the origins of the Ramapo Mountain People’s ancestry, your 5G grandfather should be found in these records as they are quite extensive. Most of these records are available on line as are many Revolutionary War records. General Washington, after the Battle of Trenton, was encamped in Morristown, until he surrendered his commission at Fraunce’s Tavern. Even without the census, it would be very hard not to show up somewhere in the history of NJ if he came to NJ. A couple of Notes, Henry Rutgers is burried in the Dutch Reform Church in Bellville, NJ. For a little trivia, look up the NJ revolutionary war hero, Tempe Wick. So, the Dutch Reform Record for baptism and marriages date to 1660. You will find fairly definative Genealogies of the Demerist and Campbell clans along with other first families of NJ.
There are some … um … gaps in this description of New Jersey history and records (the Battle of Trenton was in December 1776; Washington didn’t resign his commission until 23 Dec 1783).