Separate Paths: Lenapes and Colonists in West New Jersey 9781978813151

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SEPAR ATE PATHS

Lucia McMahon and Christopher T. Fisher, Series Editors New Jersey holds a unique place in the American story. One of the thirteen colonies in British North America and the original states of the United States, New Jersey plays a central yet underappreciated place in America’s economic, political, and social development. New Jersey’s axial position as the nation’s financial, intellectual, and political corridor has become something of a signature, evident in quips about the Turnpike and punchlines that end with its many exits. Yet New Jersey is more than a crossroad or an interstitial “elsewhere.” Far from being ancillary to the nation, New Jersey is an axis around which America’s story has turned, and within its borders gather a rich collection of ideas, innovations, people, and politics. The region’s historical development makes it a microcosm of the challenges and possibilities of the nation, and it also reflects the complexities of the modern, cosmopolitan world. Yet far too little of the literature recognizes New Jersey’s significance to the national story, and despite promising scholarship done at the local level, New Jersey history often remains hidden in plain sight. Ceres books represent new, rigorously peer-reviewed scholarship on New Jersey and the surrounding region. Named for the Roman goddess of prosperity portrayed on the New Jersey State Seal, Ceres provides a platform for cultivating and disseminating the next generation of scholarship. It features the work of both established historians and a new generation of scholars across disciplines. Ceres aims to be field shaping, providing a home for the newest and best empirical, archival, and theoretical work on the region’s past. We are also dedicated to fostering diverse and inclusive scholarship and hope to feature works addressing issues of social justice and activism. Maxine N. Lurie, Taking Sides in Revolutionary New Jersey: Caught in the Crossfire Jean R. Soderlund, Separate Paths: Lenapes and Colonists in West New Jersey

SEPAR ATE PATHS Lenapes and Colonists in West New Jersey

je a n r . soderlund

rutger s un i v er sit y p r ess

New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey, and London

 Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Soderlund, Jean R., 1947-­author. Title: Separate paths: Lenapes and colonists in west New Jersey / Jean R. Soderlund. Description: New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, [2022] | Series: Ceres: Rutgers studies in history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021041960 | ISBN 9781978813113 (paperback) | ISBN 9781978813120 (cloth) | ISBN 9781978813137 (epub) | ISBN 9781978813144 (mobi) | ISBN 9781978813151 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Delaware Indians—­New Jersey—­History—17th ­century. | Delaware Indians—­New Jersey—­History—18th ­century. | Delaware Indians—­New Jersey—­Government relations. | Delaware Indians—­ Land tenure—­New Jersey. | Whites—­New Jersey—­Relations with Indians—­ History. | Quakers—­New Jersey—­History—17th ­century. | New Jersey—­ Ethnic relations—­History—17th ­century. | New Jersey—­R ace relations—­ History—17th ­century. | New Jersey—­History—­Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. Classification: LCC E99.D2 S68 2022 | DDC 974.004/97345—­dc23/eng/20211007 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2021041960 A British Cataloging-­in-­Publication rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Copyright © 2022 by Jean R. Soderlund All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. Please contact Rutgers University Press, 106 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901. The only exception to this prohibition is “fair use” as defined by U.S. copyright law. References to internet websites (URLs) ­were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Rutgers University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared. The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—­Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992. www​.­rutgersuniversitypress​.­org Manufactured in the United States of Amer­i­ca

 For Rudy

CONTENTS

Foreword ix

Introduction

1

1

Defending the Lenape Homeland

11

2

Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country

30

3

Promising Liberty and Property: The West New Jersey Concessions

48

4

Quaker Colonization without Vio­lence or Remorse

64

5 ­Women, Ethnicity, and Freedom in Southern Lenapehoking 79 6

Forced Separation: Enslaved Blacks in the Quaker Colony

101

7

A Dif­fer­ent Path: Defining Swedish and Finnish Ethnicity

116



Conclusion

134

Acknowl­edgments 141 Notes 143 Manuscripts and Suggested Readings 175 Index 181

vii

FOREWORD

On New Jersey’s state seal sits the Roman goddess Ceres, a symbol of productivity and abundance. In commerce and politics, the image calls attention to the fecundity that makes New Jersey the Garden State, but as a meta­phor, Ceres symbolizes so much more than the bounty of its land. Contained within this message of abundance is New Jersey’s role as an incubator for cultural and social bonds that helped transform the colonies into a nation; the richness of its p­ eople, whose diversity still serves as a national model; and its place as a conduit for the robust regional economy that scaled up Amer­i­ca’s industrial growth. New Jersey holds a transformational place in regional and national history, and Ceres: Rutgers Studies in History seeks to capture the fullness of ­those stories. Ceres is a platform for cultivating and disseminating the next generation of scholarship that shapes the field. It provides a home for the newest and best work on the region’s past that is as diverse in its chronology as it is inclusive in the topics it covers. Separate Paths: Lenapes and Colonists in West New Jersey, Jean R. Soderlund’s exploration of the interpersonal relations among Lenapes, African Americans, and Eu­ro­pean settlers in West New Jersey, captures the spirit of Ceres as a proj­ ect. Separate Paths explores the protean nature of early Eu­ro­pean settlement in West New Jersey, where two competing models of colonialism set the stage for po­liti­cal experimentation and social possibilities that have not been fully examined in the lit­er­a­ture. In this extensively researched study, Soderlund challenges the casual assumptions historians have made about colonialism as an enterprise and examines how common values helped shape relations. That it all takes place in what would become New Jersey underscores the importance of remapping the relationship between regional history and the larger story. —­Lucia McMahon and Christopher T. Fisher

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INTRODUCTION

In 1682, the Lenape sakima, or leader, Ockanickon spoke with a group of Lenapes and Quakers as he lay on his deathbed in Burlington, West New Jersey. One of the Quakers, John Cripps, a West New Jersey proprietor and assemblyman, depicted the scene in his promotional tract, A True Account of the ­Dying Words of Ockanickon, published in London the same year. Cripps intended to use the report to revive interest in West New Jersey immigration, which had lagged since William Penn established Pennsylvania in 1681. The tract assured En­glish Friends that amity prevailed in West Jersey despite the destruction of Lenape towns by displacement and disease. Interpreted by Hendrick Jacobs Falkenburg, the sakima instructed his newly appointed heir, his ­brother’s son Irooseeke ( Jahkursoe), to maintain peace with the Christians, “to keep good Com­pany, and to refuse that which is Evil.” Ockanickon had e­ arlier appointed his s­ ister’s sons Mechmiquon (Sehoppy) and Swanpisse as his successors but changed his mind when, during his illness, they drank at John Hollingshead’s ­house and Mechmiquon told Tellinggreifee, the Lenape wèlathakèt, or doctor, not to cure him. ­After his death, according to Cripps, Ockanickon “was Buried amongst Friends according to his desire; and at his Burial many Tears w ­ ere shed both by the Indians and En­glish.”1 Three years ­later, another West Jersey proprietor and po­liti­cal leader, Thomas Budd, published Cripps’s account along with proceedings of other conferences with the Lenapes in the pamphlet Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-­ Jersey in Amer­i­ca (1685). Within a broader discussion of West Jersey’s development, Budd advised his readers that the Lenapes had decreased in number since the Quakers’ arrival “and have been very ser­viceable to us by selling us Venison, Indian Corn, Pease and Beans, Fish and Fowl, Buck Skins, Beaver, Otter, and other Skins and Furs.” In addition to treaties for land, the colonists and Natives held a series of meetings regarding alcohol, epidemics, threats of war, and conflict resolution. According to Budd, young Lenape men exhorted the elders “to make War on us, and cut us off whilst we ­were but few, and said, They w ­ ere told, that we sold them the Small-­Pox, with the Mach Coat they had bought of us.” The Lenapes proposed a mediation pro­cess by which all could live at peace: “If 1

2

Sepa r ate Paths

Map 1. Lenapehoking c. 1665–1685. Michael Siegel, Rutgers University Cartography Lab.

we intend at any time to make War upon you, we ­w ill let you know of it, and the Reasons why we make War with you; and if you make us satisfaction for the Injury done us, for which the War is intended, then we w ­ ill not make War on you.” They suggested a reciprocal arrangement in which the same pro­cess would follow if a Lenape injured a colonist.2 ­These Quaker narratives became part of West Jersey’s my­thol­ogy, similar to the legendary Penn’s treaty with the Lenapes at Shackamaxon in Pennsylvania and the founding stories of Pocahontas’s rescue of John Smith at Jamestown, the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth, and Peter Minuit’s purchase of Manhattan for trade goods worth sixty guilders.3 The Cripps and Budd accounts are misleading, like other Eu­ro­pean narratives, ­because they suggest that the colonists held the dominant role. In fact, in the late seventeenth and early eigh­teenth centuries,

Introduction 3

figure 1. Signature page from John Cripps, “A True Account of the ­Dying Words of

Ockanickon” (London: Benjamin Clark, 1682), reprinted in Journal of the Friends Historical Society, supplement, 9 (London, 1912): 164–166.

the Lenapes remained sovereign in what is now southern New Jersey—­the part of Lenapehoking south of the Falls (now Trenton) from the east bank of the lower Delaware River and Bay to the Atlantic Ocean. They declined b­ ecause of Eu­ro­pean disease from an estimated population of at least 7,500 in the mid-1630s to 3,000 in 1670 but held significant power through alliances with the old settlers—­ the Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans who moved from the west bank

4

Sepa r ate Paths

to set up farms in New Jersey—­and through the Lenapes’ willingness to use force to protect their homeland.4 Relations between Lenapes and colonists in southern Lenapehoking have received much less scholarly attention than Eu­ro­pean settlement in other parts of North Amer­i­ca, such as ­Virginia, New ­England, and New Netherland, where military force and epidemics destroyed Indigenous nations. Historians of colonial North Amer­i­ca have generally accepted arguments of early publicists like Cripps and Budd that harmony prevailed in West Jersey, that Lenapes ­were satisfied with the cloth, rum, and tools they received during land negotiations. Indeed, study of Lenapes and colonists in West New Jersey seriously lags scholarship on colonial Pennsylvania, where historians have unveiled the troubled history between Lenapes and Quakers despite Penn’s strategy for peace.5 Investigations of the social and po­liti­cal history of Lenapes and colonists have generally followed separate paths in southern Lenapehoking, which comprised the land area of old Burlington, Gloucester, Salem, and Cape May Counties.6 Using evidence from documents and sites, archaeologists, anthropologists, and ethnohistorians have conducted substantial research on the Lenapes, focusing specifically on communities in southern Lenapehoking or considering the region as part of broader comparative work.7 On Eu­ro­pean colonization, scholars have published books and articles on par­tic­u­lar topics in West Jersey history—­for example, histories of towns, transportation, and industries—­yet John E. Pomfret’s The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony remains the only book examining the colony as a w ­ hole. Published more than sixty years ago and focused primarily on provincial politics, Pomfret’s volume offers a starting point for further research. Other historians have offered analyses of colonial West Jersey’s courts, politics, society, and historical geography as part of larger works on New Jersey and the Delaware valley.8 This book offers an attempt to understand the cross-­cultural dynamics of how Lenapes, Swedes, Finns, Quakers, and enslaved Africans coexisted and built a functional society in late seventeenth-­century Lenapehoking. Historians have long recognized that West Jersey, like Pennsylvania, differed from the early Chesapeake and New ­England colonies ­because of greater ethnic diversity among Eu­ro­pean settlers, but we are unclear on why that mattered in the colonial era. Similarly, many have assumed that the early Quakers acted benevolently ­toward both Lenapes and Africans based on the Friends’ beliefs in nonviolence and the equality of all p­ eople u­ nder God. This study explores how, despite Quaker pacifism and long-­standing Lenape–­old settler alliances, Eu­ro­pean colonization in southern Lenapehoking resulted in the dispossession of Indigenous ­people and enslavement of Africans similar to conquests elsewhere by militaristic regimes. When the En­glish Quakers arrived in 1675 to found Salem and in 1677 to establish West New Jersey, the Lenapes hoped for a dif­fer­ent outcome. At one of

Introduction 5

the early conferences described by Thomas Budd, a sakima explained to the West New Jersey colonists, “You are our B ­ rothers, and we are willing to live like ­Brothers with you: We are willing to have a broad Path for you and us to walk in, and if an Indian is asleep in this Path, the English-­man ­shall pass him by, and do him no harm; and if an English-­man is asleep in this path, the Indian s­ hall pass him by, and say, He is an English-­man, he is asleep, let him alone, he loves to Sleep. It ­shall be a plain Path, t­ here must not be in this path a stump to hurt our feet.”9 The Lenapes intended to share their land with the Quaker immigrants, setting out a road map for coexisting in peace and prosperity. They greeted the newcomers with food, advice, and open minds, accepting their dif­fer­ent religion and culture. Like En­glish colonialists elsewhere in North Amer­i­ca, however, the West Jersey proprietors wanted sole owner­ship of the land. Instead of accepting the Lenapes’ broad path, the West Jersey Quakers chose a separate path of colonization, expropriation, and slavery. Unlike many parts of the Atlantic seaboard in North Amer­i­ca, southern Lenapehoking remained sovereign in 1675 when the Salem Quakers arrived. The Friends entered the homeland that Armewamese, Cohanzicks, Mantes, Rancocas, and other Lenape communities had preserved since the 1630s from large-­scale colonization and war. The Lenapes remained a formidable nation of approximately three thousand p­ eople in 1670 and used that power to protect their sovereignty, conducting small-­scale mourning war against individuals who encroached on territory without proper treaty protocols.10 The Lenapes maintained a close alliance with Swedes, Finns, and other old settlers, welcoming t­ hose who, beginning in 1665, moved from the west bank of the Delaware seeking larger farms and freedom from the Duke of York’s strict land policies. The old settlers had become close allies and business partners with Armewamese and Cohanzick traders, and some Eu­ro­pean men and Lenape w ­ omen married. The Natives and colonists felt comfortable as neighbors, exchanging knowledge of agriculture, livestock, hunting, fishing, and food preservation. When George Fox and other Quaker missionaries reported in 1672 that the Lenapes ­were friendly and controlled attractive real estate in North Amer­ic­ a, their colleagues Edward Byllynge, John Fenwick, and other Friends de­cided to try their hand at colonization. They planned to take over southern Lenapehoking both as a business venture and to establish a society f­ ree from religious persecution. The Quakers fully intended to use peaceful methods in their occupation, primarily by negotiating exchange of the territory for such goods as cloth, tools, wampum, and alcohol. They apparently expected the Lenapes to cede all their land and depart, contrary to the Lenapes’ resolve to permit small numbers of colonists to establish homes. Armewamese, Cohanzicks, Mantes, Rancocas, and ­others stayed in Lenapehoking, though badgered for land and stricken by Eu­ro­pean disease. The Salem colony in 1675 became an outpost in Lenapehoking similar to ­earlier Delaware valley settlements of Dutch, Swedes, and Finns. John Fenwick

6

Sepa r ate Paths

planned to rule the colony as lord proprietor but failed to impress the Cohanzicks, control the settlers, or confirm his legitimacy as governor with En­glish Quakers and the Duke of York’s government. Salem developed as a community in Lenape country, as Cohanzicks denied the Quakers permission to set up plantations and trade u­ nless they respected Native sovereignty and kept peace. In carefully negotiated conveyances, the Cohanzicks demanded that Fenwick acknowledge their retention of land. The Cohanzicks, Armewamese, and other Lenapes had engaged with old settlers as part of their network of in­de­pen­dent yet allied communities and thus could envision Salem Quakers—­and t­ hose who settled West New Jersey in 1677—as useful neighbors within a turbulent world. The West New Jersey Proprietors in 1677 negotiated three treaties with the Cohanzicks, Armewamese, Rancocas, and Mantes ­people for the territory along the Delaware River from Oldmans Creek north to the Assunpink. They brought a grander, more codified vision than Fenwick, endorsing Edward Byllynge’s West New Jersey Concessions of 1676–1677, which offered religious liberty, freedom from military ser­vice, due pro­cess rights, and republican government. The concessions likewise set out a scheme for property division that the colonists believed necessary for representative government, dividing the province into proprietary shares that ensured relentless pursuit of Lenape land. The West Jersey Proprietors circulated the concessions broadly for signatures by Quakers and old settlers in Salem as well as Burlington, thus integrating the colonists u­ nder one provincial government. ­After receiving rights to government from the Duke of York in 1680, the West New Jersey residents—­including representatives from Salem—­formed an assembly according to the pro­cess outlined in the concessions. The delegates then defended their authority against Byllynge, who received the right to government on condition he became governor—­contrary to the concessions framework specifying a power­ful assembly with no governor. In opposing Byllynge’s governorship, the West Jersey assembly denied the En­glish Crown’s authority, attempting to establish a republic separate from the imperial structure. The assembly continued its re­sis­tance ­after Byllynge’s death, when his heirs in 1687 sold the proprietorship to Dr. Daniel Coxe. Five years ­later, Coxe conveyed the colony to a group of investors in E ­ ngland, the West New Jersey Society. Disruption and factionalism severely undermined provincial power, as the assembly, for example, failed to meet from 1687 to 1692. With county courts idiosyncratically enforcing laws and administering government, colonists in Burlington, Gloucester, and Salem or­ga­nized much like the Lenapes, extending Lenapehoking’s network of linked communities. Still, the West New Jersey Council of Proprietors, with representatives from Burlington and Gloucester, carried on its efforts to procure and sell ­every acre encompassed within the 1674 West New Jersey grant from John Lord Berkeley, thus fulfilling the expectations of shareholders to push Lenapes from the land—­

Introduction 7

while also maintaining peace. Starting with their proprietary shares as a foundation, such Friends as William Biddle, Thomas Budd, and Mahlon Stacy accumulated wealth through real estate while participating as leaders in provincial government and the Council of Proprietors. Quakers interpreted the epidemic force of Eu­ro­pean diseases as God’s w ­ ill and blamed Lenape deaths on alcohol, suggesting that the Natives’ desire for rum and other spirits destroyed their towns rather than the colonists’ lust for land. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 look more closely at how colonization unfolded at the local level through analy­sis of county court and other government and religious rec­ords. We have the opportunity to examine how Lenape, old settler, and Quaker men and w ­ omen interacted on the basis of several common values, including commitment to peaceful resolution of conflict, religious liberty, and re­spect for w ­ omen’s rights and authority, while defending bound­aries between their ethnic communities. The Cohanzicks, Armewamese, Rancocas, and Mantes remained dominant in the part of southern Lenapehoking that became old Salem, Gloucester, and Burlington Counties. Their alliance with the old settlers helped both groups to fend off efforts by Quaker courts to impose their standards of justice. The Friends and old settlers ­adopted the Lenape pattern of linked, largely autonomous communities, strengthening their ethnic and religious difference. In addition, affluent Quakers enslaved Blacks from Africa and the West Indies, thus adopting slavery within their colonizing regime. Chapter 5 explores how Lenape, Swedish, Finnish, and Quaker w ­ omen participated fully in developing their communities socially and eco­nom­ically. Lenape ­women had responsibility for an impor­tant part of their economy, including agriculture and gathering, while serving as elder ­women in their matrilineal society. Some Lenape w ­ omen can be identified as leaders who negotiated with other sakimaòk and Eu­ro­pean colonists. Old settler ­women maintained Swedish and Finnish culture while supporting alliances with Lenapes for trade and mutual defense. Their husbands and ­fathers represented their neighborhoods in West Jersey courts, shielding their group authority by preventing Quaker judgment of morals cases among Swedes and Finns. Quaker ­women built upon the Society of Friends’ advancement of ­women as ministers and overseers, promoting policies that discouraged marrying outside the society and setting markers to distinguish Friends from other ethnic and religious groups. W ­ omen Friends also operated prominently in the West Jersey real estate market, despite ­legal limitations on their po­liti­cal and economic rights. Chapter 6 focuses on how Quaker leaders in West Jersey approved the enslavement of Africans despite ­earlier discussions in E ­ ngland and guidance from George Fox and William Edmundson to avoid the practice. Edmund Byllynge and other contributors to the West New Jersey Concessions discouraged slaveholding, yet by the 1680s wealthy colonists purchased the lives and ­labor of Africans imported into the Delaware valley. A gruesome case in which an enslaver

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murdered a Black ­woman in Burlington caused some consternation among his neighbors but resulted in acquittal and no ­legal reform. Like other captive p­ eople, she had rebelled against his cruelty and paid with her life. Court rec­ords and local ordinances demonstrate how, from the earliest years of West Jersey’s founding, affluent Friends ignored their beliefs in equality before God, freedom, and justice, defining Africans outside the protection of Quaker law and community. Though Friends increasingly espoused abolition by the mid-­eighteenth c­ entury, their early willingness to enslave ­people characterized Quaker colonization and separated Friends from Lenapes and most Swedes and Finns. Chapter  7 further explores differences between old settlers and Friends in their approaches t­ oward settlement. Swedes and Finns who initially built farms along the Delaware River between Pennsauken Creek and the Salem River pursued three strategies to preserve their ethnic autonomy within West New Jersey. They upheld their mutual pact with the Lenapes, strengthening each group vis-­à-­vis Quaker colonization. At the same time, old settler men participated in West Jersey government, especially at the county level, signaling their cooperation while protecting their ­legal and po­liti­cal position. Many Swedes, Finns, and Dutch also retained (and created) ethnicity through residence in separate neighborhoods adjacent to Swedish Lutheran churches at Raccoon in Gloucester County and Penn’s Neck in Salem County, while ­others spread out across southern Lenapehoking. Most Swedes and Finns avoided the Quaker colonization model of systematically buying up and selling Lenape land, instead improving their individual farms while respecting Lenape sovereignty. The Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes held traditional beliefs that resources should be shared. As neighbors, they had learned to accommodate each other’s ways. Common values among Lenapes, old settlers, and Quakers facilitated the creation of a society in West Jersey based on peace, ethnic autonomy, re­spect for ­women’s rights and authority, and religious freedom, while the eagerness of Quaker colonists to expropriate Indigenous land and enslave Africans divided them from Lenapes and most Swedes and Finns. Leading Friends defined enslaved ­people as outside the protection of their community though working for no compensation within their ­house­holds. Two colonization models evolved: One design, directed by West Jersey proprietors, sought to engross all Lenape territory and embraced slavery. The other pattern depended upon the decades-­old alliance of Lenapes and old settlers to share resources and land. Thousands of Lenapes died from Eu­ro­pean diseases, while some moved west to the Ohio valley and eventually to Ontario, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and other parts of the United States. Many Lenapes survived the epidemics and stayed in southern Lenapehoking, including the Cohanzick community of Cumberland County now known as the Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation. Over centuries, they endured discrimination and prejudice while striving to protect their families and culture. They

Introduction 9

now stand as an influential tribal nation recognized by the State of New Jersey with permanent membership on the New Jersey Commission on American Indian Affairs. Members of the Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation are strong advocates for education, h­ uman rights, and economic development, clarifying both their sovereignty and citizenship within in the larger society.

note on methodology I began researching Separate Paths: Lenapes and Colonists in West New Jersey to learn more about the social and po­liti­cal history of Lenape and Eu­ro­pean p­ eople in Lenapehoking during the seventeenth and early eigh­teenth centuries. My aim has been to explore interactions between the Natives and colonists while understanding more fully the development of colonial society. The sources revealed many questions that I hope researchers ­will continue to pursue. B ­ ecause Lenapes, like other Indigenous p­ eople, preserved agreements and history through oral communication rather than written documents, researchers face the challenge of learning about Native expectations and beliefs through Eu­ro­pean filters. My methodology involves a careful, chronological reading of available documents to try to understand po­liti­cal, diplomatic, and economic exchanges within the wider North American context. I also use the studies of archaeologists to understand the diversity of Lenape settlements in the mid-­Atlantic region. To discover the role of individual Lenapes, colonists, and their interactions, I needed to create databases that brought together disparate data from a broad range of primary sources. One database includes Lenape sakimaòk, or leaders, based on their deed signatures as grantors and witnesses; other Eu­ro­pean documents; and Robert S. Grumet’s exhaustive research in The Munsee Indians and other writings. Other databases focus on early Salem, Gloucester, and Burlington colonists; West New Jersey leaders and families; and Swedes, Finns, and other old settlers. Sources for ­these groups include immigration data, correspondence, Quaker meeting rec­ords in ­England and West Jersey, deeds, ­wills, and other demographic sources, court and assembly rec­ords, Peter Stebbins Craig’s extensive genealogical work, and the rec­ords of the Swedish Lutheran churches.

dates and text The Dutch had started using the newer Gregorian calendar in the seventeenth ­century, while the En­glish kept the Julian calendar u­ ntil 1752. The calendars w ­ ere dif­fer­ent by ten days in the seventeenth ­century, and the Julian new year began in March, so that, for example, an En­glish document dated February 6, 1680, would be February 16, 1681, u­ nder the Gregorian calendar. The En­glish colonists sometimes used double dates, for example, February 6, 1680/81. In my chapters,

10

Sepa r ate Paths

I provide the year according to the Gregorian calendar, sometimes using the double date to avoid confusion. Further, the Quakers numbered the months instead of using names, such as January, thus referring to March as the First Month through February as the Twelfth Month. In quoting from sources, I have retained the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization in documents with a few exceptions. B ­ ecause the thorn represented “th,” I have changed words such as “ye” or “yt” to “the” or “that.” I have also expanded common abbreviations (such as P for “per” or “pro”) and occasionally added punctuation or a word in square brackets for clarity.

1 • DEFENDING THE LENAPE HOMEL AND

The ­ people of southern Lenapehoking during the seventeenth c­ entury endured Eu­ro­pean threats and epidemics yet retained their homeland and sovereignty. They observed Dutch ships enter the Delaware River as early as 1615, defended their land against the Susquehannocks from 1626 to 1636, stamped out the Dutch attempt to establish plantation colonies at Cape Henlopen and Cape May in 1631, restricted the Dutch, Swedes, and Finns to small settlements and trading posts, and then allied with ­these old settlers to constrain the En­glish Duke of York’s government. When En­glish Quakers arrived to found Salem in 1675, they encountered a network of autonomous Lenape communities in alliance with old settlers who recognized the Natives’ sovereignty. The Lenapes, Swedes, Finns, and Dutch shared resources, avoided involvement in external wars, and respected individual freedom, religious liberty, and divergent cultures. The Quaker newcomers ­were welcome, in small numbers, as long as they too acknowledged Lenape dominance and owner­ship of the land. Lenapes kept control of their homeland while evading the devastation of wars with En­glish and Dutch colonists that crushed other Indigenous nations along the Atlantic seaboard. In 1607, when the Jamestown expedition arrived in Tsenacommacah, the leader Wahunsonacock (Powhatan) accepted the band of En­glishmen, expecting them to pay tribute and participate within his confederacy. Despite their ­limited population and high mortality, however, the V ­ irginia colonists treated the Powhatans with contempt, destroyed their property, and committed murders and theft. Over the next forty years, a series of Anglo-­ Powhatan wars and disease resulted in the expulsion of Powhatans from their territory and thousands of deaths on both sides. In southern New E ­ ngland, Wampanoags and Narragansetts initially granted lands to the Plymouth, Mas­sa­ chu­setts Bay, and Rhode Island colonists, believing that their settlements would remain modest and their intentions peaceful. Instead, the thousands of En­glish Puritans who immigrated during the 1630s sought farms for themselves and their numerous sons, promoting wars to wrest land from the Pequots and other 11

12

Sepa r ate Paths

nations. In colonizing New Netherland, the Dutch West India Com­pany planned at first to specialize in trade with the Munsees, Mahicans, and Haudenosaunee and then yielded to investors who argued that the colony could survive only with agricultural plantations as well as commerce. Governor Willem Kieft’s blundering efforts to collect tribute from Munsees and subsequent conflicts between Dutch colonists and Natives caused a series of bloody wars from 1639 to 1664 and the expropriation of Munsee lands in Long Island, northern New Jersey, and southern New York.1 Eu­ro­pean sources about southern Lenapehoking, including maps, deeds, and dispatches of explorers, colonial officials, and missionaries, must be scrutinized for accuracy and cultural bias. Information from early maps can be sketchy ­because Eu­ro­pean mapmakers often used reports from sea captains or simply copied previous maps, thus offering l­ ittle firsthand intelligence or understanding of change over time. Explorers and cartographers who made a­ ctual surveys depended upon Lenapes for information, so inexact hearing and faulty interpretation affected the recording of names and locations of Lenape towns. Nevertheless, careful analy­sis and correlation of evidence from maps, documents, and archaeological sites provide insight into Lenape culture and society and permit estimations of the per­sis­tence of Lenape communities.2 Lenape towns remained po­liti­cally autonomous with distinct local identities throughout the seventeenth ­century, though some merged ­because of declining population. They ­were linked together by kinship, however, and had common economic practices, culture, and religious beliefs and collaborated for diplomacy and war. Lenapes exploited the rich resources of the inner and outer coastal plains that stretched through central and southern New Jersey, as a moderate climate and adequate rainfall fostered woodlands drained by streams emptying into the Delaware River, Delaware Bay, and Atlantic Ocean. The p­ eople of southern Lenapehoking prior to Eu­ro­pean arrival—­during what archaeologists call the Late Woodland period from circa a.d. 800 to 1620—­caught sturgeon and freshwater fish in the river and streams and harvested oysters and clams from the ocean and bays. They traveled by canoe to visit and trade with p­ eople upstream and across the Delaware to obtain quartz, quartzite, chert, jasper, and argillite for tools, knives, and projectile points, supplementing the stone cobbles they collected along the river.3 Two of the earliest Eu­ro­pean explorers, the Dutch captain David de Vries in 1633 and the En­glishman Thomas Yong in 1634, extolled the Delaware valley’s natu­ral wealth. De Vries exclaimed, “This is a very fine river, and the land all beautifully level, full of groves of oak, hickory, ash, and chestnut trees. . . . ​The river has a g­ reat plenty of fish, the same as t­ hose in our fatherland, perch, roach, pike, sturgeon, and similar fish. Along the sea-­coast are codfish, the dif­fer­ent kinds of fish which are in our fatherland, and ­others.” Yong remarked on the many “beavers, otters, and other meaner furs” along with deer, elks, partridges,



Defending the Lenape Homeland 13

figure 2. Conoidal ceramic pots crafted by Natives in southern New Jersey during the

Woodland period, c. 1000 b.c. to 1600 a.d. The pointed bottoms permitted the pots to stand up in a hearth or sand. Alan Ewing Carman Museum of Prehistory of Cumberland County—­Cumberland County Historical Society.

hawks, and an “infinit number of wild pidgeons, black birds, Turkeyes, Swans, wild geese, ducks, Teales, widgins, brants, herons, cranes, ­etc. of which t­ here is so g­ reat aboundance, as that the Rivers and creekes are covered with them in winter.” The loamy soil produced “divers sorts of fruites, especially grapes, which grow wild in ­great quantity,” berries and plums and a “­great store of wild hops yet exellent good and as faire as ­those in ­England.” The region was tree covered “except only in t­hose places, where the Indians had planted their corne.” Yong considered the Lenapes “for the most part very well proportioned, well featured, gentle, tractable, and docible.” His nephew and lieutenant, Robert Evelyn, noted that corn was so available from the Lenapes that it was “­there cheaper and better” than transporting food from E ­ ngland.4 Indeed, the Lenapes had abundant resources in the local woodlands and Pine Barrens, as well as at more distant locations in the Lehigh valley and Poconos of Pennsylvania. They hunted deer, bear, beaver, turkey, elk, and raccoon; fished for sturgeon; gathered berries and other foods, such as hopniss and tuckahoe; and used wood from a variety of trees to build their h­ ouses and produce furnishings, baskets, and tools. They crafted pottery using local clay tempered with shell, stone, and fibers to create bowls and other items in specific shapes and styling that varied from one region to another.5

14

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Lenapes had integrated corn agriculture into their economy by 1624, when the Dutch established their first outpost in West Jersey. ­Women took primary responsibility for growing the “three ­sisters”—­corn, beans, and squash—­that supported agrarian socie­ties throughout the Amer­ic­ as. Female and male Lenapes assumed dif­fer­ent work roles but believed all had equal status, unlike most Eu­ro­ pe­ans, who considered ­women subservient. Lenape ­women had many responsibilities, including farming, gathering, constructing h­ ouses, making clothes and pottery, childcare, and pro­cessing food, while men prepared land for planting, conducted diplomacy and trade, hunted, and fished. In their matrilineal society, elder Lenape w ­ omen served as heads of kinship groups, with some assuming responsibilities as sakimaòk.6 Like other Indigenous North Americans, the Lenapes worshipped an all-­ powerful Master Spirit, whom they called Kètanëtuwit, who had created the world and supervised the welfare of Native communities through successful corn harvests and hunts. Religious leaders led the town in sacred dances to honor Kètanëtuwit, request beneficial weather, and seek protection from harm. Lenapes believed in the unity of spiritual and earthly realms, with integration of their religious and economic lives. They saw themselves as part of the natu­ral world, not as masters over animals and plants. Bears, deer, fish, trees, rocks, and all natu­ral t­hings each had a spirit, or manitou, that influenced p­ eoples’ lives. Through a solitary vision quest in the woods without food or sleep for days, a young Lenape man (less often a young ­woman) established a relationship with a manitou, who became their guardian spirit for the rest of their lives.7 Eu­ro­pean missionaries had l­ittle success in converting Lenapes to Chris­ tian­ity in the seventeenth and early eigh­teenth centuries. Some colonists ignored Lenapes’ spiritual beliefs in the all-­powerful Kètanëtuwit and manitous, contending that the Natives worshipped the devil. New Sweden governor Johan Printz in 1643 made this m ­ istake, saying they “know nothing of God, but serve Satan with their Kintika [religious dances], and sacrifice to him that he may give them success in their hunts and that he may do them no harm.” Printz then went on to acknowledge their spiritual confidence, admitting that “when we speak to them about God they pay no attention, but they w ­ ill let it be understood that they are a ­free ­people, subject to no one, but do what they please. I presume it would be pos­si­ble to convert them; but only with ­great ­labor.” The Swedish Lutheran minister Johan Campanius made a serious attempt in the 1640s by learning the Unami trade pidgin. He reported, however, that the Lenapes found Lutheran worship unsatisfactory ­because the minister “stood alone, and talked so long, while all the rest ­were listening in silence.” A few Lenapes attended ser­v ices and learned some Christian doctrines, yet the Swedish cleric failed to convert anyone to Chris­tian­ity. In 1647 he requested reassignment to Sweden, complaining that the Delaware valley remained “a heathen country.”8



Defending the Lenape Homeland 15

The Unami language of southern Lenapehoking was considerably more difficult to learn than the Unami trade pidgin that the Lenapes taught to early Dutch immigrants in the Delaware valley. ­These colonists subsequently conveyed the pidgin to Manhattan, using it to conduct business and daily affairs with Munsees in the Hudson valley, despite differences between the Unami and Munsee languages. ­After receiving reports of the Unami pidgin, a director of the West India Com­pany (WIC), Johan de Laet, published a short list of words, including numerals, parts of the h­ uman body, words for fire, snow, and other ele­ments, and the names of animals, birds, and fish. A beaver was “temaquoy”; deer, “atto”; and bear, “machquoyvo.”9 For Lenapes, the simplified pidgin served several purposes, offering a means of communication for trade while protecting their culture and families. In 1628, the Dutch Reformed minister Jonas Michaëlius in Manhattan protested that the pidgin was inadequate to convey “religious m ­ atters.” He noted that many colonists considered “it an easy language, which is soon learned, but I am of a contrary opinion. . . . ​It also seems to us that they rather design to conceal their language from us than to properly communicate it, except in t­ hings which happen in daily trade; saying that it is sufficient for us to understand them in that.” In restricting conversations to commerce rather than religion and culture, Lenape parents hoped to protect their ­children from the grasp of Christian missionaries. Michaëlius acknowledged this conflict, writing that the best way to convert Indigenous ­people was to catechize their ­children, who would then carry Chris­tian­ity back to their communities. He wanted to separate the ­children from their families to teach them the Dutch language and religion and give them “good examples of virtuous living.” Michaëlius reported, however, that “this separation is hard to effect. For the parents have a strong affection for their ­children, and are very loath to part with them; and when they are separated from them, as we have already had proof, the parents are never contented, but take them away stealthily, or induce them to run away.”10 The Unami pidgin remained current between Lenapes and immigrants into the early eigh­teenth ­century, employed by Lenapes, Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and En­glish. A Quaker trader in Salem, West Jersey, compiled a five-­page list of words and phrases in Unami pidgin that was recorded in the Salem rec­ords in the 1680s as “The Indian Interpreter.” The list includes common words and phrases that would be useful in everyday business and conversation. Swedish Lutheran churches in the Delaware valley received copies of Johan Campanius’s translation of Martin Luther’s Small Catechism, published in 1696, but had l­ ittle success in converting Lenape families. William Penn discussed the Unami pidgin in his 1683 Letter to the ­Free Society of Traders, believing that the pidgin represented the a­ ctual Lenape language. He considered their speech “lofty, yet narrow . . . ​ like shorthand in writing; one word serves in the place of three, and the rest are supplied by the understanding of the hearer.” Based on his knowledge of Unami

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Sepa r ate Paths

pidgin, Penn thought the Lenapes possessed an inferior language, one that was “imperfect in their tenses, wanting in their moods, participles, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections.”11 Lenape towns ­were generally small, with populations of about two hundred ­people. They had no palisades b­ ecause they sought peace with other Lenapes, neighboring Indigenous ­peoples, and Eu­ro­pe­ans, though they resorted to war when necessary. Their government was demo­cratic as sakimaòk, or leaders, could hold their position only if they made decisions consistent with the ­will of their ­people. Lenape society was matrilineal, with descent through the ­mother’s line. Kinship leaders, both male and female, chose the sakimaòk, who could be men or ­women but ­were more often male. They made decisions about planting and hunting and collaborated with other Lenape sakimaòk on war, peace, and diplomacy. Several early seventeenth-­century Dutch commentators noted how Lenape town governments operated. The secretary of New Netherland, Isaack de Rasière, believed they ­were “demo­cratic” ­because the sakima acted only with approval of the ­people. If a colonist made a request, the Lenape leader first announced his decision, and if the ­people agreed, “they give all together a sigh—­ ‘He!’—­and if they do not approve, they keep silence, and all come close to the Sackima, and each sets forth his opinion till they agree; that being done, they come all together again to the stranger, to whom the Sackima then announces what they have determined, with the reasons moving them thereto.” Adriaen van der Donck, a New Netherland resident, noted the autonomy of Lenape towns and lack of hierarchical government, writing that they “are divided into dif­fer­ent tribes and languages, each tribe living generally by itself and having one of its number as a chief, though he has not much power or distinction except in their dances or in time of war. . . . ​The youn­gest are the most courageous, and do for the most part what they please.” Van der Donck’s point about young men was particularly apt as they sometimes took the lead in resisting Eu­ro­pean aggression while sakimaòk worked to restore peace.12 Each town held a specific territory cooperatively, as a community. Like other Indigenous p­ eoples in eastern North Amer­i­ca, Lenapes believed land was a resource to be shared, not to be owned by individuals. Thus, ­under Lenape law, a sakima could transfer rights for a parcel only with approval of his or her ­people. When they “sold” land to the Eu­ro­pe­ans, Lenapes intended to give them rights to build a trading post or small plantation, not outright owner­ship as the colonizers expected. The Eu­ro­pe­ans learned this quickly, though they continued to obtain written deeds signed by the sakimaòk to send home to their superiors in Eu­rope as “proof ” of owner­ship. ­After 1675, with En­glish Quaker immigration and disastrous population loss among the Lenapes, the colonists increasingly dominated West Jersey. Still, Lenapes retained towns in the interior parts of Salem, Burlington, and Gloucester Counties and throughout the Pine Barrens.13



Defending the Lenape Homeland 17

Since 1615, Lenapes had traded with Dutch mari­ners, such as Cornelis Hendricksen and Cornelis May; then, in 1624 they permitted May to establish a trading post on Matinicum, which the Dutch called High or Schoon (Beautiful) Island, and the En­glish l­ ater named Burlington Island. The settlement was one of three sites that the WIC planned in founding New Netherland, along with Fort Orange, now Albany, New York, and another on the Connecticut River. May assigned two Walloon families and eight men, French-­speaking Protestant refugees from the Catholic southern Netherlands (Belgium), to establish farms on Matinicum and provide support to the WIC’s fur traders.14 In 1626, the Armewamese allowed the Dutch to build Fort Nassau in their territory at the confluence of Big Timber Creek and the Delaware at the site of present-­day Gloucester City. That same year, the Walloon settlers left Matinicum when Director Peter Minuit consolidated the New Netherland colony on Manhattan Island ­after four Dutch soldiers died at Fort Orange in a ­battle between the Mahicans and Mohawks. Instead of assigning resident merchants to Fort Nassau, the Dutch traded with Lenapes and Susquehannocks primarily from ships. War soon broke out when the Susquehannocks invaded Lenape country to monopolize Dutch commerce, for which they had an abundant supply of valuable Canadian furs to exchange for Eu­ro­pean goods. The Lenapes also wanted t­ hese products but had a weaker bargaining position ­because their local beaver, otter, and other skins w ­ ere thinner than ­those of animals that endured harsh Canadian winters.15 In the midst of the Susquehannock war, while the Armewamese, Mantes, Sanhickans, and o­ thers strug­gled to keep control of the territory from Salem River north to the Falls, in 1631 the Sickoneysincks near Cape Henlopen (Delaware) destroyed the Dutch plantation of Swanendael to keep the colonists from establishing large-­scale agriculture on both sides of Delaware Bay. In 1629, the WIC planned to expand its mission in New Netherland from the fur trade to permit individual investors to start patroonships, or private plantation colonies. Despite uncertainty and controversy about ­whether this was the best path, the com­pany de­cided it needed to set up settler colonies to prevent ­England and France from taking over its claimed territory. Merchants with capital could purchase land directly from the Lenapes to set up patroonships, including one at Cape Henlopen and another at Cape May. WIC director Samuel Godijn, the primary patroon of Swanendael, and his partners dispatched Gillis Hossitt, who obtained a deed from the Sickoneysincks on June 1, 1629, for a territory on the west bank two miles wide and thirty-­five miles long from Cape Henlopen to the “first narrow” of the Delaware River.16 Hossitt returned to the Netherlands and then in 1631 sailed with Peter Heyes, captain of the ship Walvis (Whale), intending to build Swanendael, grow tobacco and grain, and harvest oil from ­whales from the bay. The Sickoneysincks expected the Dutch to focus on trade; thus, they ­were surprised when Hossitt and Heyes

18

Sepa r ate Paths

took most of their goods to Cape May, where they bargained with the Kechemeches for a large tract. The Sickoneysincks concluded that the Dutch planned to conquer the region, with the two patroonships initiating settlement on both sides of the Delaware. The Sickoneysincks forestalled that possibility by destroying Swanendael’s yellow brick ­house, fields, equipment, and livestock and killing all thirty-­two residents. The incident sent shockwaves across the Atlantic, reversing the WIC’s policy in the Delaware valley as the directors focused once again on trade. The Lenapes successfully delayed expansive Eu­ro­pean settlement in the Delaware valley for more than forty years. They used the memory of Swanendael into the early eigh­teenth ­century as evidence that, while they preferred peace, they would use vio­lence when necessary to protect their homeland and families.17 Indeed, ­until John Fenwick established Salem in 1675, the Lenapes tightly restricted Eu­ro­pean colonization. Their success was remarkable and distinctive among Natives from New E ­ ngland to V ­ irginia considering the Delaware valley’s wealth of resources with fertile soil, moderate climate, forests, freshwater streams, and estuaries along the ocean and bays. The memory of Swanendael and the Lenapes’ resolution, strength, and unity—as autonomous towns coordinated to conduct diplomacy and address threats—­deterred plans for large-­scale settlement for many years. In the pro­cess, they carried on d­ oing business with the Dutch, Swedes, and En­glish who arrived, exchanging a range of commodities including corn, hops, wampum, furs, information, rights to use land, and ser­vices as allies, messengers, and guides. In late 1632, David de Vries, the Dutch mari­ner and partner of Samuel Godijn, arrived in southern Lenapehoking to make peace with the Lenapes in the aftermath of Swanendael and to reestablish trade. He had heard about the colony’s destruction before leaving the Netherlands and, as the WIC directors instructed, promptly ended hostilities with the Sickoneysincks. Lenapes on the east bank caught sight of de Vries and his six-­man crew in early January 1633 as they sailed the yacht Squirrel up the Delaware to Fort Nassau on Big Timber Creek to purchase corn for their return home. Amid the protracted war with the Susquehannocks and wary of Eu­ro­pe­ans, the Mantes and Armewamese initially held back. A Sanhickan ­woman met the Dutch, warning them against ­going too far into a creek ­because she believed that some of the Lenapes might attack. Receiving a piece of clothing, she explained that Lenapes had recently “seized a shallop with En­glishmen and killed the En­glishmen.” The next day, more than forty Mantes arrived from Red Hook (­later Red Bank), several miles south of Fort Nassau, boarding the Squirrel with beaver skins to exchange for goods. Several Lenapes wore En­glish jackets, raising de Vries’s suspicions in light of the Sanhickan ­woman’s report.18 Armewamese sakimaòk soon joined the Mantes to cooperate in negotiating and trading with the Dutch. The Lenapes ­were disappointed b­ ecause de Vries desperately needed corn and lacked sufficient goods to buy both food and furs.



Defending the Lenape Homeland 19

On January 8, as the yacht sailed near shore, de Vries found Fort Nassau “full of Indians, and more and more constantly coming.” A co­ali­tion of nine sakimaòk from “nine dif­fer­ent places” approached the vessel in a canoe and then “seated themselves in a circle and called us to them, saying they saw that we w ­ ere afraid of them, but that they came to make a lasting peace with us, whereupon they made us a pre­sent of ten beaver-­skins, which one of them gave us, with a ceremony with each skin, saying in whose name he presented it; that it was for a perpetual peace with us, and that we must banish all evil thoughts from us, for they had now thrown away all evil.” The sakimaòk declined de Vries’s gifts, “to each one an axe, adze, and pair of knives, . . . ​declaring that they had not made us pre­sents in order to receive ­others in return, but for the purpose of a firm peace, which we took for truth.” The Lenapes fi­nally acknowledged that de Vries needed corn, explaining that w ­ omen controlled its distribution. A ­ fter de Vries offered “to give them something for their wives,” they agreed to return the next day with supplies. The sakimaòk sent seven or eight young Lenapes to stay overnight on the yacht, which de Vries interpreted as showing “a good peace” and trust that they would not kidnap the ­children. At daylight, fifty Lenapes brought “Indian corn of dif­fer­ent colors” and more beaver skins in return for Dutch cloth, ­kettles, and axes.19 In the wake of Swanendael’s destruction, vari­ous Lenape communities from the Sickoneysincks to the Mantes and Armewamese sought peace with the Dutch traders. Within the context of Lenape dominance, both sides wanted amity and trade rather than war. Attacks by Susquehannocks l­ imited further help that the Lenapes could offer de Vries and his men. L ­ ater in January 1633, the Dutch saw “­great fires” on the west side of the river but encountered no p­ eople ­because of icy conditions and war. When de Vries and his crew sailed to Fort Nassau in February, they met an older Lenape man and w ­ oman, who sold them some corn and beans despite fear of capture by the Susquehannocks. Three Armewamese then told de Vries that they w ­ ere fleeing from the ­enemy who “had killed some of their ­people,” stolen their corn, and destroyed homes. They ­were “compelled to be content with what they could find in the woods, and came to spy out in what way the Minquas had gone away—­the main body of their p­ eople lying about five or six hours’ journey distant, with their wives and ­children.” Ninety Sanhickan men had died in ­battle. The Lenapes more generally “­were suffering ­great hunger,” the Armewamese said, but many survived, and the Susquehannocks “had all left and gone from us, back to their country.” De Vries realized that he would have to find corn elsewhere for their return to the Netherlands but took advantage of the Delaware River to fish with their seines, catching “in one draught as many as thirty men could eat of perch, roach, and pike.” They then sailed to the ­Virginia colony where they purchased corn.20 The conflict between the Lenapes and Susquehannocks persisted the next year, in summer 1634, when the En­glishman Captain Thomas Yong sailed up the

20

Sepa r ate Paths

river to claim the region for King Charles I and to find a northwest passage to Asia. A Lenape told Yong that they “­were at warre with a certain Nation called the Minquaos, who had killed many of them, destroyed their corne, and burned their h­ ouses.” Inhabitants of the west bank of the river ­were forced to “the other side farre up into the woods” in New Jersey. Susquehannocks came on board Yong’s ship the next day, indicating that “they w ­ ere lately come from warre with the other Indians, whome they had overcome, and slayne some of them, and cutt downe their corne.” The Susquehannocks offered Yong and his crew some of the corn they had plundered in return for a hatchet, pipe, knife, and scissors. The Natives expressed interest in trading beaver and otter furs but left the Delaware and did not return before Yong’s departure. The Lenapes and Susquehannocks ended their war by about 1636, establishing an alliance between the two nations that confirmed Lenape sovereignty in the Delaware valley while granting the Susquehannocks the right to trade.21 Captain Yong, with his nephew and lieutenant, Robert Evelyn, explored the Delaware valley, interviewing Lenapes on the east bank about their communities and the country north of the Falls. Evelyn wrote a report for Sir Edmund Plowden, who received a charter for New Albion in West Jersey from Charles I. Though Plowden traveled to ­Virginia in 1642 and prob­ably visited the Delaware valley, he failed to establish his colony. Evelyn’s report, first published in 1641, was glowing in his description of the region but offered an implicit warning that significant manpower would be needed if Plowden planned to subdue the Lenapes by force. He listed nine Lenape towns from Cape May to the Falls, estimating 940 men available to defend the Kechemeches, Mantes, Sikonesses, Asomocches, Armewamese, Rancocas, Atsayans, Calcefar, and Mosilian p­ eople.22 If one assumes an average ­family size of four to five ­people, the population of ­these towns was 3,700 to 4,700. In his report, Evelyn omitted about one-­half of the Lenapes of the Delaware valley, including the Sickoneysincks at Cape Henlopen; Cohanzicks, Narraticons, and Sanhickans in West Jersey; and Lenapes on the Delaware’s west bank, thus bringing their number in 1634 to approximately 7,500 to 9,000. Evelyn assured Plowden that the Lenapes did not pose a threat, suggesting they “are all extream fearfull of a gun, naked and unarmed against our shot, swords and pikes,” yet advised Plowden to recruit at least three hundred men if he expected to “doe very well and grow rich.” Like his u­ ncle Thomas Yong, Evelyn considered the Lenapes helpful and interested in trade. Nevertheless, he portrayed southern Lenapehoking as an inhabited country with hundreds of men ready to defend their homeland—­unlike Puritans in New ­England who used the concept of vacuum domicilium to depict Native American territory as a wasteland open to En­glish settlement.23 ­After the Susquehannock war ended, Lenapes confronted a series of colonizers from Eu­rope and New E ­ ngland, successfully limiting them to trading forts and small tracts of land. The sakimaòk required proper treaty protocol in



Defending the Lenape Homeland 21

exchanging goods on a fair and regular basis in return for the right to use land for outposts and minimal agriculture. Peter Minuit’s expedition of the ships Kalmar Nyckel (Key of Calmar) and Fågel Grip (Griffin) arrived in spring 1638 to establish New Sweden and exchange for furs. The former director of New Netherland negotiated for land from Lenapes at the pre­sent site of Wilmington, Delaware. The small colony expanded primarily on the west bank, though its governors claimed the entire Delaware valley on the basis of treaties with Lenapes on both sides of the river. Governor Peter Holländer Ridder in 1641 obtained a deed for the territory along the Delaware from Cape May to Raccoon Creek, shortly before another group of Lenapes made a deal with merchants and families from New Haven, Connecticut, for land at Varkens Kill (Salem River). The New Haven colonists bargained for land on both banks of the Delaware, thus ignoring the claims of the Dutch, Swedes, and Charles I’s grant of New Albion to Edmund Plowden. B ­ ecause Lenapes negotiated rights to use small plots of land rather than make huge territorial cessions (as Eu­ro­pe­ans recorded in deeds), the sakimaòk did not consider their actions as selling the same land twice. The Dutch and Swedish colonizers adapted quickly to the Lenapes’ concept of land owner­ ship, expecting to share possession and resources with their hosts.24 With the arrival of the Dutch and then the Swedes and New Haven colonists, the Lenapes appreciated the competitive advantage of dealing with traders from three colonies, yielding higher prices for furs and corn. The Eu­ro­pe­ans considered the situation untenable, so the Dutch, with Swedish encouragement, quickly evicted the New Haven mi­grants from their fort on the Schuylkill River. Governor Johan Printz then asserted New Sweden’s claims to the east bank of the Delaware by taking over the New Haven settlement at Varkens Kill and constructing Fort Elfsborg near the site. The fort, which controlled ship traffic on the Delaware from 1643 to 1651, was the only official effort by New Sweden to colonize West Jersey. The Dutch complained in 1650 that their vessels “must strike the flag before this fort, none excepted; and two men are sent on board to ascertain from whence the yachts or ships come.” New Netherland’s Governor Peter Stuyvesant in 1651 effectively removed Fort Elfsborg’s strategic advantage both on the river and in the Susquehannock fur trade, replacing Fort Nassau with a new garrison, Fort Casimir, at Tamecongh (­later New C ­ astle, Delaware).25 During New Sweden’s existence from 1638 to 1655, the Lenapes had frequent and generally improving relations with the Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans who made up the colony’s small population. The most serious conflict between New Sweden and Lenapes occurred soon a­ fter the arrival of Johan Printz, the temperamental and overbearing governor who expected to dominate the Lenapes despite his fewer than two hundred immigrants. In March  1644, ­after colonists brought epidemic disease, the Lenapes killed five settlers in response to the deaths of their kin and ­because the Swedes lacked enough trade goods to renew e­ arlier treaties for rights to land. In the midst of wars in the Chesapeake,

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Sepa r ate Paths

New ­England, and New Netherland, including northern New Jersey, during the 1630s and 1640s, Printz requested from his Swedish superiors several hundred soldiers to break “the necks of all of [the Lenapes] in this River, especially since we have no beaver trade whatsoever with them but only the maize [corn] trade.”26 Printz received no additional soldiers; nor did he obtain from Sweden the cloth, metal goods, and other manufactures that the Lenapes sought. In killing the five settlers, the Lenapes conducted religious mourning war to avenge the deaths of f­amily members who died from epidemics, but at the same time they warned the Swedes that they needed to fulfill obligations, most importantly providing trade goods in return for use of land. In the 1644 conference to resolve differences over the five murders, Printz pretended to hold power but realized he had no choice but to accept the Lenapes’ gifts of beaver furs and wampum as compensation for the deaths rather than insist on punishment for the perpetrators. In his weak position, he followed Lenape protocol. The next year, when Swedish goods still had not arrived, the Armewamese sakima Mattahorn and his son Ackehorn convened a large group to discuss ­whether the Swedes should be forced out. The council of elders de­cided that the “Swedes are good enough” ­because they avoided extensive colonization and war, unlike neighboring colonies. Though the Swedes continued to have supply prob­lems as Eu­ro­pean warfare prevented ships from bringing new immigrants and goods, the Lenapes’ assessment of relationships with New Sweden colonists proved correct. The two groups intermingled, traded, shared information, intermarried, and allied to resist efforts by the Dutch (beginning in 1655) and the En­glish (starting in 1664) to subdue their communities. The fourth and last governor of New Sweden, Johan Risingh, who arrived in 1654, helped to seal this friendship with formal diplomacy.27 In the 1640s and 1650s, many Armewamese and perhaps ­others who merged with their communities relocated from West Jersey to the confluence of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers on the west bank. Some had moved east to New Jersey during the war with the Susquehannocks; the Armewamese held the territory on both sides of the river in what is now the Philadelphia-­Camden ­metropolitan area. According to Peter Lindeström, the Swedish engineer who accompanied Risingh to New Sweden in 1654, the Lenapes built six towns between Wicaco and the falls of the Schuylkill at Nittabakonck. They are “the most intelligent” of several Lenape groups “who own this River and dwell ­here,” Lindeström believed, and have “cleared and cultivated [their land] with ­great power.” The towns had “several hundred men strong, ­under each chief, counting w ­ omen and ­children, some being stronger, some weaker.” Lindeström admired the district, which he said the Armewamese “rightfully own,” for its beauty, clear springs, fruit trees, and “abundance of vari­ous kinds of rare, wild animals, which, however, now begin to become somewhat diminished” from hunting. Mattahorn,



Defending the Lenape Homeland 23

Ackehorn, and other Lenapes built their communities in the area to participate in the fur trade with Eu­ro­pe­ans and Susquehannocks at the eastern terminus of the Schuylkill trade route to the Susquehanna valley. Lenapes also grew corn on rich soils along the Delaware River north to the Falls, selling some of it as a cash crop to the New Sweden colony.28 Lindeström described the east bank of the Delaware as a region “very rich in all kinds of wild animals and birds, and in the river as well as in the kills and streams emptying into it, t­ here is an abundance of fish of vari­ous kinds.” At the Falls near Assunpink Creek, he wrote, “­there is along the river a beautiful and good land, suitable for black and blue maize, Swedish barley and other such like. [It] is a level and good land for pasture, where the [Lenapes] have lived for a long time, and are still dwelling.” Lindeström observed that the Mantes, who had formerly lived south of the Armewamese at Mantua Creek, now had communities at the Falls and farther north, which could be accessed only by canoe. The Mantes ­people ­were “the rightful owner of the east side of the river” that was “formerly mostly occupied” by them, he thought, “yet this nation is now much died off and diminished through war and also through diseases.” The Mantes, like other Lenapes, held territory on both sides of the Delaware and so hunted and fished on the west bank, selling their surplus to Eu­ro­pe­ans and other Natives.29 Lindeström’s evidence suggests change among Lenape communities since the En­glishman Robert Evelyn visited during the Susquehannock war, when some Lenapes fled their destroyed homes on the west side of the Delaware to take refuge in West Jersey. Their population had dropped significantly from disease and war, from approximately 7,500 to 9,000 in the 1630s to about half that number in 1654.30 With the loss of Fort Nassau and re­orientation of the Susquehannock trade, the Mantes ­people moved north, while the Armewamese relocated to their lands at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill, where Dutch and Swedes also traded with the Susquehannocks. Change came again in the 1660s, however, when the Armewamese on the west bank faced challenges from Haudenosaunee attacks and epidemic disease. In 1661, as allies of the Susquehannocks, the Armewamese at Passyunk lost twelve p­ eople in an assault by “Sinnecus.” Then, in the winter of 1661–1662, the Haudenosaunee deterred the Lenapes from hunting in the Susquehanna and Lehigh valleys, thus preventing them from trading with the Dutch. The Armewamese in May 1663 further solidified their alliance with the Susquehannocks, assisting them to defeat eight hundred Haudenosaunee, who nevertheless in retreat killed Lenapes and spread smallpox that they had contracted from the Dutch. The Armewamese at Passyunk told Andries Hudde, a Dutch official, “that half of them have already been killed by the Sinnekus.” Though Hudde doubted this claim, the Armewamese population did decline, leading many to return to the east bank by 1670. ­There, despite their diminished numbers and power, they rebuilt communities along Newton and Big Timber Creeks. With the Mantes, Rancocas, Cohanzicks, and

24

Sepa r ate Paths

figure 3. Southern Lenapehoking, as presented in Augustine Herrman and W. Faithorne, sculpt., V ­ irginia and Mary­land as it is planted and inhabited this pre­sent year 1670 (London, 1673). Library of Congress. (Detail)

other groups, the Armewamese strengthened southern Lenapehoking despite the ravages of Eu­ro­pean disease.31 Augustine Herrman, a New Netherland merchant who purchased land on the Raritan River in 1651 and knew the Delaware valley well, produced for the Mary­land government a map published as V ­ irginia and Mary­land as it is planted and inhabited this pre­sent year 1670 (London, 1673). He included southern Lenapehoking, which he labeled “New Jarsy Pars at pre­sent Inhabited Only or most By Indians.”32 With a combination of names and diagrams of wigwams, Herrman provided a good idea of Lenape communities located south and east of Rancocas Creek but omitted groups farther north, such as the Assiscunks and Atsayans.



Defending the Lenape Homeland 25

He suggested that both the Rancocas and Mantes communities lived on the Rancocas, supplementing Lindeström’s report that by 1654 the Mantes had moved north from Mantua Creek.33 Unlike prior cartographers, Herrman used the name Yacomanshaghkings rather than Armewamese for their homeland on Newton and Big Timber Creeks. It is likely that Herrman referred to the sakima Jackiekon, combining his name with hacking, meaning in Unami “place” or “land.” Jackiekon was one of the Lenapes who ­later signed the September 1677 conveyance to the West New Jersey Proprietors for the territory along the Delaware between Big Timber and Rancocas Creeks.34 To the south, on Raccoon Creek, Herrman suggested rather small settlements of Narraticons, who had figured prominently in previous maps. He depicted the Cohanzicks as a sizeable community, a combination of several groups, the Asomocches, Sewapois, and Sikonesses, who e­ arlier cartographers had described in the region that is now Salem and Cumberland Counties. At the Maurice River, Cape May, and vari­ous rivers leading to the Atlantic Ocean, Herrman placed wigwams to suggest numerous but unnamed Lenape towns. ­These ­were likely the Kechemeches of Maurice River and Cape May, the Moovoankoncks of the ­Great Egg Harbor watershed, and the Amakaraonks of the ­Little Egg Harbor area.35 For Lenapes, the En­glish Duke of York’s 1664 conquest of New Netherland, including the Dutch colonies on the Hudson and Delaware Rivers, brought the expansive threat from ­Virginia, Mary­land, New ­England, and Long Island much closer to home. While the Swedish and Dutch outposts in the Delaware valley had remained small and focused on trade—to a large extent ­because the Lenapes had successfully discouraged plantation agriculture with the 1631 attack on Swanendael and subsequent threats—­English colonialists now threatened to use war. In tandem, Eu­ro­pean immigrants to North Amer­i­ca had brought new diseases that killed thousands of Lenape m ­ others, ­fathers, and c­ hildren before their time. Though the Native population of the lower Delaware valley prior to 1600 is unknown, their numbers declined from approximately 7,500 to 9,000 in the mid-1630s, to about 4,000 to 5,000 by 1650, and to an estimated 3,000 by 1670, when the Eu­ro­pean population in the region was about 858. Despite severe population loss, however, the Lenapes remained in the 1670s what the eighteenth-­ century historian Samuel Smith called “a formidable body.” They continued to control events and determine the pace of colonization through negotiation, vio­ lence, and threats of vio­lence.36 In September  1670, Lenapes gathered at the town of Oneanickon located upstream on Assiscunk Creek, the land that En­glish colonists ­later called Springfield Township, Burlington County.37 The residents of Oneanickon celebrated the corn harvest with other Lenapes who came from nearby towns in the areas of Rancocas, Pennsauken, and Big Timber Creeks, as well as longer distances from Navesink at Sandy Hook and Cohanzick on Delaware Bay. They came together

26

Sepa r ate Paths

foremost to thank Kètanëtuwit, the Greatest Spirit, or God, with ritual dancing and praise.38 They also faced threats of war from the En­glish governor in New York, Francis Lovelace, who demanded that the sakimaòk turn over the men who had killed ten colonists since 1664. Several Swedish intermediaries arranged the meeting with Lovelace’s representatives, as the governor refused to attend. Although only the clerk Matthias de Ring’s written report of the conference survives, his minutes offer enough detail to consider the Lenapes’ perspective. The sakimaòk and Eu­ro­pean officials met together to preserve peace in the face of En­glish colonization. As diplomats and witnesses, they followed Lenape treaty protocol, at least in part. The sakimaòk included Renowewan of Pennsauken Creek, a veteran diplomat who had witnessed a pact with the Dutch on the Delaware in 1646; Nanacussy and Ockanickon from the upper Assiscunk and Rancocas Creeks; Ockanickon’s ­brother Metapis from Navesink; Colehickamin, Pesacakson, and Ojroqua, their s­ ister, from the territory between Pennsauken and Oldmans Creeks; and the Cohanzick leader Mehocksett, whom Salem colonists ­later called the king.39 Lovelace’s del­e­ga­tion comprised officers of the Duke of York’s government on the Delaware, mostly Swedes and Dutch who had arrived prior to the En­glish takeover in 1664: the Swedes Peter Cock, Peter Rambo, and Israel Helm, and Dutch Martin Roseman and Matthias de Ring. The only En­glish negotiator was Edmund Cantwell, who had remained in the colony since taking part in the 1664 invasion and became sheriff in 1672. As go-­betweens and interpreters, the Swedes set up the meeting and arranged for several Susquehannocks to attend along with their translator, the Lenape Menanzes. De Ring wrote that his del­e­ga­tion arrived on Friday, September 23, 1670, but had to wait at Oneanickon “3 or 4 days for the arrival of the rest of the sachems and other Indians, who did not all come.”40 Renowewan and fellow sakimaòk received the colonists during the harvest ceremony, allowing them to witness their thanksgiving while waiting for every­ one to arrive. The Lenapes then listened to the colonists’ grievances about the killings of ten colonists “from the time when the En­glish came h­ ere into the country ­until the pre­sent.” The sakimaòk must have wondered why the Eu­ro­pe­ ans offered no trade goods as part of the negotiations (de Ring mentions none) and responded to the colonists’ complaints by presenting “a small bundle of white sewant about 3 or 4 fathoms, on the condition” that the En­glish “would be patient while they looked for the murderers and brought them in, if they could find them.” Continuing to follow Lenape diplomatic protocol, Renowewan and ­others then offered another bundle of white wampum, stating “that they did not seek war and that they desired to go out hunting and trade up and down among the Christians just as before.” The governor’s representatives accepted the wampum but said “not as atonement for the murders which they committed but that we accept it only provisionally as a pledge that they would look for and bring in the murderers.” Lovelace had demanded punishment by death for wrongful kill-



Defending the Lenape Homeland 27

ings according to En­glish practice, not compensation with gifts as accepted in Lenape law.41 The sakimaòk gave the En­glish and Dutch officials a lesson in Lenape government and diplomacy, though almost certainly not the Swedes with whom they had collaborated for many years. Lovelace’s appointees said they “­were surprised that not one of the sachems or Indians knew who had committed the murders” and named three they thought w ­ ere the culprits. The Lenapes provided alibis for the named men and further denied that their own ­people had stolen or destroyed goods from Peter Jegou and Peter Alrichs, who had failed to obtain Lenape permission for their plantations near the confluence of Assiscunk Creek and the Delaware. Sakimaòk from that area did not attend the September  1670 treaty, prob­ably by design. Renowewan and the other delegates emphasized the autonomy of Lenape towns, explaining “that the Indians from Assisconck,” not their communities, had plundered Jegou’s and Alrichs’s property.42 At the September  1670 Oneanickon conference, the sakimaòk successfully delayed but did not halt pro­gress t­ oward war with the Duke of York’s government. The root c­ auses of the Lenapes’ discontent remained unchecked, so young men periodically conducted mourning war (with or without their elders’ consent) to atone for permitting colonists to infiltrate their land. They believed that Kètanëtuwit was punishing them through the spread of Eu­ro­pean disease. As representatives of families, the men sought to avenge the deaths of kin by killing vulnerable colonists, ­those who settled on outlying lands for which Lenapes received inadequate compensation or who traveled through Lenape country without guides. Unlike Haudenosaunee mourning war, the Lenapes slayed a few ­people in episodic attacks rather than take captives and execute enemies on a continuing basis to replenish their population and revitalize their communal spirit.43 New York governor Lovelace continued to threaten the Lenapes in retaliation for ­these attacks but discovered the Swedes, Finns, and other Delaware valley settlers had l­ittle appetite for war. In March 1671, Sheriff William Tom and Peter Alrichs reported strained relations with the Lenapes, who claimed “where the En­glish come they drive [the Natives] from ­there lands . . . ​for instance the North[,] ­Virginia and Mary­land and feare if not timely prevent[ed] s­ hall doe so h­ ere.” Tom had to depend on the Swedes and Finns for information, “for us few En­glish none of us [is] able to speake to the Indians,” and warned Lovelace that their small scattered settlements could be attacked.44 The situation deteriorated in September 1671 when a Lenape, Tashiowycan, with assistance from Wywannattamo, killed two Dutch servants of Peter Alrichs on Matinicum, Peter Weltscheerder and Christian Samuels. Alrichs reported that the sakimaòk “promised their best assistance to bring in the murderers, or to procure them to be knocked in the head, if it might be allowed by the Governor,” but ­were apprehensive b­ ecause kinsmen vowed to seek revenge if Tashiowycan and Wywannattamo ­were punished. The ­family believed that Tashiowycan’s

28

Sepa r ate Paths

actions ­were justified ­because his s­ister had died from epidemic disease. He expressed “­great grief for it, & said—­The Manetto [manitou] hath killed my ­sister & I ­will go & kill the Christians.”45 Tashiowycan believed that Kètanëtuwit had allowed disease to destroy his ­sister b­ ecause the Lenapes permitted Eu­ro­pe­ans to take their land and undermine their culture. Though Lenapes kept most of their traditional ways, they had ­adopted certain trade goods, particularly cloth, guns, metal goods, and alcohol. In 1650, Adriaen van der Donck wrote that they increasingly used guns, “sparing no expense for them; and are so skilful in the use of them that they surpass many Christians.” He described their apparel as a combination of Eu­ro­pean cloth and animal skins, as w ­ omen and men wore “a piece of duffels or leather in front, with a deer skin or elk’s hide over the body,” using “for the most part duffels cloth, which they obtain in barter from the Christians.”46 In killing the servants Weltscheerder and Samuels, Tashiowycan pursued mourning war to appease God and bring an end to the epidemic. Like many Lenapes since the early seventeenth ­century, he believed that an angry Kètanëtuwit permitted the disease to spread ­because they accepted Eu­ro­pe­ans into their country and defiled their culture and land by participating in trade. In 1654, sakimaòk had blamed the Swedish governor Johan Risingh for bringing sickness, which they believed Kètanëtuwit had “sent in our ship and all around the ship.” ­Unless they could convince God to end the epidemic, “both we and all would die.” ­Later, in 1751, a female Lenape prophet in the Susquehanna valley had a vision in which “the G ­ reat Power [warned] that they should destroy the poison from among them” by rejecting Eu­ro­pean culture and Chris­tian­ity. In the 1760s, the Delaware sakima Neolin preached that Natives w ­ ere responsible for mortality and loss of land b­ ecause they had ­adopted Eu­ro­pean ways.47 Lovelace called for war through the fall of 1671 but could not rally the Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and even his En­glish officials in the Delaware colony to march against the Lenapes. Reluctantly, in December 1671, the Lenape sakimaòk agreed to surrender the murderers and sent two men to Tashiowycan’s “wig-­wam in the night; one of them his par­tic­u­lar friend; him he asked if he intended to kill him; he answered no, but the sachems have ordered you to die: [Tashiowycan] demanded what his b­ rothers said; being told they also said he must die, he then holding his hands before his eyes, said kill me: Upon this the other Indian, not his intimate, shot him in the breast.” Though Wywannattamo escaped, the Lenapes satisfied the En­glish, who displayed Tashiowycan’s body in chains at New C ­ astle, the Delaware colony outpost. The Lenape leaders also publicly reprimanded “their young men, and before the En­glish, told them, that now they saw a beginning of punishment, and all that did the like should be so served.”48 ­Under En­glish pressure, the sakimaòk managed to convince their community to turn in Tashiowycan’s corpse rather than risk war. They would have preferred to pay compensation, but Lovelace would not agree. Lenapes supported



Defending the Lenape Homeland 29

Tashiowycan’s goals as they dreaded the spread of En­glish settlers and their disease. Indeed, they continued to conduct mourning war over the next several years, culminating with a conference in May 1675 with the next governor of New York, Edmund Andros. At that time, amid conflicts between En­glish and Natives in other colonies—­King Philip’s War in New ­England and Bacon’s Rebellion in the Chesapeake—­Andros sought peace with the Lenapes by accepting compensation for colonists’ deaths.49 The Lenapes surmounted a series of calamities ­after 1615 when the Dutch first sought trade in the Delaware valley. The Armewamese, Cohanzicks, Mantes, and other communities observed the outbreak of wars in the Chesapeake, New ­England, and New Netherland and applauded the quick action of the Sickoneysincks to cut off the Dutch colony of Swanendael. The Lenapes kept relative peace, using their substantial numbers and power, the memory of Swanendael, and incidents of mourning war to discourage Eu­ro­pean colonization in their homeland. Nevertheless, they faced catastrophic effects of epidemic disease, as they declined to about three thousand in 1670, significantly fewer than a half ­century ­earlier but still higher than Indigenous populations elsewhere who faced war, slavery, and exile. The p­ eople of southern Lenapehoking, at the arrival of John Fenwick and his Quaker colony in 1675, remained sovereign, ready to defend their freedom, land, and communities.

2 • SEEKING PE ACE IN COHANZICK COUNTRY

The history of southern Lenapehoking entered a new phase in 1675 when the En­glish Quaker John Fenwick arrived with settlers to found a colony he named Salem, meaning “peace.” The Cohanzicks of the Salem and Cohansey Rivers apparently received the immigrants with good ­will, if not open arms. The interactions and expectations of the Lenapes, Quakers, and Dutch, Swedes, and Finns (old settlers), who had begun migrating from the west bank of the Delaware in 1665, presaged patterns of colonization in West Jersey over the next fifty years. The Cohanzicks had merged with other Lenape communities as a result of epidemics brought by the Eu­ro­pe­ans but welcomed alliances with friendly colonists within the framework of Lenape sovereignty. The old settlers found refuge from the Duke of York’s rigid land policies in the Delaware colony, while Fenwick’s Quakers escaped religious persecution in E ­ ngland and Ireland. For the Cohanzicks, both groups could bolster their population against hostile external attacks by En­glish and Haudenosaunee forces. The old settlers welcomed the Lenape alliance in return for farmland; Fenwick’s colony expected to dominate the region from Oldmans Creek to the Cohansey watershed. Outnumbered and committed to peaceful occupation, the Salem Friends quickly recognized the Cohanzicks’ sovereignty and continuing rights to land. Since the late 1630s—­amid frequent conflicts in New E ­ ngland, V ­ irginia, Mary­land, New Netherland, and the adjacent Munsee country of northern New Jersey—­southern Lenapehoking had avoided war. The Cohanzicks, Armewamese, and other communities deflected large-­scale Eu­ro­pean colonization through per­sis­tence, fortitude, occasional murders of trespassing settlers, and well-­timed threats but permitted the Dutch, Swedes, and New Haven colonists to take up small parcels or build forts in return for adequate compensation. By the 1660s, l­ittle evidence remained in Cohanzick country that twenty En­glish families from New Haven, Connecticut, had settled on Varkens Kill (Salem River). The New Haven outpost persisted for about two years but in the summer of 1642 suffered severe mortality from disease. Governor Johan Printz, who 30



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 31

figure 4. Cohanzick country, as presented in Herrman and Faithorne, ­Virginia and Mary­land. Library of Congress. (Detail)

arrived in February  1643, integrated the remaining seven En­glish ­house­holds into New Sweden. Most of the ­house­hold heads, Elias Baily, William Braunvell, Robert Coxwell, John Erie, Thomas Marod, Mr.  Spinning, and John Wall (or Woollen), apparently left the area with their families, as they did not appear on the Duke of York’s 1671 ­house­hold census of the east bank. A few may have joined Lenape communities or taken up small holdings outside the census takers’ purview. William Braunvell, or his son perhaps, lived in West Jersey in 1677, as “­will Bromfield” appeared on the Upland Court census. Similarly, most of the soldiers at Fort Elfsborg on Varkens Kill, which operated effectively from 1643 to 1651, departed from the east bank. Of the eigh­teen officers and soldiers serving ­there in 1644, most had died, returned to Eu­rope, or lived on the west bank by the 1670s.1 Beginning in 1665, though the Duke of York had no treaty with the Lenapes for the Salem area, individual Eu­ro­pean colonists from New C ­ astle negotiated with the Cohanzicks for land near the Salem River in what became Penn’s Neck. Some of them also received permits from the New Jersey governor Philip Carteret, headquartered in Elizabeth, to obtain deeds from Lenape leaders. Sakimaòk Tospaminck and Wennaminck in 1665 permitted Foppe Jansen Outhout, a justice and tavern owner in New C ­ astle, to construct a h­ ouse and plantation, and Wennaminck, in 1666, allowed the New ­Castle resident Isaac Tayne, alias L’Pierre, to take

32

Sepa r ate Paths

up adjacent land. Michael Lacroy and Michael Baron also purchased acreage, while Lacroy’s sons traded ten fathoms of wampum, three hogs, and one ­kettle to Tospaminck, Wennaminck, and Machkierck Allom for nearby lands. This payment in hogs suggests that at least some Lenapes had incorporated—or w ­ ere willing to incorporate—­livestock into their economy, perhaps reducing friction between the Eu­ro­pe­ans and Cohanzicks over the colonists’ roaming hogs and ­cattle.2 Swedes and Finns from the Delaware colony also migrated east into Lenape territory, rebelling against the Duke of York’s efforts, in the late 1660s, to impose quitrents and expropriate common lands for distribution to new En­glish colonists. Before this, the old settlers and Lenapes on the west bank had lived in adjacent neighborhoods with a flexible system that recognized surrounding meadows and forest as shared resources. Eu­ro­pean and Lenape inhabitants could pass across improved lands as long as they safeguarded the own­er’s livestock and other property. Swedes and Finns who had immigrated to the Delaware valley in the 1640s and 1650s had previously benefitted from systems in Sweden and Finland by which farmers cultivated individual crops but had access to adjacent areas for firewood, gathering, and grazing livestock. In Lenapehoking, they found the Lenapes’ use of land congenial and thus welcomed a system of shared resources rather than fee s­ imple owner­ship of large farms and plantations. Though some scholars have emphasized the impact of Finns who had migrated from eastern Finland to Sweden to pursue a specific method of slash-­and-­burn agriculture, the Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes in the Delaware valley developed a mutual understanding for use of common land. Intermarriage among Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes helped to strengthen cross-­cultural ties.3 With support from the Lenapes, many Swedes and Finns in the summer of 1669 opposed the new En­glish land policies in what became known as the Long Swede (or Long Finn) Rebellion. The En­glish considered the nonviolent re­sis­ tance as treasonous, claiming that the Long Swede, also known as Königsmark and other aliases, wanted to return the Delaware valley to Sweden’s control. ­Because the old settlers and Lenapes found common cause over loss of land, the Duke of York’s government took fast action, transporting Königsmark as a servant to Barbados and punishing his most ardent supporters with fines. Königsmark’s closest accomplice, Hendrick Andersson Coleman, a Finn who ­later moved to West Jersey, according to the En­glish was “well verst in the Indian language” and had left “his habitation ­Cattle & Corne with out any care taken for them” to take refuge with Lenapes. During the 1660s, Lenapes on the west bank moved to West Jersey, consolidating their communities in the face of En­glish expansion. In the de­cade ­after 1669, at least ten Long Swede conspirators also relocated their h­ ouse­holds. For example, Matthias Nilsson of Bochten and his father-­in-­law Matthias Matthiasson by 1671 negotiated with the Cohanzicks to set up new homes in the area they also called Bochten (­later Boughttown), while Matthias Bärtilsson and Eric Jöransson of Crane Hook moved to Finn’s Point.



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 33

figure 5. The “Main Residence,” the largest of the seven cabins of the New Sweden

Colonial Farmstead. Th ­ ese w ­ ere replica cabins first built in 1988 as a living history museum in Bridgeton, New Jersey. In 2020 the cabins ­were renovated and moved to Governor Printz Park in Tinicum Township, Pennsylvania, where the farmstead ­will once again be used to teach the history of the colony of New Sweden. (Photo­graph by Bill Moller of the Tinicum Township Historical Society, courtesy of the New Sweden Com­pany, Inc.)

Other Long Swede confederates settled at nearby Chestnut Neck, One Tree Hook, and farther north on Raccoon Creek.4 While written deeds have survived for a few Long Swede rebels who built new farms in southern Lenapehoking, o­ thers obtained Lenape permission with oral agreements sealed with compensation, such as wampum and goods. Some Swedes and Finns, but not most, arranged for documents to demonstrate to the En­glish government that they had purchased the land. The Finn Lucas Petersson obtained a permit in 1668 from Governor Carteret to purchase a “Neck of Land from the Indians” and a deed in 1671 from Keckquenaminck and Wennaminck, described as ­brothers, for a tract adjacent to the land of the Long Swede rebels Nilsson and Matthiasson, for whom we have no deeds. Petersson had already paid the Cohanzick sakimaòk “a good Consid[eration] in goods.” Johan Hendricksson, a Long Swede conspirator, and his son Peter negotiated with the sakima Osawath in June 1675 for two necks south of Oldmans Creek at One Tree Hook. The Hendrickssons paid a variety of goods, including match coats, guns, gunpowder, tools, strong liquor, and beer.5

34

Sepa r ate Paths

Thus, in May  1672, when Society of Friends leader George Fox and fellow missionaries traveled through southern New Jersey on their way from Mary­land to New E ­ ngland, a small but growing number of Eu­ro­pe­ans lived in the region. Cohanzick guides shepherded the Quakers from the Delaware River, passing through woods punctuated by “bogs Rivers, & creeks,” at night lying by a fire “and sometimes in the Indian Cabbins.” The Lenapes ­were friendly and helpful, Fox wrote, while emphasizing their dominance in the region and lack of interest in Chris­tian­ity. He met with several sakimaòk and their families who received him kindly, including one who “could speak some En­glish and he received mee very loveingly and I spake to him much and his ­people and they w ­ ere loveing.” Fox thus conveyed to En­glish Friends considering immigration to New Jersey, including John Fenwick who frequented London meetings, that the Lenapes ­were amicable ­toward ­those who recognized their sovereignty. Fox warned, however, that on their return from New E ­ ngland on the path west from Manhattan that they heard of the 1671 killing of the Dutch servants at Matinicum, which their master Peter Alrichs had taken up without Lenape permission.6 Indeed, in the three years between Fox’s visit and the Griffin’s arrival at Salem River, more incidents had occurred in central New Jersey and northern Delaware as Lenapes retaliated in mourning war for epidemic deaths and encroachment on land. In 1674, a­ fter regaining New York and the Delaware colony from the Dutch, the Duke of York appointed a new governor, Edmund Andros, who placed a priority on bringing peace to the region to encourage immigration and financial success. In 1675 and 1676, Andros understood that, without careful diplomacy, the Lenapes could be drawn into the larger wars enveloping eastern North Amer­i­ca. In Mary­land and V ­ irginia, En­glish colonists attacked the Susquehannocks in what is called Bacon’s Rebellion, while in New ­England, settlers fought against Natives in King Philip’s War. Andros realized that he had to travel to New ­Castle to negotiate with the Lenapes before conflict spiraled out of control. Lenapes had killed Dr. John Roades and Thomas Tilley on Cohanzick hunting land in Delaware between the Whorekill and New ­Castle, while the old settler James Sandelands stood accused of slaying a Lenape, Pequees, at his h­ ouse in Upland.7 On May 13, 1675, at New C ­ astle, four sakimaòk met with Andros, including Renowewan of Pennsauken Creek, Nanacussy and Ockanickon of the Rancocas area, and Wassackarous (Saccatorey), who had recently moved to West Jersey from Navesink. Renowewan, Ockanickon, and Nanacussy had participated in the September 1670 meeting at Oneanickon, as did Mehocksett of Cohanzick. Wassackarous prob­ably negotiated with Andros on behalf of Mehocksett and his ­brother Petocoque b­ ecause Cohanzicks had killed Roades and Tilley, who traveled across their territory without permission. To cover for their deaths, Mehocksett and Petocoque subsequently signed a series of deeds for land in Delaware from 1676 to 1682, a deal prob­ably brokered at the May 1675 treaty but



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 35

not recorded in the minutes. At that meeting, Andros also presided over Sandelands’s jury trial for manslaughter. Sandelands had thrown Pequees from his ­house, but an all-­European jury cleared him b­ ecause they considered the death accidental.8 While the Lenapes yielded to Andros in several re­spects—­they gained l­ittle from Sandelands’s trial but still agreed to give up land in Delaware—­the region avoided war. Andros dropped Lovelace’s demand for En­glish punishment of Lenape murderers and instead accepted the Native practice of covering deaths through gifts. The Lenape sakimaòk and En­glish governor engaged in negotiations to reduce rather than escalate the cycle of vio­lence. Many of the old settlers—­ Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and French—­stood ready to continue the close relations that had existed for more than a generation. The Lenapes’ alliance with Swedes and Finns helped to preserve southwestern New Jersey as Lenape country, a place where many Swedes and Finns, with the En­glish colonists, found an unruly but generally nonviolent home. In fall 1675, several months a­ fter the New ­Castle meeting, John Fenwick’s expedition arrived on the Griffin, quickly meeting with the Cohanzicks to arrange terms on which the immigrants could build homes and establish a colony. Fenwick had become involved in Quaker settlement in West New Jersey when, on March 18, 1674, he purchased from John Lord Berkeley one-­half of the proprietorship of New Jersey, which Berkeley had received from the Duke of York. Fenwick paid £1,000 in trust for Edward Byllynge, who had arranged the deal with Berkeley but was in debt so asked Fenwick to extend the funds ­until he could repay him. When the Quakers Fenwick and Byllynge subsequently quarreled, leading Friends appointed the Quakers William Penn, Gawen Lawrie, and Nicholas Lucas as trustees to mediate the dispute. Fenwick demanded and received one-­tenth of the proprietorship, but he too fell into debt so, right before sailing for West Jersey, signed a mortgage to two creditors, the Quakers John Eldridge and Edmund Warner. Fenwick expected them to return control of the colony ­after selling enough land to pay his debts. Instead, they claimed he had surrendered owner­ship of Salem. The lawsuits to resolve this conflict over the Salem Tenth continued u­ ntil 1682–1683 when William Penn purchased the claims of Eldridge, Warner, and Fenwick to remaining unsold lands.9 Despite uncertainty over what rights Fenwick held to territory in West Jersey, he de­cided to establish a colony of his own soon ­after purchasing the land in trust for Byllynge. Fenwick pressed through the opposition from Byllynge and the three mediators to obtain one-­tenth of West Jersey land in a combined parcel rather than dispersed lots throughout the colony. By the end of February 1675, Fenwick set his course, selling five thousand acres to William Malster of the City of Westminster and his sister-­in-­law Frances Bowyer of Buckingham.10 On March  8, 1675, Fenwick published a two-­sided broadside, targeted to Friends, describing his proposed colony in New Jersey. Individuals, rich and

36

Sepa r ate Paths

poor, could emigrate and establish new lives in Salem in three dif­fer­ent ways. Affluent p­ eople could buy land at the rate of £5 per one thousand acres, with ­those who purchased one thousand to ten thousand acres receiving the status of proprietors or freeholders. ­Those who could not afford this price could also have “the Freedom of the Country” and obtain one hundred acres for each person they transported over fourteen years of age, paying a yearly charge (or quitrent) of one penny per acre. ­Others could sign up as bound servants to Fenwick or another purchaser in return for transportation and, at the end of four years’ ser­vice, receive clothing, tools, and other freedom dues as well as one hundred acres with the same quitrent requirement. Fenwick proposed that the emigrants would at first collaborate to construct h­ ouses and plantations, though individuals could work separately if they chose. He envisioned a town or city to be built “by reason of Delaware River for Trade,” in which ­every purchaser would have a part. The government would consist of a governor and council of twelve proprietors, with six rotating off annually to allow all freeholders a chance to participate.11 On the reverse side of the proposal, Fenwick published an extract entitled “The Description of a happy Country” from John Ogilby’s Amer­i­ca (1671) that described West Jersey as a place “where the Land floweth with Milk and Honey.” Among exclamations of the opportunities for economic success, wealth of resources, plentiful flora and fauna, and recommendations on what clothing and tools emigrants should take, the author observed briefly about the Lenapes: “And if one chance to meet with an Indian Town, they ­shall give him the best Entertainment they have, and upon his desire direct him on his Way.” Though this could be accurate when Eu­ro­pe­ans approached Cohanzicks fairly, Fenwick downplayed their substantial population and power.12 Between February and July 1675, Fenwick sold 150,000 acres of Salem land in fifty transactions.13 Of ­these purchasers (including four who on June  7, 1675, bought resales from John Eldridge), twenty-­five heads of household—­some with families, o­ thers traveling alone—­settled in Salem during the years 1675 to 1681. Nearly three-­quarters (eigh­teen) of ­these “first purchasers” had resided in London and its environs, hailing from such parishes as St. Botolph, St. Martin in the Fields, St. Paul Shadwell, and Stepney, while the remaining seven came from Berkshire, Essex, Gloucestershire, Nottingham, Southampton, and Wilts. Of ­those drawn from outside the London area, several had connections with Fenwick or other buyers, including the proprietor’s d­ aughters and sons-­in-­law Elizabeth and John Adams of Berkshire, and Priscilla and Edward Champney of Gloucestershire. (Fenwick’s third d­ aughter, Anne, married Samuel Hedge in Salem in 1676.) John and Elizabeth Pledger of Portsmouth, Southampton, partnered with Hipolite and Mary Lefever of St. Martin’s, Middlesex, as the ­couples purchased three thousand acres each with deeds dated May  25, 1675. John and Hipolite had already arrived in West Jersey by that date, ­because on March 27, 1675, they made an agreement with Accomes (Necomis), Meopony, Wassackarous, and Alloways



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 37 ­table 1 Settlers from ­England, Other En­glish Colonies,

and Ireland in the Salem Colony, 1675–1681

House­hold heads from ­England and colonies House­hold heads from Ireland En­glish servants Irish servants Total

Quakers

Non-­Quakers (or unknown)

36

39

7

1

4 1 48

14 2 56

for land at Mannington Creek. In d­ oing so, they helped to facilitate Fenwick’s ­later negotiations with the Cohanzicks and arrange for assistance from the Lenapes and old settlers prior to the Griffin’s arrival.14 Fenwick was quite successful in attracting Quakers to his colony, which he portrayed as a haven of peace and religious freedom. More than one-­half, at least forty-­three of eighty-­three heads of ­house­hold who settled in 1675–1681, can be identified as Friends from E ­ ngland, Ireland, and other En­glish colonies (see ­table 1). Twenty-­one servants accompanied t­ hese settler families. Of the twenty-­ nine Friends from E ­ ngland whose local origins are clear, nineteen came from the London area, a group of emigrants who knew each other (and had networks with many of the Friends from outside greater London, including Fenwick and his ­family). While all Quakers had experienced persecution for their beliefs since the 1650s, the urban Friends had interacted with one another in the face of beatings, fines, and imprisonment, the 1665–1666 bubonic plague, the ­Great Fire of London of 1666, and high infant mortality even in more normal times. With sufficient wealth to purchase West Jersey land and provide transportation for their families and servants, the Londoners responded quickly to Fenwick’s call.15 The Quaker immigrants had ­adopted the emergent religion since 1650, endured persecution and conflict, and then in the 1670s de­cided to move when the West Jersey colonizers offered a Quaker government. Like other religious groups, the Society of Friends had a distinct set of beliefs that distinguished them from other Christians, despite continuing disagreements within the sect over some princi­ples and practices. Around 1650, George Fox and his early followers in northern E ­ ngland began attracting adherents from the Seekers, Ranters, and other radicals who rejected both the Puritans, who controlled the En­glish government during much of the 1640s and 1650s, and the Anglican church, which was reestablished as the orthodox religion ­after restoration of the monarchy in 1660 with Charles II. The central tenet of the Society of Friends is that an inner light, or love of Christ, dwells in e­ very person, through which

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believers communicate directly with God without need for biblical interpretation by “hired priests.” They also abandoned practices and rituals of worship of the Puritans and Anglicans, such as communion, written sermons, and Bible readings. Quaker missionaries, known as “First Publishers of Truth,” spread their witness throughout the British Isles, Eu­rope, and American colonies, holding meetings in homes and open fields. Their refusal to take oaths on the Bible, pay tithes, or worship in the parish church resulted in fines, distraint of property, imprisonment, and sometimes death. The En­glish government passed a series of laws against Quaker practices, criminalizing attendance at Friends worship.16 Hannah (or Anna) and Henry Salter ­were two of the Quakers who responded to Fenwick’s invitation to relocate in North Amer­i­ca. Their biographies spanned the period from the sect’s emergence in 1650s E ­ ngland to colonization in West Jersey, evoking the achievements, ­trials, and motivations for emigrating among Quaker settlers more generally. Hannah served as a Quaker missionary and writer who, with her first husband, John Stranger, for a while opposed George Fox’s leadership in the Society of Friends. In 1656, they encouraged James Nayler to ­ride a ­horse into Bristol, ­England, as his disciples sang, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth.” Hannah wrote to Nayler calling him Jesus and spent time in jail with other followers, while the En­glish government punished Nayler more severely. They ultimately all apologized to Fox and remained Quakers.17 Hannah Stranger faced serious challenges in the mid-1660s, like o­ thers in London, when her husband John and ­children died within a short period, several from the plague. The London and Middlesex Quarterly Meeting burial lists indicated multitudes d­ ying from the plague in 1665–1666 and high child mortality throughout the late seventeenth ­century. The average life expectancy at birth was only about twenty-­two years during the 1660s and 1670s, rising to thirty-­two years by 1700, b­ ecause so many c­ hildren died as infants. Life expectancy for ­people who survived to age fifteen years was better but not impressive, increasing from an average of thirty-­two years in the 1660s to nearly fifty years in 1700. While Hannah’s loss of her ­family was devastating, she was not alone in her grief. We have no diary to know w ­ hether she too had suffered from the plague and how she reacted to the deaths of her first husband and ­children. In any case, in 1666, about a year ­after John’s death, Hannah married Henry Salter, a London Quaker in the silk business, who had been imprisoned in 1660 for attending Quaker meetings. They ­were apparently well-­to-do ­because in 1675 they purchased ten thousand acres from John Fenwick and immigrated to the Salem colony with their son John in 1677. They worked together as merchants and purchased additional land in West Jersey and Pennsylvania.18 In addition to Hannah and Henry Salter, at least nine early Quaker settlers in Salem had suffered persecution in ­England. In 1660, Salem colonists Henry Salter, John Smith, and Christopher White, along with Hannah’s first husband, John Stranger, ­were among about 350 Quakers committed to Newgate Prison in



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 39

London as a result of the Fifth Monarchy rebellion, despite the fact they did not participate in the uprising. They ­were jammed together with no room to sit down, 100  in one room, “and divers of them fell sick through the Stench and Closeness of the Place.” The number of Friends punished in the London area grew to more than 1,700 in 1664 and then declined as a result of the dislocations caused by the bubonic plague and ­Great Fire in succeeding years. Joseph Besse, who in 1753 published a compilation of the Friends’ reports of sufferings, with his own commentary, wrote that beginning in 1665 “the Fury of Persecution in this City was restrained for some Years by the righ­teous Judgments of God, the devouring Pestilence, by which Multitudes of its Inhabitants ­were cut off in this Year, and in the next, the terrible Fire which laid waste the City it self.” Persecution abated in London u­ ntil 1670, when the new Conventicle Act resulted in 515 cases. In September 1670, troops destroyed the Ratcliff meeting ­house, selling such parts as doors, win­dows, and flooring. When Friends tried to hold a meeting for worship on the ruins, five ­were imprisoned and ­others fined and distrained of their goods. Salem immigrants Richard Guy, John Smith, and John Maddocks suffered imprisonment in Newgate for about two years for refusing to take the oath of allegiance. Roger Pedrick was punished through distress of goods, while Henry Salter was one of forty-­one ­people arrested in an “unlawful Assembly” in Stepney. The jailer treated them harshly and “would not suffer them to Work at their Trades, which they had prepared to do, being many of them poor Men.” The jailers tossed their hammocks into the yard so that they had to sleep on the brick floor, refused them visitors, and beat three men and threw them into a dungeon.19 Even Quakers who had not been imprisoned or whipped understood the threat to their freedom of worship. While enforcement of laws against dissenters varied over time and by locality (often according to the inclinations of local officials), the possibility of imprisonment, beatings, fines, and distraint of property remained formidable u­ ntil the Toleration Act of 1689 brought reduced risk. Between 1650 and 1689, an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Friends faced penalties, and about 450 ­people died—­stunning numbers when compared with the 1670 population of En­glish Quakers of about 43,000.20 Some of the worst instances occurred in London in 1665 when the plague carried off Quaker prisoners in Newgate and on board ships awaiting deportation as criminals. The London and Middlesex Quarterly Meeting recorded their deaths, including that of Robert Hays, “who for Truths sake suffered many weeks imprisonment in Newgate a­ fter which he being carryed from thence (with 2 more) on Shipboard in order to Banishment they being taken out of their hott Bedds without an houres warneing and exposed to the Sharpe Aire of a cold Morning upon the ­water he departed this Life not having spoken many words a­ fter he came on Board the Shipp.” Edmund Ward, Benjamin Lawrence, Daniel Wrenn, James Sweet, and o­ thers also succumbed in prison in 1665 “for Testimony of Truth,”

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while John Fox, Vincent Gerrard, William Newman, Joane Powell, and Dorothy Hall ­were among thirty men and ­women who died in port on the Black Ea­gle while awaiting transportation as bond servants to Jamaica.21 Salem settlers who wrote back to their families in the weeks and months a­ fter arriving in the Delaware valley suggested a number of reasons for immigrating but emphasized freedom from adversity. As early as November 22, 1675, Martha Smith, wife of John, penned a letter to her ­brother and sister-­in-­law praising God that she had “more comfort in one day h­ ere, then I had in many dayes in E ­ ngland, which is ­great joy to my soul.” She encouraged them to make the journey so that “we may end our days together” in this “brave Country,” where her f­ amily already had chickens, pigs, and cows and planned to obtain sheep. They had land and would soon “set up a good House, for we have not a very good one at pre­sent.” For Martha Smith, the peace and economic security she found in West Jersey justified the difficult transatlantic voyage, though she clearly missed her f­ amily and hoped they would come. While her b­ rother, Richard Craven, a thirty-­six-­year-­old baker, did not receive her letter b­ ecause he had died by drowning in August 1675, his wife Anne Craven immigrated with their c­ hildren within a few years.22 Esther Huckens offered similar sentiments to an En­glish friend, downplaying the arduous journey and risk of death, stressing he should not “be discouraged ­because of the W ­ ater, for the Lord is well able to preserve by Sea as Land, we ­were near two Hundred ­People on board the Ship we came in, and t­ here was an ancient ­Woman judged near fourscore years of Age, and she did very well, and severall o­ thers that ­were very ancient; we lost but two, and they ­were ­Brothers.” Like Martha Smith, Esther Huckens was happy in her new land. She wrote, “­Here is no want of any ­thing but good p­ eople to Inhabit; ­here is liberty for the honest hearted that truly desire to fear the Lord; ­here is liberty from the cares and Bondage of this World.” She admired the “­great store of Fish and Fowl, and plenty of Corn, and Cows, Hoggs, Horses, Oxen, Sheep, Venison, Nuts, Strawberries, Grapes; and Peaches,” and pointed out that female and male servants ­were in high demand and could “come to ­great fortune (as they call it).”23 Robert Wade and Roger Pedrick wrote to their wives, who had remained in ­England, assuring them that the Delaware valley was a fine place to live. Both moved to the west bank of the Delaware River, unhappy with Fenwick’s delay in concluding an agreement with the Cohanzicks, though Pedrick subsequently returned to build a farm on Oldmans Creek in the 1680s. Wade urged his wife, Lydia, to emigrate, pledging that the region was a place “where we may live very quietly and Peaceably, where we ­shall have no vexation, nor tearing nor rending what we have from us,” a reference to En­glish persecution of Friends by distraint of goods. He emphasized that the nearby Lenapes “are very quiet and Peaceable,” unlike the situation in New ­England with King Philip’s War. Pedrick agreed that “it is a very ­free and plentiful Country” where “the Natives ­were as willing to sell as we ­were to Buy” the productive fields, marshes, and timber.24



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 41

Upon arrival in southern Lenapehoking, John Fenwick moved promptly to obtain deeds from the Cohanzicks but found negotiating with them more complicated than expected. Previously, in June 1675, in E ­ ngland, he had offered articles of agreement to his first purchasers, which thirty-­six had signed. The articles promised that they held effective deeds and that Fenwick would purchase thirty to forty thousand acres of land from the Lenapes within thirty days of arrival. While Wade and Pedrick may have thought that the Lenapes ­were e­ ager to deal, the Cohanzicks took time to educate the Quakers on the terms by which they would permit settlement. The Lenapes would allow joint use of territory and resources, sharing the land with the newcomers, but refused to sell outright as the En­glish expected. Fenwick spent six months negotiating with the Cohanzicks to secure three properly signed documents for the large area he identified as his colony south and east from Oldmans Creek past the Cohansey River to Back Creek. He met numerous times with Cohanzick sakimaòk with assistance of two local landowners, Foppe Outhout and Michael Baron, who witnessed the first treaty agreement on November 17, 1675. Outhout served as an interpreter. Fenwick also asked Francis Whitwell, who owned land and became a prominent resident in Kent County, Delaware, to witness the document, perhaps to gain broader support in the Delaware valley for his claims to the territory.25 Six Cohanzick sakimaòk signed the November  1675 document, including Meopony, Alloways, Necosshehesco and her son Necomis, Wassackarous, and Mohutt for the region from Salem River to Canahockincke (prob­ably Stow) Creek, from the Delaware River to the stream heads. They agreed that, in return for allowing the immigrants to take up land, the Cohanzicks would receive woolen and linen clothing and “diverse other Commodities” and keep “the Plantations in wch they now Inhabite” ­until “they s­ hall thinke fitt to Remove from the same.” From the start, the Lenapes made it clear with Fenwick that they ­were granting the new colonists rights to use the land but would not be displaced from their communities.26 Despite seeking help from the old settlers and meeting promptly with the Cohanzicks, Fenwick made a series of ­mistakes in this 1675 agreement. He ignored the concerns of Outhout, Baron, and their Eu­ro­pean neighbors who wanted written acknowl­edgment from Fenwick that their land rights would be respected. Outhout ­later testified that the Cohanzicks asked him to write the paper as well as interpret, making sure to except “Such Lands as [the Cohanzicks] had Sould & disposed of before” to the old settlers. Outhout noted, “Fenwike Refused that & drewe the wrytings himselfe.” Fenwick’s refusal to recognize promptly the old settlers’ relatively small land claims resulted in several New ­Castle court cases and considerable ill ­will.27 Additional prob­lems with the document prolonged negotiations. Of serious concern was lack of certainty among the colonists about which Cohanzick leaders controlled the land between Salem River and Stow Creek. In the first line of

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Sepa r ate Paths

Map 2. Major Lenape Land Conveyances to West Jersey Proprietors 1676–1693.

Michael Siegel, Rutgers University Cartography Lab. key No.

Date

Recipients

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

1676 1676 1676 1677 1677 1677 1688 1688 1693

John Fenwick John Fenwick John Fenwick West New Jersey Proprietors West New Jersey Proprietors West New Jersey Proprietors Gov. Daniel Coxe Gov. Daniel Coxe West New Jersey Society



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 43

the November 1675 agreement, Fenwick named Mehocksett, the major Lenape sakima who had met at Oneanickon in September 1670 with representatives of Governor Lovelace but did not travel to Andros’s May 1675 conference at New ­Castle. Mehocksett signed neither the November 1675 document nor a supplementary agreement of January 8, 1676, though he was named as a grantor in both drafts. The inconsistency between sakimaòk listed in the conveyances and t­ hose who signed provides insight into the pro­cess by which Fenwick obtained information about Lenape territorial rights and then had to revise with further feedback. It seems likely that Fenwick inserted Mehocksett’s name into each of ­these documents b­ ecause the Quaker understood him to be the region’s chief sakima, or “King,” as the En­glish called him. But Mehocksett, himself, despite his broader influence, claimed more restricted, specific lands on both sides of the Delaware for which he eventually signed over rights. On March  14, 1676, Fenwick fi­nally obtained an agreement for the territory from Salem River to Stow Creek from Mohutt, Alloways, Meopony, Wassackarous, Necosshehesco, and Necomis, “the true & undoubted ­owners (as by naturall Right & Interst).” Mehocksett’s name did not appear in the text, but he witnessed the document as “the King” along with his b­ rother Opur, two other Lenapes, Fenwick’s ­daughter Elizabeth Adams, and seven male colonists. With many more witnesses than normally signed Lenape conveyances, Fenwick took pains to ensure that both Cohanzicks and Eu­ro­pe­ans recognized the document.28 The Cohanzicks also demanded adequate goods for this large tract, as Fenwick seemed reluctant to specify what he would pay. The November 1675 draft stated a vague amount of clothing and other goods, while in the January 1676 supplement, several sakimaòk agreed to accept a piece of cloth and four guns instead of other articles previously promised. The final conveyance of March 14, 1676, indicated a detailed and substantial payment, which Fenwick had provided, including “a good & valluable Quantitye of Rum tradeing cloath Shirts hoase shoes Gunnes lead pouder and other En­glish Apparrell & Commodities.”29 Fenwick had become more proficient in negotiating with the Cohanzicks in the months between November 1675 and March 1676 as he sought deeds for two additional parcels. None of the documents recognized the previous purchases of the old settlers. The February 6, 1676, conveyance, Fenwick’s first completed agreement with the sakimaòk, covered the territory known as L ­ ittle Cohanzick and ­Great Cohanzick situated south and east along the Delaware River between Canahockincke (Stow) Creek and a combination of Back Creek and Cohansey River, and into the mainland to their heads. Many Cohanzicks lived in this area, which the document recognized by excepting “the Towne & Plantations in wch they the sd Indyans now Inhabbitts and useth for & untill such time onely as they ­shall thinck fitt to remove from the same.” Fenwick named Mehocksett again, with Mohutt, Newsego, Chochanahan, and Terucho as the “true & undoubted ­Owners (as Natives),” but only Mohutt, Chochanahan, and Terucho signed. The

44

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Cohanzicks received four anchors of rum (about forty gallons), twelve match coats, and other parcels of goods. On March  2, 1676, Tospaminck and Wennaminck, who had traded lands to Outhout, Tayne, and the Lacroys, signed over rights for the territory between Oldmans Creek and Salem River. This document included no exception for Cohanzick plantations, prob­ably b­ ecause they had consolidated their towns on the Cohansey River. Though Mehocksett granted none of the Fenwick conveyances, he was one of six sakimaòk who ­later signed, in 1693, the agreement for land between the Cohansey and Maurice Rivers to Jeremiah Basse for the West New Jersey Society in ­England. While colonists recognized Mehocksett as the primary sakima of Cohanzick, he took care to yield only territory for which he was an ­actual own­er.30 With t­hese three conveyances from the Cohanzicks, Fenwick fulfilled one promise he had made to the first purchasers in ­England prior to boarding the ship Griffin. By yielding to Cohanzick demands for reciprocity, however, he failed to provide clear title according to the standards of En­glish investors. This was just one of many prob­lems that Fenwick faced, as Byllynge, the trustees, Eldridge, Warner, and other Quaker leaders collaborated in E ­ ngland to undermine his proprietorship. In addition, in the Delaware valley, Governor Andros asserted po­liti­cal control of West Jersey ­until 1680 on behalf of the Duke of York. ­Because the Duke refused to transfer governmental power to the West Jersey proprietors, the colonists faced confusion over land titles, court jurisdiction, and tariffs on the goods they brought to build and furnish their new homes. The trou­ble between Fenwick and Andros began in December  1675 a­ fter Edmund Cantwell, sheriff of the Delaware colony, reported the Griffin’s arrival at Salem River. The New York council and Andros ordered that ­because Fenwick had presented them no documents before proceeding to West Jersey, he “is nott to bee Received as owner or Proprietor of any Land whatsoever in delowar, butt to be used civily paying all dutys as o­ thers his Mayties Subjects in ­those parts.” If any of the Salem party wanted to s­ ettle on the west bank of the river, Andros would be happy to oblige, but they could not expect “any Priviledge or freedom of Custome or traeding on the East shoare, none to bee allowed in any case to yr smallest vessell Boate or prson.”31 The ­battle between Fenwick and Andros heated up ­after Fenwick, beginning in June 1676, took an oath of office as governor of Salem, appointed a council and surveyor, accepted oaths of allegiance from several colonists, published a plan for distributing lands on the Salem and Cohansey Rivers, and approved surveys for some settlers. Andros worked through the New ­Castle court, to which he assigned primary jurisdiction in the Delaware valley on both banks of the river.32 In November 1676, in response to reports of “John Fenwikes actings on the East syde of delowarr River, by his granting Pattents for land” and refusing to obey ­orders, the governor directed Captain John Collier, the commander at New ­Castle,



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 45

and New ­Castle magistrates to use force if necessary to convey him to New York for trial. Andros was particularly upset by charges that Fenwick had taken West Jersey land from one of the justices, Jean Paul Jacquet, who had received rights from the En­glish government. When Collier arrived at Fenwick’s ­house in December 1676, he found the Quaker “so Refractory” and ready to stand “uppon his defence.” Fenwick denied “that the Governor of Yorke had anything to do wth him and that hee would obey nothing but what should come from his Majtie the King or his Highnesse the duke of Yorke.” Fenwick stood his ground, resolving “not to leave his h­ ouse wth out he was carried away e­ ither dead or [alive] and if any one dearst come to take him itt was att their Perills.” Soldiers from New ­Castle then arrested Fenwick, taking him to New York, where he was found guilty in January 1677 of unlawfully taking land and presuming to be lord proprietor. He refused to pay a £40 fine so remained in jail u­ ntil August 1677 when the Burlington settlers arrived at New York on the Kent. Andros permitted Fenwick to accompany them to West Jersey, instructing him to appear in New York by October 6. When Fenwick returned as instructed, Andros released him on lawful be­hav­ior.33 Though imprisoned in New York from December 1676 to August 1677, Fenwick’s prob­lems in Salem did not cease. In April  1677, three Finns—­Staffan Jöransson, Lars Hendricksson, and Matthias Bärtilsson—­sued Fenwick for selling them land for which he lacked owner­ship. They ­were among the old settlers implicated in the Long Swede Rebellion and moved to Pompeon Hook on the east bank in 1671. Hendricksson and Bärtilsson had themselves faced charges in New ­Castle court for destroying Foppe Outhout’s h­ ouse in June 1676, trying first to set it on fire and then pulling it down when the wood was too green to burn. They promised “to build . . . ​a better h­ ouse then the other was, wth win­dows and doors in the same.” In their cases against Fenwick, the court told them they would have to wait b­ ecause Fenwick was “as yet a prizoner in New Yorke.” Fenwick settled the cases with them out of court ­after his release in August 1677.34 Though permitting Fenwick to return home, Andros adamantly imposed the Duke of York’s authority, forcing the Burlington settlers to pay tariffs on their ­house­hold goods and requiring their magistrates to report to him. In Salem, the tug-­of-­war continued as the New ­Castle court in November 1677 took a census and levied a tax on adult males, including many (though not all) h­ ouse­hold heads on the east bank. In response, Fenwick attempted to assert authority at a meeting with colonists on April 30, 1678, where he announced appointments of officials and commanded, based on his deed from Lord Berkeley, “the supriority & the submission of the ­People ­there as his Right & Propriety.” Sheriff Cantwell informed the New C ­ astle court that Fenwick had demanded the p­ eople take “an oath or sume sutch t­ hing,” which several did, and had forbidden Foppe Outhout from acting as a justice of New C ­ astle court “upon the forfeiture of his

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Estate” in Salem. Fenwick denied New ­Castle’s power to levy a tax on the east side, stating that “whoesoever did pay any Levy should forfeit their Lands and priviledges.” Fenwick followed up the meeting by visiting several old settlers at the ­house of Gilius Gilljohnson in Lower Penn’s Neck, inquiring why they had not attended his meeting at Salem “to aknowledge him meaning himselfe to bee Lord and proprietor of the place.” They responded, asking “how they Could owne him so Long as they paid Levy to witt 12 gilders 10 styvers pr head att New ­Castle Court.” Fenwick then threatened “that all t­hose whoe payed the same should never Enjoy a foott of Land on the Eastern shoare.”35 Fenwick faced imprisonment once again in New York, where he stood trial before Andros and the council on August 29, 1678, for assuming power in Salem. He remained in jail u­ ntil March 1679, unable to produce adequate evidence of his right to government. While he was ­there, in October 1678, Andros installed his own magistrates from among Salem inhabitants to form a court subordinate to New C ­ astle. The justices included the Quakers Edward Bradway, Richard Guy, James Nevill, and Edward Wade, the early purchaser William Malster, and William Penton, a yeoman of Alloways Creek. Andros designated New C ­ astle justice Foppe Outhout, who lived on the east side, to preside when disputes arose between the “new Commers” and “Old Inhabitants of ­those pts.” The Salem court had authority to choose one or more constables, plan use of unimproved lands, hear criminal cases less serious than murder and assault, and arbitrate civil cases ­under £5. B ­ ecause Fenwick had failed to provide any formal government in Salem, the colonists accepted this arrangement as preferable to direct oversight by New C ­ astle. Andros achieved some harmony by appointing influential colonists to the court.36 As Salem residents established contact with the new settlers in Burlington, however, many p­ eople looked forward to in­de­pen­dence from the Duke of York’s regime. They heard that Fenwick had transferred owner­ship of unsold Salem land to Eldridge and Warner and received invitations to unite with the Burlington colonists to elect an assembly ­under the West New Jersey Concessions of 1676–1677. Once the Duke of York in 1680 transferred the government of the entire province, including Salem, to Edward Byllynge, John Fenwick lost all prospect of keeping his colony separate, despite his careful negotiations with the Cohanzicks. By early 1679, many Salem men—­English, Dutch, Swedes, and Finns—­had signed the concessions, and, by 1682, Salem Tenth sent a full complement of delegates to the assembly.37 The complexity of Fenwick’s ­legal, po­liti­cal, and financial conflicts has overshadowed the fundamental success of his colony within southern Lenapehoking. The Cohanzicks’ requirement that Fenwick recognize their towns in the agreements of 1675–1676 clarified to all residents, Eu­ro­pean and Lenape, that the Cohanzicks remained sovereign. Despite Salem’s po­liti­cal merger with the Burlington immigrants, the colonial outpost in Cohanzick country remained



Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 47

quite distinct from the Burlington and Gloucester settlers who interacted with Armewamese, Rancocas, and Mantes communities. Salem did not participate in the Council of West Jersey Proprietors, which aimed to buy from the Lenapes all available land. Working with the Cohanzicks, the Salem colony lived up to its name quite well, maintaining peace by conforming more closely than other En­glish colonies to Lenape expectations of shared possession. In the face of epidemic disease and the need to merge communities, the Cohanzicks defended their sovereignty, families, personal freedom, and land.

3 • PROMISING LIBERT Y AND PROPERT Y The West New Jersey Concessions

While the Cohanzicks, old settlers, and Salem immigrants in southern Lenapehoking found ways to accommodate cultural differences, share resources, and protect personal freedom, Edward Byllynge and his Quaker allies in E ­ ngland wrote their plan for a model society. Their constitution, entitled “The Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Province of West New Jersey in Amer­ic­ a” (1676–1677), offered substantial liberties based on Friends’ ideals yet betrayed poor understanding of Lenape power in the region. Byllynge, his Quaker colleagues, and other investors expected Friends to land on the east bank of the Delaware River, obtain signed deeds from the Armewamese and other communities (who would then leave), harvest handsome profits from land sales to other colonists, and establish a Quaker government. Widely praised by scholars for its republican structure and broad freedoms, the West New Jersey Concessions was fundamentally intended to transform southern Lenapehoking into an En­glish commonwealth. Despite the ravages of epidemic disease, however, the Lenapes significantly disrupted t­ hese plans, remaining power­ful for more than forty years. Like Salem, the settlements at Burlington and Gloucester survived as distinct communities within the bound­aries of Lenape sovereignty, linked by a weak provincial government but always mindful of Native strength. Acting on Byllynge’s behalf, the trustees William Penn, Gawen Lawrie, and Nicholas Lucas promoted West New Jersey as an autonomous, unified province despite John Fenwick’s actions in Salem and the Duke of York’s failure ­until 1680 to transfer the powers of government. Like other colonialists, they put forward a plan for land distribution, government, and laws, of which Byllynge was prob­ ably the primary author. Though never formally ­adopted by the West New Jersey assembly, the West New Jersey Concessions of 1676–1677 ­shaped early colonization, as investors and landholders in ­England, Salem, and Burlington signed 48



Promising Liberty and Property 49

in 1677 and succeeding years. The concessions offered radical approaches to government, natu­ral rights, and diplomacy with the Lenapes, while carefully outlining protections of real estate. The proposed constitution thus appealed to a broad range of potential purchasers and colonists: wealthy investors looking for profits from selling land; Quakers who had experienced persecution in E ­ ngland and Ireland; servants intent on ample compensation for their ­labor; and Delaware valley Dutch, Swedes, and Finns seeking assurance that their landholdings and ways of life in West Jersey ­were secure.1 The West New Jersey Concessions was a striking document when compared with the governmental frameworks of ­England and its North American colonies in the late seventeenth c­ entury. In 1659, amid the intellectual and po­liti­cal ferment of the Commonwealth period, Byllynge had written a tract, entitled A Mite of Affection, Manifested in 31. Proposals, that set forth many of the ideas he included in the concessions. A soldier in the Commonwealth army who had become a Quaker in 1657, Byllynge proposed in A Mite of Affection a sweeping overhaul of En­glish government that reflected his persecution as a Quaker, commitment to religious liberty, and republican beliefs. Many aspects of his 1659 plan emerged in the West Jersey Concessions: a fundamental constitution that could not be altered by legislative action; unicameral parliament (or assembly) elected annually by voters in local districts; lack of a strong executive (­whether monarch or governor) who could block legislative action; broad protections of liberty of conscience; concern about involuntary servitude; reform of judicial procedures to remove mandatory oaths, eliminate the death penalty for theft, offer jury t­rials by one’s peers, and allow defendants to take exception to jurors and plead their own cause.2 The concessions outlined a republican government, placing sovereignty in the voters—­presumably adult male landowning colonists, though not stated explic­ itly. (Only men signed the concessions.) Voters or­ga­nized by district would elect legislators with a secret ballot rather than by oral vote. The voters would keep considerable control over their representatives through formal instructions and annual elections, and all residents had the right to petition. The concessions emphasized in several provisions that the assembly had power to enact legislation, including taxation, consistent with the document’s fundamental laws. The assembly’s power was l­imited only by voters and the concessions (or constitution) they signed, not by a governor’s veto as in other colonies. In the mid-1670s, the West Jersey Concessions deviated significantly from the model of ­England and its colonies of a strong executive, ­whether king or governor. Penn’s The Frame of the Government of the Province of Pennsilvania in Amer­ic­ a (1682), for example, required a governor (proprietor) or his deputy, provincial council, and general assembly. The governor or deputy presided over the council and had a treble vote. Together they proposed all laws to the general assembly; established courts, markets, cities, and schools; presided over major t­rials; executed the laws; and protected “the Peace and Safety of the Province.” In the

50

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West Jersey Concessions, t­ hese powers lay with the unicameral assembly elected annually by male colonists. While Penn incorporated into his constitution Quaker values that aligned with the West Jersey Concessions by establishing no militias and fostering significant freedom of religion, his government reflected increasing requirements by the Crown for po­liti­cal hierarchy and imperial control.3 The impact of persecution against Quakers in ­England and Ireland can be seen in many provisions of the West Jersey Concessions. Most relevant was chapter 16, on liberty of conscience, stating: That no Men nor number of Men upon Earth hath power or Authority to rule over mens consciences in religious ­matters therefore it is consented agreed and ordained that no person or persons whatsoever within the said Province at any time or times hereafter ­shall be any waies upon any pretence whatsoever called in question or in the least punished or hurt ­either in Person Estate or Priveledge for the sake of his opinion Judgment faith or worship t­ owards God in m ­ atters of Religion but that all and ­every such person and persons may from time to time and at all times freely and fully have and enjoy his and their Judgments and the exercise of their consciences in ­matters of religious worship throughout all the said Province.

As written, this was an impor­tant statement of religious liberty, placing no restrictions on ­people ­because of their religion. All residents received freedom to worship or refuse to worship at all, while adult males could qualify to vote and hold po­liti­cal office regardless of belief. In comparison, in the mid-1670s, V ­ irginia and Mas­sa­chu­setts retained established churches mandating attendance and tax support for a designated denomination, though the Puritan hierarchy in the Bay colony no longer hanged Quaker missionaries—as they did in 1659–1661—­for proselytizing their faith. Several other colonies allowed more flexibility yet assumed settlers accepted Chris­tian­ity. Rhode Island, where exiles from Mas­sa­ chu­setts found sanctuary beginning in the 1630s, protected a range of beliefs from government interference, while Mary­land’s Catholic leadership permitted worship among Protestants, including Quakers, with its Act of Toleration (1649). Carolina offered freedom of worship in any denomination that seven ­people would support, but provided favored status to the Church of ­England, which became the established church in the early eigh­teenth c­ entury.4 Perhaps the most intriguing questions come with comparison of the West Jersey Concessions with Penn’s provisions in the Laws Agreed Upon in ­England (1682) that offered freedom of worship to all Pennsylvania inhabitants “who confess and acknowledge the One Almighty and Eternal God” and who “live peaceably and justly in Civil Society.” Thus, Penn required settlers to accept mono­the­istic religion, though he did not insist that they attend worship. In the



Promising Liberty and Property 51

next provision, however, he specified the first day of the week as the Lord’s day, on which “­People ­shall abstain from their common daily ­Labour.” In t­ hese ways, the Pennsylvania proprietor pulled back from the broad liberty of conscience of the West Jersey Concessions, which he had endorsed in 1677. Additionally, Penn enumerated many moral offenses in Laws Agreed Upon in ­England that the concessions omitted. Like many Quakers, Penn believed that cursing, drunkenness, stage plays, dice, cards, and cockfights “excite the P ­ eople to Rudeness, Cruelty, Looseness and Irreligion, [and should] be respectively discouraged and severely punished.” Byllynge had also opposed t­ hese practices in A Mite of Affection but apparently chose, with Penn and other advisers, to exclude a Christian moral code from the concessions to maintain consistency with their broad statement of religious freedom in chapter 16.5 The negative experiences of Quakers with the En­glish ­legal system also influenced the concessions’ guarantees for fair ­trials. A person charged with a crime or sued by civil action had the right to trial by a jury of “twelve good and Lawfull men of his neighbourhood” whom he or she accepted as unbiased. The jury determined guilt or innocence, not the justices, as established in the landmark 1670 En­glish case involving the religious liberty of William Penn and William Mead. The concessions emphasized the importance of truth in court proceedings, requiring testimony from “at least two honest and reputable persons” for proof in civil and criminal ­trials, with harsh penalties “in case that any person or persons ­shall beare false witness.” At the same time, the concessions sought flexibility, giving a defendant “­free liberty to plead his own cause” rather than hire an attorney and permitting plaintiffs in any case except treason, murder, and other felonies “full power to forgive and remit the person or persons offending against him or her selfe” at any time before or a­ fter judgment.6 While Byllynge and the trustees sought to protect religious and civil liberties, they also safeguarded property rights to attract real estate investors and settlers. The concessions had twin goals of providing a haven to persecuted Quakers and raising funds for Byllynge, who was still in debt. The decision to sell one hundred proprietary shares at £350 each (or fractional share at proportional cost), rather than specific acreages, propelled the momentum to buy up Lenape land. Shareholders sought to obtain more and more territory so that they could recoup and profit from their investments.7 The concessions described the pro­cess for purchasing and surveying land and defined the size of grants that masters would receive for transporting servants. The document required absentee proprietors to engage servants or tenants to live on their land and outlined the procedures by which proprieties would be surveyed and recorded at reasonable rates, publicly established. The authors prescribed a pro­cess of rec­ord keeping in West Jersey and London to register the colony’s deeds, mortgages, leases, and other conveyances. Provisions also addressed the establishment of towns, protection of property bound­aries ­after

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seven years’ possession, and ­free passage through waterways and lands “not planted or enclosed.” For hunting and fishing, “all the Inhabitants within the said Province of West Jersey have the Liberty of Fishing in Delaware River or on the sea coast and the Liberty of Hunting and Killing any Deer or other wild beasts the Liberty to Shoot or Take any wild Fowles within the said Province” provided that inhabitants do not hunt upon lands that other colonists possessed. While offering broad rights to travel, hunt, and fish, ­these rules promised landowners protection from trespass and loss of crops.8 The concessions clarified that West Jersey could be settled only with Lenape permission. In the document’s first few sentences, the authors noted—­and the signers agreed—­that all lands not yet inhabited (by Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and the Salem colonists) would first be “contracted for with the Natives” before taken up and divided for sale. In chapter 26, the authors described the treaty pro­ cess in more detail, acknowledging some of the differences between En­glish and Lenape methods of conveying rights to land. The document stated, It is agreed when any land is to be taken up for settlements of townes or otherwayes before it be Surveyed the Comissioners or the major part of them are to appoint some persons to goe to the chiefe of the natives concerned in that land soe intended to be taken up to acquaint the Natives of their Intention and to give the Natives what pre­sent they ­shall agree upon for their good w ­ ill or consent and take a grant of the same in writeing ­under their hands and seales or some other publick way used in ­those parts of the world which grant is to be Registered in the publick register allowing alsoe the Natives (if they please) a coppie thereof and that noe Person or persons take up any land but by order from the Comissioners for the time being.9

The concessions respected the Lenapes’ owner­ship but seemed to assume that they would turn over land in perpetuity for some gifts, whereas the Armewamese and other communities expected ongoing payments and shared use. Byllynge and other concessions authors did foresee the need for mediation between colonists and Natives, particularly amid the 1675–1676 wars in New ­England and the Chesapeake. For “a good understanding and friendly correspondence between the proprietors freeholders and inhabitants of the said province and the Indian Natives thereof,” they proposed that if a Lenape wronged a colonist, at least two commissioners would “give notice to the Sachum or other chiefe person or persons . . . ​that Justice may be done and satisfaction made to the Person or persons offended.” In cases when colonists wronged a Lenape, commissioners should ensure that justice was served, when necessary arranging a trial by a jury composed of six Eu­ro­pe­ans and six Lenapes of the neighborhood. The commissioners should also “use their endeavour to perswade the Natives to the like way of tryall when any of the Natives doe any waies wrong or



Promising Liberty and Property 53

injure the said proprietors Freeholders or inhabitants.”10 The authors thus proposed a novel arrangement to bridge the gap between En­glish and Lenape laws and judicial systems. Their recommendations for mediation conformed with Native pro­cesses in which wrongdoers compensated a victim’s ­family even in cases of death. Lenapes likely dismissed the possibility of joint jury panels, if colonists ever suggested them, as biased in ­favor of En­glish jurisprudence. Underscoring the West Jersey found­ers’ commitment to mediation rather than warfare with the Lenapes was the concessions’ lack of any reference to militias and military preparedness. This was quite dif­fer­ent from the “The Concessions and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Cæsarea, or New Jersey” ( John Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, 1665), which gave authority to the assembly to erect “forts, fortresses, ­castles,” as well as cities and towns, and “to fortify and furnish with such provisions and proportion of ordnance, powder, shot, armour, and all other weapons, ammunition and abiliments of war, both offensive and defensive, as ­shall be thought necessary and con­ve­ nient for the safety and welfare of the said Province.” The 1665 document also instructed the assembly “to constitute train’d bands and companies. . . . ​To suppress all mutinies and rebellions; to make war offensive and defensive with all Indians, strangers and foreigners, as they ­shall see cause,” and empowered the governor to appoint military officers and muster the militia. ­After the province’s division in 1674, the East Jersey Proprietors retained military provisions but permitted Quakers to avoid military ser­vice and war taxes. In contrast, the West Jersey government adhered to the concessions’ princi­ples of pacifism and peace with the Lenapes throughout the proprietary period.11 Historians have considered and debated the extent to which the West New Jersey Concessions can be considered antislavery, based on a clause in chapter 23. The chapter focuses first on the need for open courts, that “any person or persons inhabitants of the said Province” may attend a trial, so “that Justice may not be done in a corner nor in any Covert manner.” The provision then continues, “Being intended and resolved by the help of the Lord and by ­these our Concessions and fundamentalls that all and ­every person and persons Inhabiting the said Province s­ hall as farr as in us lies be ­free from oppression and slavery.”12 At first glance, the statement’s placement suggests that the authors specifically defined “oppression and slavery” as the result of unfair t­ rials and imprisonment of En­glish ­people and did not address the African slave trade then surging in the late seventeenth-­century Atlantic. One would expect the authors to have written a separate chapter for a full-­throated opposition to slavery in all its forms. Nevertheless, several considerations indicate that the authors compromised among themselves, drafting a document that s­ topped short of abolitionism yet made no effort to promote slavery. The most compelling evidence comes from a comparison of the New Jersey Concessions (1665), the section entitled “And that the Planting of the said Province may be the more speedily promoted,” with

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the West Jersey Concessions (1676–1677), chapter 4, which had the same title and carefully followed the format of the 1665 document. Significantly, where the New Jersey Concessions of 1665 offered extra acreage to colonists who transported servants and slaves, the West Jersey Concessions omitted any reference to slaves. The 1665 document also specified that “­every christian servant” would receive acreage as freedom dues, taking pains to exclude enslaved p­ eople who suffered perpetual bondage. The West Jersey Concessions mentioned only servants (not Christian servants), consistent with its discouragement of slavery in promoting settlement.13 By the mid-1670s, some Quakers began to question the morality of slaveholding, as Friends in Barbados and the Chesapeake imported Africans as enslaved ­labor. George Fox, who had traveled to the West Indies and eastern North Amer­ i­ca in 1671–1673, advised Quaker enslavers in Barbados “that Christ dyed for all, . . . ​for the Tawnes and for the Blacks, as well as for you that are called whites.” He suggested that Friends instruct enslaved Africans in Chris­tian­ity and release them ­after a term of years. Though Fox did not publish t­ hese words u­ ntil 1676, his sentiments w ­ ere known to missionaries who accompanied him, including the Irish Friend William Edmundson, who in 1675 returned to Barbados and the mainland colonies. Edmundson echoed Fox’s advice to provide religious education to enslaved Africans and criticized the practice of enslaving p­ eople as inconsistent with Quaker beliefs.14 Fox, Edmundson, and their fellow missionaries had witnessed the results of the murderous Atlantic slave trade and harsh plantation regimes in the American colonies. It seems likely that they conveyed their discomfort to the men planning the first Quaker colony, West New Jersey. A ­later comment by Benjamin Furly, a Quaker leader in Rotterdam, offers further evidence that the authors discussed slavery while drafting the West Jersey Concessions. In critiquing William Penn’s constitution for Pennsylvania in the early 1680s, Furly noted his belief that the concessions ­limited the terms of enslaved Africans to eight years. It seems likely that Furly had read an early draft of the concessions that included this proposal, which reflected Fox’s recommendation to limit involuntary bondage. Not all of the concessions’ authors agreed, so they reached a more ambiguous consensus. In par­tic­u­lar, William Penn exhibited ­little concern about slavery, as he failed to prohibit the practice in Pennsylvania and indeed purchased enslaved Africans to work on his Pennsbury estate.15 By August 1676, Byllynge and the trustees had completed a draft of the West Jersey Concessions that they used to attract investors and colonists in ­England and Ireland and to convince settlers already in West Jersey—­Fenwick’s immigrants, Dutch, Swedes, and Finns—to join the West Jersey government. On July 1, 1676, Sir George Carteret had signed the quintipartite deed with Byllynge, Penn, Lawrie, and Lucas to formally create the two colonies of East and West Jersey. The trustees could move forward to plan and publicize the colony.16



Promising Liberty and Property 55

The trustees, with Byllynge and Edmund Warner, appointed three commissioners to try to convince Fenwick to drop his claims to the Salem colony, attract Salem colonists and old settlers to join the West Jersey proj­ect, and make preliminary plans for colonization. The authors of the West Jersey Concessions believed the document would play an impor­tant role in unifying the colony by offering a broad range of religious, civil, and property rights. In August 1676, they gave a draft copy to James Wasse, a London surgeon and Quaker who had purchased land from Fenwick, appointing him a commissioner with the Quakers Richard Hartshorne of East Jersey and Richard Guy of Salem. In a letter to Hartshorne, Penn and his colleagues described the concessions in some detail, exclaiming, “We have made concessions by ourselves, being such as friends ­here and ­there (we question not) w ­ ill approve of, having sent a copy of them by James Wasse.” They highlighted its structure as an experiment in republican government, stating, “­There we lay a foundation for ­after ages to understand their liberty as men and christians, that they may not be brought in bondage, but by their own consent; for we put the power in the ­people.”17 Though drafted in 1676, the West Jersey Concessions took final shape only in early March 1677 when the trustees, Penn, Lawrie, and Lucas, signed an agreement with five of Byllynge’s Yorkshire creditors, Thomas Hutchinson, Thomas Pearson, Joseph Helmsley, George Hutcheson, and Mahlon Stacy. The Yorkshiremen received ten of the one hundred shares of West Jersey land in return for arranging cancellation of £3,500 in debts that Byllynge owed them and other creditors. The concessions gave them and the “Considerable number” of ­people ready to emigrate to “have f­ree liberty to make choice of any one of the said tenth parts or shares which ­shall be first divided.” The concessions further stipulated that according to a contract granted on “the second day of the month called March 1676 instant [1677 new style]” this group could build a town and choose their own magistrates “for executing the Laws according to the Concessions.”18 With this commitment and ­earlier sales helping to reduce Byllynge’s debts, the trustees proceeded on March 3, 1676/1677, to solicit signatures for the concessions from investors and potential West Jersey colonists. They signed beneath the heading, “IN TESTIMONY and witness of our consent to and affirmation of ­these pre­sent Laws Concessions and Agreements WEE the Proprietors Freeholders and Inhabitants” of West Jersey. The copy currently located in the West New Jersey Proprietors Papers at the New Jersey State Archives, which has what appear to be 151 original signatures and marks, has been reprinted in vari­ous sources. Thirty-­one men signed the first page, apparently in E ­ ngland, of whom thirteen failed to s­ ettle in the colony, among them Edward Byllynge, the trustees Gawen Lawrie, William Penn, and Nicholas Lucas, and the l­ awyer Thomas Rudyard (see ­table 2).19 The trustees appointed nine commissioners to lead the new colony, including five early signers of the concessions, Thomas Olive, John Penford, Benjamin

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Sepa r ate Paths ­table 2 

Signers of the West New Jersey Concessions

Signed in ­England: Did not immigrate to West Jersey Immigrated to Burlington area

13 18

Signed in West New Jersey: Burlington area colonists Salem area En­glish and Irish colonists Salem area Dutch, Swedes, Finns New ­Castle residents

40 57 21 2

Total

151

Scott, Robert Stacy, and Daniel ­Wills. The five sailed in 1677 on the Kent, the first ship of Burlington settlers, as did the commissioners Thomas Foulke, Joseph Helmsley, and John Kinsey, who did not sign the document. Kinsey died soon ­after arriving in West Jersey, while Helmsley and Penford quickly returned to ­England. Richard Guy, who lived in Salem, endorsed the constitution with members of his community. The eigh­teen proprietors who signed the concessions in E ­ ngland and immigrated to the colony included men who became prominent in West Jersey government and society: William Biddle, Thomas Budd, Francis Collins, William Emley, Thomas Lambert, Samuel Jennings, Henry Stacy, and Mahlon Stacy. The Burlington leadership ­later repudiated Byllynge when he accepted the Duke of York’s designation as chief proprietor, naming himself governor in contradiction to the concessions.20 The 120 men who signed the remaining three pages of this copy formed a mix of Salem and Burlington residents who sought the concessions’ expansive liberties, stable government, and assurance that their landholdings ­were secure. By identifying ­these signers as Salem immigrants and old settlers as well as Burlington area colonists, we can better understand the pro­cess by which Eu­ro­pe­ans sought to create a legitimate, unified colonial government. Over the course of several years beginning in late 1678 or early 1679, 78 Salem residents signed the concessions, including 57 En­glish and Irish immigrants and 21 Dutch, Swedish, and Finnish settlers. In addition, 2 New C ­ astle officials, Edmund Cantwell and Casparus Herrman, who had purchased land but did not live on the east bank, signed to protect their property rights. By endorsing the document, the Salem immigrants indicated their readiness to join the Burlington Quakers in lieu of Fenwick’s failed government and Andros’s assertion of the Duke of York’s power. Some Salem colonists, such as Fenwick’s son-­in-­law John Adams failed to sign the concessions, but members of Andros’s Salem court, Edward Bradway, Richard Guy, William Malster, James Nevill, Foppe Outhout, and William Penton,



Promising Liberty and Property 57

approved the document. Another Fenwick son-­in-­law, Samuel Hedge, and the leading Quakers George Deacon, John Maddocks, Samuel Nicholson, John Pledger, John and Andrew Thompson, and John Smith also signed.21 The twenty-­ one Salem area Dutch, Swedish, and Finnish settlers who endorsed the concessions, including Foppe Outhout, must have de­cided, by 1679, that Fenwick’s efforts to form an in­de­pen­dent government w ­ ere doomed. He had challenged the rights of some old settlers and demanded their allegiance and taxes—­while Andros was ­doing the same. The old settlers valued the concessions’ promise of religious liberty, secure property rights, jury t­ rials, and elections and likely viewed the concessions as a kind of naturalization document, as Swedes and Finns had previously taken oaths of allegiance a­ fter the 1655 Dutch conquest of New Sweden.22 A second copy of the concessions, located in the West Jersey Assembly Papers in the New Jersey State Archives, provides some additional information about how West Jersey leaders circulated the document but leaves questions unanswered. It is an imperfect copy of the West New Jersey Proprietors version, with a total of 124 names, including copies of most of the same signatures from ­England and Salem. At the end of the list of 113 copied names are 11 autograph signatures by mostly Salem residents, including Fenwick’s third son-­in-­law, Edward Champney. It seems likely that someone made this copy of the concessions for the Salem rec­ ords, thus permitting individuals to add their names a­ fter the original document left for Burlington. With the second list, we have the names of 165 signers, many fewer than the number of adult male landholders in West Jersey. At least one more copy of the concessions must have circulated b­ ecause many residents of the Burlington and Gloucester areas are missing from the existing documents.23 The pro­cess for integrating Salem into the West Jersey government began in 1680, ­after William Penn and his colleagues successfully lobbied the Duke of York for the transfer of government. They had submitted a protest, prob­ably written by Penn, to the duke’s commissioners b­ ecause Andros refused to yield power to the West Jersey proprietors and charged immigrants a 5 ­percent custom on their belongings. Penn reasoned that Berkeley and Carteret had executed laws by issuing the New Jersey Concessions of 1665; thus the West Jersey acquisition from Berkeley included both government and land. Penn noted that the West Jersey proprietors had to purchase the land twice, from Berkeley and the Lenapes, and invoked ­England’s constitution “that the King of ­England cannot justly take his subjects goods without their consent.” He argued that the government was more impor­tant than the soil in attracting immigrants, summarizing the ideals of the concessions of 1676–1677: “For what is good Land without good laws . . . ​if we could not assure ­people of an easy and ­free, and safe Government both with re­spect to their spiritual and worldly property; that is an uninterrupted liberty of conscience, and an inviolable possession of their civil rights

figures 6 and 7. Signature pages of the West New Jersey Concessions and Agreements,

1676–77, RG West Jersey Assembly, Acts of the General Assembly, 1681–1701, Concessions and Agreements [includes Act of the General Assembly, 1681–1699], vol. 2, New Jersey State Archives. Note that most of the names w ­ ere copied from another document, while the last eleven are original signatures.

figures 6 and 7— continued

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and freedoms, by a Just and wise Government, a mere wilderness could be no encouragement.”24 The Burlington colonists began electing their commissioners as set out in the concessions even before news of the duke’s transfer of government reached the colony. In early 1680, leaders circulated the concessions for additional signatures and then, as required in chapter 3, held meetings on March 25 to elect ten commissioners. Andros was furious with the colonists “for writing and signing and sending abroad writings at Burlington and meeting together according to appointment March 25 and the signing to a paper.” Though he arrested Thomas Budd, the Burlington leaders refused to “produce Copys,” and Andros de­cided simply to appoint five of the eight men elected as commissioners to serve as justices of the Burlington court. L ­ ater that year, on August  6, 1680, the duke transferred power, thus allowing West Jersey to operate in­de­pen­dently from New York.25 ­Under direction of the five commissioners, Thomas Olive, Daniel ­Wills, Robert Stacy, Mahlon Stacy, and William Emley, all of whom signed the concessions in ­England in March 1677, West Jersey inhabitants worked to create a government consistent with its provisions. Though the Duke of York’s transfer of power to Edward Byllynge annulled the document before it could go into effect, the colonists resisted Byllynge’s efforts to centralize power. Salem and Burlington had conducted local government with significant buy-in from settlers and in­de­pen­dence from the duke. They intended to keep their de facto sovereignty as the concessions promised. The first rec­ord of the Burlington Court Book begins on June 14, 1680, ­after Andros had appointed five elected commissioners as justices of his Burlington court. No rec­ord of e­ arlier court proceedings exists except for several references in the Upland court minutes. The justices had prob­ably wanted to protect their discussions from Andros to the extent pos­si­ble. On March 25, 1681, the Burlington court met for the first time u­ nder the autonomous West Jersey government, with newly elected commissioners: Thomas Budd, Samuel Jennings, Thomas Lambert, Thomas Olive, Mahlon Stacy, and Robert Stacy of the Burlington area; and Edward Bradway, Richard Guy, and John Thompson of Salem. Chosen “for one w ­ hole year next ensueing by the Common Vote of the ­People,” they did “solemnly promise that wee ­will truly and faithfully discharge our Respective trusts according to the Lawe of the said Province and Tenour of the Concessions . . . ​ And doe equall Justice and Right to all men according to our best skill and Judgment without corruption favour or affection.” The Burlington area Sheriff William Emley, Constables John Woolston and Thomas Wood, Surveyor Daniel Leeds, and Register Thomas Revell and the Salem area Register James Nevill made similar pledges to fulfill their trusts “according to the Tenour of the Concessions.” At their next meeting, May 3, 1681, the commissioners ruled “that all Freeholders and Inhabittants within the Jurisdiction of the Court” must appear



Promising Liberty and Property 61

at its next meeting “to signe the Concessions; or shew their reasons for their refusal.” While this directive may have inspired some colonists to sign the document, the August court rec­ords omit any response, and several subsequent pages of the rec­ords are missing.26 Despite Byllynge’s claims as governor, the West Jersey colonists pursued the “Tenour,” or meaning and purpose, of the concessions to elect a legislature, which met in Burlington for the first time on November 21, 1681. They passed a series of fundamental laws quite consistent with the concessions, requiring the assembly to be elected annually “by the f­ ree ­people of the said Province.” Though accepting the governor and council in place of the commissioners designated by the concessions to execute laws, the assembly denied the governor power to wage war or raise any military forces, to enact any law without the assembly’s approval, or to levy taxes, appoint officials, or dissolve the assembly without its consent. The assembly confirmed the concessions’ comprehensive statement of religious freedom, “that liberty of conscience in m ­ atters of faith and worship ­towards God, s­ hall be granted to all p­ eople within the Province aforesaid; who ­shall live peaceably and quietly therein; and that none of the f­ ree ­people of the said Province, ­shall be rendered uncapable of office in re­spect of their faith and worship.” When Samuel Jennings, whom Byllynge had sent to West Jersey as his deputy governor, agreed to this document, the assembly accepted him in that office. Jennings remained a stalwart supporter of the assembly in its ­battle with Byllynge in following years.27 The assembly passed and Jennings assented to a series of laws that enacted many, but not all, parts of the concessions. They confirmed jury t­ rials in criminal and civil cases, emphasizing that the judgment of “twelve good and lawful men of the neighborhood” would determine the outcome of ­trials, not the assessment of the justices. The laws allowed defendants to take exception to jurors, established serious penalties for false witness, and endorsed the right to petition the assembly. The representatives also passed more specific bills based on the firsthand knowledge they had gained in administering the province since their arrival, including regulation of lands, money, fees, highways, weights and mea­ sures, fairs, ports, and killing hogs. One obvious omission from the concessions is the pro­cess for mediating disputes and crimes between the colonists and Lenapes. Instead, the 1681 law penalized any person who sold “strong liquors to any Indian or Indians” with a £3 fine.28 The assembly met several times in 1682, with representatives from Burlington, Salem, and the new settlement at Gloucester, and then in May 1683 heeded warning that Byllynge planned to arrive in West Jersey to take control as governor. As specified in the concessions, the voters had elected delegates from the Tenths settled thus far: ten each from the First, Second, and Salem Tenths and seven from the Third Tenth, whose Irish immigrants founded the Newton settlement the previous year. Of the thirty-­seven delegates, only one was an old settler, Michael

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Baron of Salem. The signatures of twenty-­nine assemblymen appear on one or both extant copies of the concessions; most of the other delegates prob­ably signed another version given their subsequent unan­im ­ ous support for the document. The 1683 assembly appointed local officials and a committee to obtain territory from the Lenapes and made regulations for highways, fences, bricks, and leather. It also passed legislation prohibiting “drunkeness, swearing and whoredom, and other prophaness,” moving beyond the “Tenour” of the concessions, which had omitted reference to standards of Christian morality.29 The 1683 assembly’s most pressing business, however, was to defeat Byllynge’s efforts to dominate the provincial government. They enacted a law that no governor could require the assembly or any of its members to move “(when sitting) to any place, without the consent of the House.” They listed ten resolutions confirming the elected assembly’s power, giving the governor a double vote but no veto over legislation. The assembly then considered a series of queries to which they crafted resolves, each passed nemine contradicente (i.e., with no dissenting votes). They reasoned that, as embodied in the concessions, they had obtained the right of government with the land they purchased from Byllynge and the trustees. This “contract and covenant of the land and government to the purchasers” still stood, regardless of the intervening prob­lems with the Duke of York. The “Concessions agreed upon by the Proprietors and ­people, and subscribed in London, and West Jersey, ­were agreed upon to be the fundamentals and ground of the government of West New Jersey” with the exception only of John Fenwick’s tenth, “which he said then at that time was not ­under the same circumstances, but now freely consenteth thereunto.” Fenwick, who attended the assembly, now publicly acknowledged that his Salem colony was part of the West Jersey government.30 The legislature pledged to adhere to the concessions, in accordance with “the fundamental laws of E ­ ngland” and “the powers of the patent,” yet assumed the assembly’s right “to make such variations as from time to time” as is necessary for the public good. The legislature could amend the concessions by a vote of “six parts of seven” of the assembly, with the exception of “the law of liberty of conscience, the law of property, the law of yearly Assembly, the law of juries, and the law of evidence.” With the challenges of settlement in mind, the delegates believed “that in the constitutions of this colony of West New Jersey, ­there are some expressions and passages too strict, and which by experience are found not so practicable nor profitable.” They retained the concept of fundamental constitution, particularly for what they considered the inalienable rights of religious freedom, property, representative government, and trial by peers, while introducing a pro­cess for amending less central provisions of the concessions.31 The delegates elected Samuel Jennings as their governor, ignoring Byllynge’s power to assume the office or designate a deputy. With this action, as the historian John Pomfret has stated, the “assembly in effect had usurped the right of



Promising Liberty and Property 63

government.”32 The representatives claimed power ­under the concessions, which they had purchased with their landholdings in West Jersey, asserting that Byllynge could not nullify the document even if the Crown de­cided he should be governor. With persecution and ­limited civil rights fresh in their minds, the Quaker colonists clung to the concessions as a bulwark for religious liberty, property, po­liti­cal participation, and fair ­trials. The 1683 assembly turned out to be the high point of unity in the provincial government as delegates cooperated to defend their rights u­ nder the concessions. When their efforts failed to obtain support against Edward Byllynge from leading En­glish Quakers, including George Fox, in 1685 they accepted Byllynge’s appointee, John Skene, as deputy governor. Byllynge died in 1687, having never visited southern Lenapehoking. His heirs sold the government and f­ amily property in the province to a non-­Quaker, Dr. Daniel Coxe of London, who denied the validity of the concessions but pledged to uphold such rights as religious freedom.33 As the provincial government became dysfunctional—­and remained so during the remainder of the proprietary period—­political power resided at the local level, enforced by county officials, courts, and the inhabitants themselves. The Quaker found­ers, as members of the 1683 assembly, put forward the West Jersey Concessions as the standard for a just society and representative government; thus, the document offers the benchmarks for determining the extent to which the colonists fulfilled their promises of religious liberty, property rights, freedom from involuntary servitude, justice, and peace for all inhabitants, male and female, including Lenapes, African Americans, Eu­ro­pean immigrants, and old settlers. The men who had signed “IN TESTIMONY and witness of our consent to and affirmation of ­these pre­sent Laws Concessions and Agreements” now had responsibility to help create a colony based on ­these revolutionary ideals.

4 • QUAKER COLONIZ ATION WITHOUT VIO­L ENCE OR REMORSE

When 230 West New Jersey settlers landed in 1677 on the ship Kent, they obtained assistance from Lenape towns and the Swedes and Finns at Raccoon Creek. The Lenapes debated how to greet t­ hese new arrivals, considering the waves of disease that had accompanied ­earlier groups of Eu­ro­pean immigrants. At several conferences in the following months, Ockanickon and other leaders protested the h­ azards of colonization: plagues, disputes over land and livestock, social disruption, and alcohol. They had endured epidemics in three generations, resulting in population loss in southern Lenapehoking from at least 7,500 in the mid-1630s to 3,000 by 1670. Now, according to Thomas Budd’s report of the conferences, young Lenape men wanted war. The sakimaòk “­were advised to make War on us,” Budd wrote, “and cut us off whilst we ­were but few, and said, They ­were told, that we sold them the Small-­Pox, with the Mach Coat they had bought of us.” The sakimaòk promised the Friends that they would not attack, recommending a pro­cess of conflict resolution similar to proposals in the West New Jersey Concessions but more consistent with Lenape practice. They offered an entirely reciprocal arrangement for addressing disputes in which each side would negotiate for satisfactory compensation for an injury before g­ oing to war. The Lenapes kept relations between their communities and the West Jersey colonists at the level of diplomacy, rejecting jury ­trials within the En­glish system, which the concessions specified in some cases when a Eu­ro­pean wronged a Lenape. The proposed jury would have been composed of six Natives and six colonists. Instead, the Lenapes protected their sovereignty, refusing subordination to West Jersey law.1 The Quakers and Lenapes avoided war—­even the ­limited mourning war that some Lenapes had practiced intermittently from the 1640s to mid-1670s against Swedish, Dutch, and En­glish colonists when epidemics struck and Eu­ro­pe­ans encroached upon Lenape soil. Still, Quaker colonization in West Jersey caused a 64



Quaker Colonization without Violence or Remorse 65

vortex of Lenape deaths similar to other places in North Amer­i­ca, though not as extreme, perhaps, as in provinces that used military force to expropriate Native lands. As pacifists, the West Jersey Friends avoided armaments, with no mention of militias, weapons, and forts in the concessions or fundamental laws. The Swedes, Finns, and Dutch seemed comfortable with that policy, as many signed the concessions and indeed had opposed ­earlier calls by the En­glish governor Francis Lovelace for attacks on the Lenapes. Still, sakimaòk recognized the toll Eu­ro­pean colonization took on their communities. Hundreds of new immigrants arrived and spread out across the land, assuming that the Lenapes had transferred full owner­ship with rights to carve up the meadows and forests into farms. The proprietary system of dividing the colony into one hundred parts for sale at £350 per full share encouraged investors to push for more Lenape land to market as real estate. They expected the Armewamese, Rancocas, and other communities to leave, without concern about where they might build new towns. For Quakers, epidemics apparently smoothed the way, as God brought plagues to help the newcomers, God’s ­people. Some colonists offered alcohol to Lenapes, and indeed major land deals involved strong liquor and beer. As the Eu­ro­pean population r­ ose in West Jersey—to an estimated 1,760 by 1682 and 3,500 by 1700—­and Lenapes succumbed to smallpox and other illnesses, the balance of power shifted increasingly t­oward the colonists. Nevertheless, Lenapes retained influence through threats of mourning war, which the Quakers feared.2 Friends believed that God favored their peaceful colonization in southern Lenapehoking, emphasizing their righ­teous possession through purchases from the Lenapes. John Fenwick agreed in several 1675–1676 Salem documents that the Cohanzicks would keep “the Plantations in wch they now Inhabite” ­until “they ­shall thinke fitt to Remove from the same.” He left no further evidence about ­whether he preferred that the Lenapes departed or stayed, but as or­ga­nizer of the Salem proj­ect, he obviously expected the Lenapes to yield most of their land and other­wise defer to the colonists. As their population declined, Cohanzicks and adjacent communities survived by merging towns on the Cohansey River. The Quaker Robert Wade, who settled briefly in Salem but then purchased a plantation at Upland on the west bank of the Delaware River, believed that God promoted Quaker colonization without military force. He informed his wife, Lydia, in May 1676, “In New E ­ ngland they are at Wars with the Indians, and the news is, they have cut off a g­ reat many of them; but in this place, the Lord is making way to exalt his name and truth; for it is said by t­ hose that live h­ ere abouts, that within ­these few years, ­here ­were five Indians for one now.”3 Burlington area settlers similarly expressed faith that God supported their enterprise ­after the Shield brought an epidemic in 1678. The Quaker Mahlon Stacy, a passenger on that ship, wrote in August  1680, that “the God of Life abounds in His Love to His ­little Flock, dayly extending His Peace (as a River)

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to His Remnant.” The Quakers of West Jersey, though small in number could “make a ­Great and Strong Nation.” Stacy had been convinced that an impressive ­future awaited the colony even before he immigrated, “and the Lord is mightily bringing it to pass, in His Removing the Heathen that know Him not, and making Room for a better P ­ eople, that fears his Name. Tis hardly credible to believe, how the Indians are wasted in Two Years Time; and especiall the last Summer: and how the En­glish are increased both in C ­ attle and Corn.” Mary Murfin Smith, who at four years old also arrived on the Shield, the ­daughter of the Quakers Robert and Ann Murfin, l­ater penned an account of the early settlement of Burlington. She carefully pointed out that the commissioners had obtained Lenape consent for their settlement and acknowledged that “the Indians, very numerous, but very civil, for the most part, brought corn and venison, and sold the En­glish for such t­ hings as they needed.” Still, from information she received from her parents and friends, she “observed how God’s providence made room for us in a wonderful manner, in taking away the Indians. Th ­ ere came a distemper among them so mortal that they could not bury all the dead. ­Others went away, leaving their town. It was said that an old Indian king spoke prophetically before his death and said, ‘the En­glish should increase and the Indians decrease!’ ”4 In 1677, to assume owner­ship of the land along the Delaware River and adhere to the West New Jersey Concessions, the commissioners had engaged a group of old settlers to help them negotiate three deeds with the Lenapes. Israel Helm, Peter Rambo, and Lasse Cock served as intermediaries for tracts from Oldmans Creek to Big Timber Creek and from ­there to the Rancocas. The Holsteiner Hendrick Jacobs Falkenburg assisted with the territory from the Rancocas to Assunpink Creek. Peter Rambo and Israel Helm had come to New Sweden in 1640 and 1641 respectively and sat on the Upland court. Lasse Cock became an Upland justice in 1680. All ­were closely associated with the Lenapes, serving as intermediaries for the Duke of York’s government. They lived on the west bank of the Delaware, although Helm obtained land at about this time from the Lenapes on Clonmell Creek (in what is now Gloucester County) and settled t­here by 1680. Falkenburg was an active interpreter and trader with the Lenapes in West Jersey who in 1677 leased land at Lessa Point at the confluence of the Delaware River and Assiscunk Creek.5 In producing the deeds, the commissioners set down the names of the Lenape leaders with whom they traded cloth, tools, brandy, guns, ammunition, jewelry, and other goods for the territory. While the Eu­ro­pe­ans heard (and spelled) the names of sakimaòk in a variety of ways on dif­fer­ent documents, we can identify the Lenapes who signed the documents with some assurance. Study of conferences and conveyances in the Delaware valley highlights the status of individuals as sakimaòk and suggests the ways in which the colonial scribes recorded their names. In the case of the three 1677 West Jersey agreements, additional difficulty



Quaker Colonization without Violence or Remorse 67

arises ­because only recorded abstracts of the documents exist. Thus, we have to navigate the registrar’s defective transcription of the original text. The commissioners wanted the huge area of fertile farmland on New Jersey’s inner coastal plain extending along the Delaware River, from its east bank to the heads of creeks. This was prime Lenape territory, with towns located along numerous tributaries. The En­glish and sakimaòk had opposing ideas about what the agreements entailed, as the Quakers wanted full possession while the Lenapes expected to lease rights for some of the territory and receive annual payments. The Rancocas, Mantes, and Armewamese at first remained in the area, but as disease ravaged their communities, they moved upstream to the heads of creeks, merging into towns that endured through the eigh­teenth ­century. While some Quakers may have hoped that the Lenapes would leave, the Natives—­ though much reduced in number—­maintained towns at the heads of Big Timber, Rancocas, Crosswicks, and Assunpink Creeks and on the Cohansey River. Some also relocated farther east into the pinelands, though sparse rec­ords prevent detailed knowledge of where they lived. Sakimaòk carefully signed documents for the land to which their communities held rights, with no Lenape endorsing more than one of the three 1677 deeds. They included well-­respected men and at least one ­woman who had participated in conferences with the Dutch, the Duke of York’s government, and John Fenwick. Renowewan of Pennsauken was one of five signers of the September 10, 1677, agreement for the area from Big Timber to Rancocas Creek. He had negotiated with the Dutch as early as 1646 and attended conferences with the En­glish and Susquehannocks in 1670, 1675, and 1677. He apparently died soon ­after the 1677 treaty, as his name dis­appears from the rec­ord. Mechmiquon, ­later known to the colonists as King Charles, signed this deed as Sehoppy, a name that he also frequently used. Though Ockanickon on his deathbed in 1682 named another sakima as his successor, Mechmiquon in fact became the leading Lenape spokesperson in the Rancocas region over the next forty years. Jackiekon signed this deed in his capacity as a sakima of the Armewamese on Big Timber Creek.6 About two weeks ­later, on September 27, 1677, Mehocksett, Tallaca, and Ojroqua met with the commissioners to transfer rights to the land between Oldmans and Big Timber Creeks. ­Because we have only the recorded abstract rather than the original document, and no further commentary from the interpreters or commissioners, it is unclear why only ­these three leaders acted for the Lenapes. Mehocksett apparently represented Lenape interests from the Oldmans Creek area, as he was a leading sakima of the Cohanzicks, but he had carefully avoided signing any of the Fenwick deeds. As with several of ­those Salem conveyances, the colonists may have placed his name in the deed without obtaining his signature; with only the abstract, it is impossible to know. The other two sakimaòk mentioned in the abstract for Oldmans to Big Timber Creek ­were Tallaca and Ojroqua, both of whom subsequently granted rights to lands in the Timber

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Creek and Cooper River region. Tallaca made agreements with William Cooper for Pyne Point (­later Camden) in 1682 and with John Roberts and o­ thers at Pennsauken in 1684.7 Ojroqua was a female leader who had attended the September 1670 meeting at Oneanickon with representatives of the Duke of York’s government. She subsequently, in 1678, was one of four sakimaòk who yielded rights to Elizabeth Kinsey for Shackamaxon Island (­later Petty Island), located in the Delaware River adjacent to Pennsauken.8 Augustine Herrman’s 1670 map and evidence from Peter Lindeström’s 1654–1655 report suggest why no additional Lenapes from the region between Oldmans and Big Timber Creeks agreed on the exchange. Herrman omitted the wigwams he used as symbols for Lenape towns from the region south of the Timber Creek watershed, where Mantes had formerly dominated. They had moved north to the Falls by the mid-1650s and to the Rancocas by 1670.9 The commissioners, with the old settlers’ assistance, apparently negotiated with Mehocksett, from the Oldmans Creek region, and Tallaca and Ojroqua, from the Big Timber Creek area, to obtain rights to the territory between t­ hose two streams. Lenapes had already permitted Swedes, Finns, and En­glish to build farms north of Oldmans Creek, among them Hans Hopman and his sons, Peter Jönsson Halton, and ­Will Bromfield. The interpreter Israel Helm obtained land on Clonmell Creek in 1677.10 On October 10, 1677, six sakimaòk met in treaty with the commissioners and Hendrick Jacobs Falkenburg as interpreter to discuss the transfer of rights for the territory from Rancocas Creek north to Assunpink Creek at the Falls of Delaware. The Lenapes included Ockanickon, Wassackarous, and Pesacakson from the Rancocas area and three sakimaòk from the Assunpink watershed farther north. While Ockanickon and Wassackarous ­were members of a Lenape ­family whose territory extended from the west bank of the Delaware to the Atlantic coast, Ockanickon primarily represented the Rancocas. He had participated in the September 1670 meeting at Oneanickon and negotiated frequently with the Duke of York’s government and the West Jersey Quakers.11 Wassackarous had a wide-­ranging ­career and apparently more responsibility than most sakimaòk, as he moved west from Monmouth County to the Salem area in 1675, where he was part of a del­e­ga­tion who met with Governor Edmund Andros at New ­Castle and then signed Cohanzick conveyances to Quaker immigrants. Prior to his death around 1684, Wassackarous also signed the conveyance for Shackamaxon Island to Elizabeth Kinsey and several Pennsylvania deeds to William Penn. Like Ojroqua and Wassackarous, Pesacakson conveyed rights to Shackamaxon Island in 1678. He also witnessed two 1683 deeds for Penn.12 While ­these surviving abstracts for the broad territory between Oldmans and Assunpink Creeks provide ­limited detail, several subsequent conveyances offer greater insight into Lenape expectations for ­these treaties. Three of the four Lenape sakimaòk who signed the 1678 conveyance to the eighteen-­year-­old Quaker

figure 8. Deed for Shackamaxon (Petty) Island from Lenapes to Elizabeth Kinsey,

July 12, 1678, Document Signed, Richard Reeve Wood papers. Courtesy of Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa.

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­ oman Elizabeth Kinsey for “the greate Island lying before Shak[amaxon]” had w participated in the 1677 treaties: Ojroqua, Wassackarous, and Pesacakson. The fourth grantor of Shackamaxon Island was Colehickamin, who was active in other conferences with the Eu­ro­pe­ans and survived ­until at least 1693 when the Gloucester County court compensated him for killing a panther.13 The 1678 document was significant ­because it spelled out the Lenapes’ expectations that they would continue to tap the island’s resources and receive yearly payment from Kinsey in return for giving her permission to raise livestock and plant hay. The Lenapes retained the rights to hunt, fish, and dig wild tuckahoe in return for protecting her hogs from slaughter “and her hay from burning.” Kinsey paid six hundred guilders sewant (approximately £15 sterling) in 1678 and promised annual payments of rum and gunpowder, which she l­ater changed to one match coat, or woolen garment. ­These payments continued ­until 1698, when Ojroqua signed a deed confirmation indicating her willingness to accept one ear of corn annually, if she wanted it, instead of the valuable match coat she had previously received. Her “­brothers,” as she referred to the other grantors, had apparently died or moved away from the region, so she alone negotiated the 1698 confirmation. With increased immigration to West Jersey and Pennsylvania and significant population decline among the Lenapes, her bargaining position became more difficult. Nevertheless, she insisted on inclusion of the ear of corn as a symbol of reciprocity.14 While Elizabeth Kinsey in 1678 purchased rights to an island in the Delaware River not included in the three 1677 West Jersey deeds, other colonists dealt with the Lenapes for land that lay within that territory on the east bank. William Cooper in 1682 traded goods for Pyne Point (now Camden) from the Lenape sakima Tallaca, though the West Jersey commissioners had already negotiated for that land. The Armewamese retained their town nearby, attending the 1703 funeral of Esther Spicer, who operated the Cooper River ferry.15 Individual diplomacy of this sort was a means by which Lenapes obtained annual payments in the early years, while maintaining peace. Some other examples of individual purchases include John Roberts and partners in 1684 at Pennsauken Creek; John Ithell circa 1684 at Timber Creek; John Dennis and partners in 1688 at Cape May; and Samuel Hedge in 1699 at Pilesgrove.16 Additional written evidence of individual diplomacy has prob­ably been lost, while colonists also relied on oral agreements with the Lenapes. The deed granted by several Pennsauken sakimaòk to William Heuling in August 1685 evokes the pathos that Lenapes endured as they retreated in the face of En­glish colonization and death. The document asserts that Heuling had bought and paid for nine plantations “being the ­whole sum and nu[m]ber of plantations that are at Sannocussing.” The Lenape w ­ omen and men promised “to deliver up” the territory as soon as “our Corne is ripe and not to cut and destroy the peechtrees nor to do any manner of harm” to Heuling or his c­ attle. The colo-



Quaker Colonization without Violence or Remorse 71

nist clearly expected the Lenapes to leave their town on the north branch of Pennsauken Creek soon ­after they harvested their crops.17 The West New Jersey government was soon unsatisfied with the broad expanse of territory the commissioners obtained in 1677, though it adhered to the concessions mandate to negotiate with the Lenapes. Despite disease and dislocation, the sakimaòk used delaying tactics and, when necessary, threats of vio­ lence to slow the colonists’ pro­gress. Often, the Eu­ro­pe­ans claimed to buy more territory than they could ­settle within a few years or even de­cades, so Lenape communities remained on the land. B ­ ecause the sakimaòk viewed the transactions as leases rather than sales in fee s­ imple, they had no reluctance to retain tracts that colonists failed to occupy. In 1683, the West Jersey assembly began a pro­cess to gain owner­ship of ­every acre Fenwick and Byllynge had purchased from John Lord Berkeley. At its May  1683 session in which the delegates stood united in opposing Byllynge’s claims to the governorship, the assembly devised a plan to fund the growing provincial debt through sale of Lenape territory. Thus, Quaker leaders acknowledged that they intended Rancocas, Mantes, Armewamese, Cohanzicks, and other Lenapes to pay for colonization. The legislators agreed that “a con­ve­nient tract of land ­shall (with what speed may) be purchased of the Indians in such place or places as the commissioners . . . ​­shall judge most con­ve­nient, that the same may be clear, and such part or parts thereof may be sold (not exceeding five thousand acres) for the paying the debts, and publick charges, and expences of the Province.” Governor Samuel Jennings would receive six hundred acres from the tract, to be taken up within three years a­ fter he received it. Lenape land rather than taxes would fund the government.18 The 1683 assembly comprised some of the most active real estate speculators in West Jersey, including twelve who had bought proprietary shares from Byllynge and the trustees and now wanted to capitalize further on their investment. William Biddle, Thomas Budd, Mahlon Stacy, Thomas Olive, and Francis Collins marketed property often, with Biddle dealing in over one hundred transactions and Budd more than eighty in West Jersey. At least twenty of the twenty-­seven assemblymen from the Burlington and Gloucester areas bought and sold real estate frequently during their lifetimes.19 The assembly’s team of negotiators, including Mahlon Stacy, Budd, Olive, and William Emley, made l­ ittle pro­gress during the next several years in convincing Lenapes to give up more territory. Instead, the assembly tried to raise funds through taxes, also with ­little result, so in 1687 Budd agreed to fund the £1,250 debt in return for fifteen thousand acres of land. In June 1687, he met with sakimaòk from the Assunpink Creek–­Millstone River region, who offered him rights to a large tract in return for wampum, twenty guns, gunpowder and lead, twenty ­kettles, eighty match coats, beer, and other goods. Budd afterward sold the acreage to Dr. Daniel Coxe, who in 1687 acquired the right to govern West Jersey

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from Edward Byllynge’s heirs. Coxe retained the territory during his proprietorship and then in 1693 attempted to sell it to the new proprietors, the En­glish West New Jersey Society.20 The assembly handed over responsibility for distributing lands to the resident proprietors of Burlington and Gloucester Counties, who in September  1688 elected the Council of West Jersey Proprietors. The council supervised land distribution, tried to reach a favorable position vis-­à-­vis the East Jersey colony in surveying the division line, and took charge of negotiating with Lenape sakimaòk, forbidding o­ thers from purchasing Lenape land without their consent. In April 1689, the council noted that its agents had held numerous treaties with the Lenapes, bestowing on them “chargeable treats.” The council worked strenuously to buy up land over the next twenty-­five years, sometimes attaining a quick result while in other cases the Lenapes demanded extended meetings and held out for adequate payments.21 The council also confronted Daniel Coxe’s efforts to consume all West Jersey acreage that had not been purchased from the Lenapes. In 1688, his mediator obtained conveyances for large tracts above the Falls and, in southern New Jersey, for Cape May and the broad territory from ­Little Egg Harbor River to the heads of Oldmans, Raccoon, Big Timber Creeks, and Maurice River. Coxe was unsuccessful in convincing Mehocksett and fellow sakimaòk to sign over the land between Cohansey and Maurice Rivers, but in 1693, the West New Jersey Society in E ­ ngland, to whom Coxe sold the proprietorship, accomplished that goal for considerably more trade goods than Coxe had advanced for his southern New Jersey purchases. Both Coxe and the West New Jersey Society agreed to share the land with resident proprietors if they paid a portion of the goods traded to the Lenapes.22 By 1703, sakimaòk thought the land-­grabbing campaign of West Jersey proprietors had gone too far. By that time, many Lenapes in the Burlington area had merged into two towns and adjacent territory: Crossweeksung, on Crosswicks Creek, southeast of the Falls; and Coaxen (or Weekpink), on an interior branch of Rancocas Creek. As colonists encroached on their territory, the sakima Mechmiquon contacted the Council of West Jersey Proprietors to clarify the eastern boundary specified in the 1677 agreements for land between Big Timber and Assunpink Creeks. He stressed that the eastern boundary identified in the documents was too far east, thus taking too much Lenape land. Rather than the “uppermost head” of the creeks, in fact the border “­ought to be according to a line that was afterwards actually run, by agreement made between the En­glish and the Indians, and which comes lower upon the said creeks than the uppermost heads thereof.” The council admitted the ­mistake, acknowledging that the Lenapes had marked the border with the colonists, who accepted it as the “Indian Line.” With Mechmiquon’s leadership, the Lenapes successfully preserved their towns.23



Quaker Colonization without Violence or Remorse 73

A de­cade l­ater, in 1714, Mechmiquon negotiated again with the colonists when John Wetherill used alcohol to defraud him of acreage where Coaxen stood. The sakima and other Lenapes gained assistance from John ­Wills, a longtime member of the Council of West Jersey Proprietors and interpreter, and several assemblymen to meet with Governor Robert Hunter. Mechmiquon explained to Hunter how “fraudulently & unjustly John Wetherill had obtained his hand to Deed for a parcel of land out of the Tract he had reserved for the Indians to live upon out of wch he never Intended to Sell any having Sold all the rest to the En­glish.” The sakima continued, “If [the land] be taken from us where must the Indians go Signifying that he had Lived Amongst the En­glish ever Since they came into the Country and that they had lived lovingly and like B ­ rothers together And that a l­ ittle Land would Serve the Indians And that ­there was Enough in the Country for both.” The governor charged Wetherill with purchasing the tract illegally, warning that his fraudulent use of alcohol had created “the danger of a rupture with t­ hese Indians.” ­Wills and his associates agreed, admonishing Wetherill to relinquish the document or “it might be the occasion of A war in the Country.” The Lenapes actively participated in the negotiations, refusing to leave Hunter’s “fireside till they Se that papr Destroyed.” When Wetherill returned from home with the document, Mechmiquon “tore it to pieces And threw it into the fire all but A Small Scrap that fell upon the floor Another Indian perceiving of it Step’d and pick’d it up and threw it into the fire also Shewing thereby their G ­ reat Aversion to it.” ­After the Lenapes expressed their thanks, the governor ended the treaty with food and drink. In a report to the Lords of Trade, Hunter explained his actions to avert a crisis, stating, “I am sure the w ­ hole country applauded what was done in that ­matter as a very necessary, and considerable peice of justice and ser­vice.”24 Despite their diminished numbers, in 1703 and 1714 the Lenapes effectively employed persuasion and the threat of vio­lence to gain justice and protect their remaining towns in the Burlington area. The provincial leaders zealously sought deeds to Lenape lands, yet they followed the Lenapes’ diplomatic protocol of reciprocity and fair practice, in part to adhere to the concessions, in part for fear of reprisals. While the Lenapes preferred peace, they ardently defended their communities. At the same time West Jersey Quakers used diplomacy to obtain territory without war, they developed propaganda about Lenapes to help justify the ravages of Eu­ro­pean settlement. Friends ­adopted an adverse narrative exaggerating their neighbors’ use of alcohol, suggesting that a lack of discipline rather than colonization led to population loss and social disruption. By controlling the written narrative, including quotations attributed to leading sakimaòk, such as Ockanickon, the colonists created a ste­reo­type shifting blame for the Lenapes’ decline from the ordeals of land expropriation and epidemic disease to imbibing rum. The Eu­ro­pe­ans propagated the myth that Lenapes ­were particularly susceptible to

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drunkenness (leading to vio­lence), while at the same time trading large quantities of alcohol at treaty conferences and disregarding the fact many colonists also indulged in rum. The West Jersey leaders’ preoccupation with tavern sales to Lenapes is mind-­boggling, as they passed a series of laws prohibiting the practice while offering barrels of rum, brandy, and beer in exchange for land.25 This tiered system had become policy in the Delaware colony in May  1675 when Governor Edmund Andros met in New ­Castle with the old settlers and Lenapes. He forbade the Dutch, Swedes, and Finns from distilling liquor from grain or corn, while allowing merchants to sell rum and other alcohol to Natives with a minimum two-­gallon quantity as requested by Lenape sakimaòk. Despite Andros’s decree, old settlers continued to manufacture and sell liquor in small quantities, an impor­tant supplement to their income. Lenapes and Eu­ro­pe­ans had tippled together since contact, cementing friendships while risking arguments. The ban on alcohol sales, as well as restrictive En­glish land policies, had convinced some Swedes and Finns to join the Lenapes on the east bank.26 In 1679, anx­i­eties about liquor arose during conflict between Lenapes and West Jersey immigrants who de­cided to ­settle on the west bank near the Falls. Though outside West Jersey jurisdiction, the incidents had a lasting impact on how Burlington Quakers interacted with their Lenape neighbors in purchasing land and sale of alcohol. In September 1675, Andros had purchased rights to land at the Falls from four sakimaòk, hoping to attract immigrants and develop the Duke of York’s colony. Hearing of Andros’s plan, a group of West Jersey settlers, including Robert Lucas, Robert Scholey, and ­others petitioned, “We may have Land in Jersie Side but we ar willing to becom Tenants to his highness the Duke of Yourk if your Honor please to give us the grant and to Cleer the Indians.” They craved the large fertile tracts, agreeing to pay quitrents to the Duke of York.27 When Andros granted them territory, Ockanickon and his ­brother Metapis, who claimed possession but had not attended the September 1675 treaty, argued that they ­were “the right ­owners, and never have had the Vallew of a pipe . . . ​ Ockenickan saying that none wil nor shal Come Upon the land without Satisfaction.” They likely collaborated with the sakimaòk who attended the 1675 conference, particularly their ­brother Mamarakiekon, as well as old settlers such as Israel Helm and Lasse Cock, who had wanted to build their own town on the site.28 Lenapes created havoc when Lucas and com­pany founded Crewcorne, while the old settlers—­justices of the Upland court—­failed to intervene. In April 1680, the Crewcorne settlers exclaimed to Andros that they found themselves “agreived by the Indians when drunck, Insomuch that we be and have been in g­ reat danger of our Lives, of h­ ouses burning of our goods Stealeing and of our Wives and c­ hildren a Frighting.” Rather than acknowledging the root injustice of their expropriation of land, the colonists blamed the Lenapes, constructing the ste­reo­type of Natives who irrationally attacked Eu­ro­pe­ans when drunk. ­After the Crewcorne residents accused local tavern keeper and ferryman



Quaker Colonization without Violence or Remorse 75

Gilbert Wheeler, Andros required him to appear in New York for selling alcohol to the Lenapes.29 In September  1680, the Lenapes continued to resist the Crewcorne settlement. The Eu­ro­pe­ans could blame Wheeler and alcohol, but the issue of land fraud remained. Lucas and his compatriots wrote to Andros that Wheeler still entertained Lenapes at his ­house by ­great numbers, and sells [liquor] to them by both ­great and small mea­sures, which sometimes they carry a litle distance from his h­ ouse and makes them selves drunck with it, Then they revill and fight together, and then they com furiously and break our fences and steales our corne, and breaks our win­dows and dores and carryes away our goods, and worryed 3 of our chatle in one day with their dogs, which oppression if it continue ­will force som of us from our Plantations, we being very weake at the pre­sent for re­sis­tance and ignorant in their Lingo whereby we can not appease them when they are mad with drinck.

Ockanickon, Metapis, and their communities resisted colonization of their territory without compensation. Expropriation of land was the prob­lem, not alcohol. Gilbert Wheeler persisted in selling liquor to the Lenapes on both sides of the Delaware River, as the Upland court fined him £4 in June 1681 and the Burlington court charged £5 in 1682.30 Indeed, the Burlington court established fines for selling alcohol to the Lenapes in the midst of the conflict at Crewcorne, though it lacked jurisdiction on the west bank. They anxiously considered the actions of Ockanickon and his ­people, who lived nearby at Oneanickon and other towns on Crosswicks and Rancocas creeks. The first step of the Quaker commissioners (or justices), in June 1680, was to declare that any person who “­shall hereafter directly or indirectly sell any Rumme or other strong liquor to any Indian or Indians ­either by ­great or small mea­sure without order from the Court” be fined fifty shillings (£2.5). Interestingly, they included the possibility that the court might order or give permission for such a sale. At the next court in August 1680, however, the commissioners Thomas Olive, Daniel ­Wills, Robert Stacy, Mahlon Stacy, and William Emley repealed this regulation, creating a two-­tiered system similar to that of Governor Andros. They banned all sales to Lenapes of rum and other strong liquor ­under a half anchor (about five gallons) but permitted transactions of a half anchor or more as long as the merchant took “speciall care that such Indian and Indians as s­hall buy the same Liquors in manner aforesaid s­hall speedily depart with the same Liquors apart into the Woods to drinke the same ­there; that soe the ­people may not bee disturbed by them.” The fine of fifty shillings remained the same. The commissioners clarified the goals of this policy: to protect the traders’ ability to sell rum while separating the Lenapes from Eu­ro­ pean settlements.31

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At its first session in November  1681, the West New Jersey assembly took responsibility for legislation, imposing a £3 fine for selling “any strong liquors to any Indian or Indians.” The delegates in May 1682 amended that straightforward prohibition to divide the proceeds from fines between informers and the public stock and to increase the fine to £5 for “­every foreigner that ­shall so offend,” a designation referring to Wheeler, who lived on the west bank. This law remained in place u­ ntil November 1692, when the assembly acknowledged that “­there hath been many abuses committed by permitting of rum to be sold to Indians, and notwithstanding the laws formerly made to suppress the same.” This time they outlawed “the selling or giving of rum, or any manner of strong liquor,” to an African American or Lenape, specifying a £5 fine. They permitted, however, “a moderate giving” to an enslaved African “for necessary support of nature, or to an Indian in a fainting condition” without taking any payment. The Burlington court prosecuted few residents for selling liquor to the Lenapes despite the assembly’s view that the practice was prevalent.32 The Society of Friends, with considerable overlap in leadership with the Burlington court and assembly, similarly claimed that the Lenapes’ consumption of alcohol was the root of difficulties, that if colonists ­stopped retailing rum, relations would improve. Indeed, the Quakers could fulfill a moral purpose by helping the Lenapes to avoid harming themselves. The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which met first in Burlington in 1681 and then convened alternately at Burlington and Philadelphia starting in 1685, instructed members not to sell rum or other liquors to Natives ­because of their excessive use. The ­women’s yearly meeting emphasized this ban as its first policy directive in 1691, requiring reports from monthly meetings on “friends order as to the Indians that they should not give them any Strong Liquor to their hurt.”33 Coinciding with prohibitions on liquor sales was the fact that many treaties for land included payments of rum, beer, and other alcohol. While not all deeds specified quantities of goods, many provide this information, detailing the cloth, clothing, tools, paint, guns, ammunition, and liquor involved in each exchange. Including alcohol among trade goods in West Jersey began prior to Quaker settlement and continued through the seventeenth c­ entury. In the Salem area, Edmund Cantwell and Johannes Dehaes in 1673 had paid half an anchor of “drink,” while in 1675 John Pledger and Hipolit Lefever offered a full anchor of rum, and Johan and Peter Hendrickson traded one anchor of strong liquor and one anchor of strong beer for their necks of land. The three 1677 West Jersey conveyances between Oldmans and Assunpink Creeks provided a total of twenty anchors (two hundred gallons) of brandy and rum along with many other goods. Even a­ fter the Crewcorne incidents, liquor remained an impor­tant item in West Jersey trade. The brewer Thomas Budd included two anchors of beer in his 1687 deed, while in 1688 and 1693 representatives of the proprietors Daniel Coxe and the West New Jersey Society presented gallons of rum and



Quaker Colonization without Violence or Remorse 77

beer.34 The large quantity of drink in some of the documents—­along with the many k­ ettles, axes, combs, awl blades, bells, mouth harps, tobacco tongs, and other items—­suggests that the Lenapes desired many of the items to trade, prob­ably for furs with Natives in the Susquehanna valley and farther north and west. This helps to explain why Lenape sakimaòk in 1675 had asked Andros to stop the flow of alcohol by small mea­sure but wanted access to quantities of two gallons or more. Thomas Budd’s promotional pamphlet, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania and New-­Jersey in Amer­i­ca (1685), boosted the narrative of Friends’ honorable be­hav­ior t­ oward Lenapes while at the same time fostering the ste­reo­type of their addiction to drink. As a land speculator, merchant, brewer, leading Quaker, and provincial official, Budd published the pamphlet to attract settlers and investors to the Delaware valley. He stressed that the “Indians are but few in Number, and have been very ser­viceable to us by selling us Venison, Indian Corn,” and other goods, including furs. Budd and his associates met with Lenapes several times, convening on one occasion to discuss alcohol with “eight Kings, (& many other Indians),” including Ockanickon. Budd quoted the speech of a Lenape spokesman who asked the colonists “to put down the sale of Rum, Brandy, and other strong liquors to them.” The Lenapes sat opposite the Eu­ro­pe­ans, offering four wampum ­belts, in Budd’s words, “to give us as Seals of the Covenant they made with us.” The sakima then explained that the Dutch and Swedes had sold alcohol to them, but “they ­were blind, they had no Eyes, they did not see that it was for our hurt.” The Lenapes, according to Budd’s transcript of the sakima’s speech, could not control themselves, with 140 ­people killed “since the time it was first sold us.” The Lenape then entreated the Quakers to be dif­fer­ent, “to deny themselves of the Profit of it for our good.” He continued, “We must put it down by mutual consent; the Cask must be sealed up, it must be made fast, it must not leak by Day nor by Night, in the Light, nor in the Dark, and we give you ­these four ­belts of Wampam, which we would have you lay up safe, and keep by you to be Witness of this Agreement.”35 Budd portrayed the sakima’s speech as complimentary to Friends and suggested that the Lenapes wanted to limit alcohol sales. We should question this, however, b­ ecause sakimaòk welcomed rum and other strong drink as part of the trade goods they received for rights to land, including the beer they received from Budd himself. Lenapes, like Eu­ro­pe­ans, dealt with liquor in a variety of ways. Some avoided it altogether, while o­ thers drank for plea­sure even to excess. The Crewcorne incidents suggest that Lenapes used the excuse of drunkenness to confront Eu­ro­pe­ans who settled land without compensating the Lenapes fairly. Given the ongoing concerns of the West Jersey government and Friends meetings, Lenapes continued to obtain liquor and sometimes used its disguise to express grief for ­family and community members lost in epidemics.36

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For Lenapes, the issues of disease, loss of land, and alcohol intertwined. Death from epidemics decreased their power, though they remained strong and willing to challenge the pacifist Friends. The sakimaòk convinced younger men not to conduct mourning war but had less success in controlling drunkenness and, at least in the case of Crewcorne, attacks on property. Lenapes apparently refrained from assaulting West Jersey residents, perhaps respecting the Quakers’ commitment to nonviolence despite their rapacity for land. Still, the death and dislocation of Quaker colonization spelled disaster by the mid-­eighteenth ­century as such towns as Oneanickon, Sannocussing, and Armewames dis­appeared and surviving Lenapes merged at Cohanzick, Coaxen, and Crossweeksung.

5 • ­WOMEN, ETHNICIT Y, AND FREEDOM IN SOUTHERN LENAPEHOKING

The eighteenth-­century Quaker politician Samuel Smith, of Burlington, in 1765 issued the first published history of New Jersey. As a descendant of early settlers and influential member of the New Jersey government, Smith had access to rec­ords that are no longer extant. His description of the Kent’s arrival in August 1677 and the Burlington immigrants’ dependence on Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes through their first winter remains a prime source for ­these early months. Smith wrote, the ship’s crew “landed their passengers, two hundred and thirty in number, about Rackoon creek, where the Swedes had some scattering habitations, but they w ­ ere too numerous to be all provided for in h­ ouses; some w ­ ere obliged to lay their beds and furniture in cow stalls, and appartments of that sort; among other incon­ve­niences to which this exposed them, the snakes ­were now plenty enough to be frequently seen upon the hovels u­ nder which they shelter’d.” Though the West Jersey commissioners acted promptly to obtain help from old settlers to negotiate land treaties with the Lenapes, it was “late in the fall” before the colonists agreed to build the town of Burlington. The “winter was much spent before the work was begun; in the interim they lived in wigwams, built ­after the manner of the Indians. Indian corn and venison, supplied by the Indians, was their chief food.”1 Beyond Smith’s condescending dismissal of the old settlers’ living conditions, he displayed—­like many commentators then and since—­scant interest in how the Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes assisted hundreds of new arrivals. In 1677, approximately twelve old settler h­ ouse­holds dwelled near Raccoon Creek, headed by men who had negotiated rights to land from the Lenapes and settled during the previous five years. Several Swedish and Finnish ­women had crossed the Delaware River with their husbands and ­children, while the identities of other wives are unknown. Some of the men w ­ ere quite young, hoping to trade with the Lenapes and establish a farm before starting a ­family. ­Because the 79

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Swedish and Finnish men had ties with Lenapes as business partners and neighbors, it is likely some had domestic relationships with Lenape w ­ omen.2 Samuel Smith’s text is an example of how historical sources have ignored the essential ser­vices of ­women, ­whether Lenape, African, or Eu­ro­pean. Sheltering and feeding the Kent passengers required maximum effort, though Quakers and old settlers in Salem and across the Delaware must have assisted a­ fter the first few days. The ship’s landing at harvest time enabled the residents to share corn and other food, yet the newcomers’ continuing need ­until the summer of 1678 stretched the region’s resources. Smith passed over months of work and orientation that Swedish, Finnish, and Lenape ­women provided to the Quaker immigrants. In the first days a­ fter the En­glish landed on their doorsteps, the old settlers or­ga­nized sleeping arrangements, prepared meals, and offered facilities for washing and childcare, medicines, and firewood. In the following weeks, Swedish, Finnish, and Lenape ­women helped the Friends negotiate their new environment, identifying berries, fruit, nuts, and roots to supplement vari­ous Eu­ro­pean grains, such as rye and wheat, and the Indian corn, beans, and squash that Lenape ­women raised. The w ­ omen also knew sources of wood and fibers for constructing wigwams, furnishings, and vari­ous tools, while Lenape, Swedish, and Finnish men could provide guidance on fish and game.3 During the de­cade ­after Quakers first arrived, Fenwick’s colony expanded to include Salem, Greenwich, and adjacent farms, while the Burlington settlement stretched north to Assunpink Creek and south to Newton in what became Gloucester County. By 1682, an estimated 1,760 Quakers had immigrated to West Jersey. Lenapes retained towns near the Falls of the Delaware; on Crosswicks, Assiscunk, Rancocas, and Big Timber Creeks and Cohansey River; in the pinelands; and near the Atlantic shore. The Swedes, Finns, and Dutch built farms primarily between Big Timber Creek and Salem River, though some lived at Pennsauken, Maurice River, and the Jersey shore. The West Jersey colonists or­ga­nized themselves in autonomous communities governed by county courts in Burlington, Gloucester, and Salem, providing stable leadership even as the provincial government became dysfunctional from power strug­gles among West Jersey officials, En­glish proprietors, and Crown bureaucrats. Quakers set up meetings for worship and monthly meetings for discipline throughout the colony, while old settlers attended Swedish Lutheran churches across the river at Wicaco and Crane Hook ­until 1702 when they established congregations in Raccoon and Penn’s Neck. Quakers and Swedish Lutherans had abandoned any idea of converting Lenapes, who remained faithful to the Greatest Spirit, Kètanëtuwit, and their individual manitous through prayer, dancing, and ritual.4 Cohanzick, Armewamese, Rancocas, and other Lenape w ­ omen helped to create patterns of ethnic intersection and separation that distinguished the development of southern Lenapehoking culture. While ­women intermarried across Lenape towns and some formed partnerships with Swedes, Finns, and En­glish,



Women, Ethnicity, and Freedom 81

Lenape identity remained strong—­indeed, it continues in the twenty-­first ­century with the Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation headquartered in Cumberland County. Lenapes safeguarded their sovereignty and culture, refusing u­ ntil ­after 1740 to convert to Chris­tian­ity.5 Similarly, many Swedes and Finns intermarried and shared technology and culture with Lenapes, Dutch, and En­glish, while maintaining and forging ethnic identity through the Swedish Lutheran church. ­Others chose to join new faiths and traditions. While some members of Quaker families also married outside the religion, the Society of Friends in West Jersey increasingly enforced endogamy ­after 1694. Female Quaker leaders, as ­mothers of maturing c­ hildren, helped to lead the effort. As discussed in chapter  6, elite Friends purchased enslaved African ­women and men whom they expected to ­labor within their h­ ouse­holds but defined outside the protection of Quaker community and law. Though severe gaps exist in the historical rec­ord, particularly for Lenape and old settler ­women, evidence from treaty negotiations, county court minutes, and church rec­ords suggests that Lenape, Swedish, Finnish, and Quaker w ­ omen held substantial status and freedom within their groups. Our knowledge of female leadership among Lenapes is ­limited to a large extent ­because Eu­ro­pean men—­ sea captains, explorers, and colonialists—­expected to negotiate with men. The lists of sakimaòk with whom they traded only rarely indicated ­women, ­whether ­because w ­ omen seldom signed land conveyances or the Eu­ro­pe­ans failed to highlight their gender. The Dutch sea captain David de Vries in January 1633 discovered the power of Armewamese and Mantes ­women when he tried to purchase corn from their husbands. He obtained the needed food only when he acknowledged that Lenape w ­ omen controlled agricultural land and its produce. Within their matrilineal society, m ­ others held status as heads of kinship groups, feeling the brunt of Eu­ro­pean diseases that destroyed the lives of so many ­family members during the seventeenth c­ entury. When a sakima died, elder ­women supervised the pro­ cess by which rights to leadership descended through the maternal rather than paternal line. The sakima’s successor normally was his ­sister’s child rather than his own. A m ­ other sometimes signed a conveyance when her son, the designated sakima, was still a minor, as in the case of Necosshehesco and her son Necomis, who signed several documents in 1675–1676 for John Fenwick. In 1682, Ockanickon’s wife, Matollionequay, was among the Lenapes who met in Burlington with a group of Quaker men and ­women to hear her husband’s ­dying words. John Cripps published, on the last page of his account of the gathering, the signs of Matollionequay, Ockanickon, his designated heir Irooseeke ( Jahkursoe), the shaman Tellinggreifee, and Nemooponent, identified as “a Prince.” Matollionequay may have also served as a witness to two conveyances for Nathaniel Cripps in 1717 and 1719 for land in ­Little Egg Harbor, as her name was recorded as Mamelawwayqua (her mark). Several other Lenape w ­ omen in the Burlington County

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figure 9. Signs of Wassackarous, Ojroqua, Colehickamin, and Pesacakson on Deed for Shackamaxon (Petty) Island from Lenapes to Elizabeth Kinsey, July 12, 1678, Document Signed, Richard Reeve Wood papers. (Courtesy of Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa. (Detail))

area who held leadership status in the eigh­teenth c­ entury included Bathsheba Mullis and Sarah Stores.6 The Lenape ­woman for whom we have the most extensive information as a diplomat was Ojroqua, whose name the Eu­ro­pe­ans spelled in a variety of ways including Ojerekqua, Ojerekquae, Ojrequia, Ojrequa, and Oyagrakum. We learn her gender from a 1698 document on which the scribe noted “her marke” next to her signs. Identifying Ojroqua as female demonstrates that Lenape ­women participated in diplomacy associated with their status as heads of kinship groups, agricultural producers, and related duties. ­Because her gender went unnoticed in many documents, it is likely that other w ­ omen as well took part in conferences without written reference.7 Ojroqua represented Lenapes from the region between Pennsauken and Oldmans Creeks in several major conferences with Eu­ro­pe­ans. In September 1670, she attended the treaty at Oneanickon with representatives of Governor Francis Lovelace to end conflict over Eu­ro­pean encroachment on land. The other Lenape diplomats included the principal sakimaòk Renowewan, Ockanickon, Mehocksett, and Nanacussy, and Ojroqua’s b­ rothers Colehickamin and Pesacak-



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son. It is also likely, given Ojroqua’s status and residence, that she helped to negotiate and signed the September  27, 1677, conveyance to the West Jersey commissioners for the land between Oldmans and Big Timber Creeks.8 In the 1678 transaction for “the greate Island lying before Shak[amaxon],” Ojroqua and three sakimaòk described as her ­brothers Wassackarous, Colehickamin, and Pesacakson granted land rights to the eighteen-­year-­old Quaker ­woman Elizabeth Kinsey. They spelled out carefully Lenape expectations in such conveyances, indicating that they would continue to hunt, fish, and dig tuckahoe while Kinsey would pay six hundred guilders sewant and make an annual gift for permission to plant hay and keep livestock. Ojroqua endorsed the 1678 document and two drafts of the 1698 confirmation with two marks, a spiral and a drawing that resembles a bird’s wings. Her spiral is distinctive among Lenape signs in southern Lenapehoking, though the symbol is prominent in Native American art and culture. With it, she may have represented spiral-­shaped shells from which Natives produced wampum.9 As Lenape ­women shared leadership in their sovereign communities and government—­while interacting with the old settlers and En­glish colonizers in diplomacy and trade—­the West New Jersey proprietors established their provincial assembly and county courts ­under the West Jersey Concessions and En­glish common law, which severely ­limited the rights of Eu­ro­pean w ­ omen. In the face of Lenape re­sis­tance and power, the Quakers quickly dropped any hope that they might submit to En­glish law. The Friends had somewhat greater success in integrating old settler men, as many agreed to sign the West New Jersey Concessions of 1676–1677 to safeguard their landholdings and civil rights. Glimpses of encounters of Swedish and Finnish w ­ omen with West Jersey law, however, suggest that, like Lenapes, they retained considerable autonomy, keeping largely out of the reach of county justices and juries. Edward Byllynge and his Quaker colleagues who drafted the concessions included no formal po­liti­cal rights for w ­ omen, despite w ­ omen’s status as ministers and guardians of discipline within the Society of Friends, which set them apart from w ­ omen in other Eu­ro­pean religions. While reforming En­glish law in other ways, the planners of the West Jersey government l­ imited married w ­ omen’s property rights, requiring ­women to yield their in­de­pen­dence at marriage. As feme covert, a married w ­ oman lost control of property and wages, and ability to make contracts and sue in court. Unmarried ­women, including ­widows, held ­these rights as feme sole.10 The concessions’ authors used language referring explic­itly to ­women in just a few provisions, t­ hose concerning “­every able man servant” versus “­every weaker servant male or female”; protections for debtors and petty criminals; abuse against “any man ­woman or child”; rights of ­widows and ­children in intestate estates; and provisions for estates when “any man or ­woman” committed suicide. Other­wise, the concessions included such language as “he,” “him,” “any person or persons,” and “his or their” even when discussing religious

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freedom and ­legal pro­cess, which arguably pertained to ­women and men. Only men signed the concessions, which, though never formally ­adopted, guided settlement in West Jersey into the 1680s.11 The fundamental agreements and thirty-­six laws passed by the first West Jersey assembly in November 1681 and signed by Deputy Governor Samuel Jennings followed the concessions quite closely. In subsequent years, however, the legislature added laws that moved beyond that document, though leaving ­women’s po­liti­cal status unchanged. Of considerable significance to w ­ omen and men was the assembly’s adoption in May 1683 of a law to “take special care for the suppressing of drunkenness, swearing and whoredom, and other prophaness,” which the concessions had omitted. The law required the testimony of one or more witnesses for each wrongdoing, prescribing fines or time in the stocks for swearing and drunkenness. In the case of “such who ­shall be found guilty of whoredom,” the punishment would be determined “according to the nature of the offense by the court.” The law provided no more detail about how the assemblymen defined “whoredom” or pos­si­ble distinctions in penalty for ­women and men. In 1694, the legislature ­adopted another act to prevent “Whoredom and Adultery,” declaring that among “heinous transgressions . . . ​the sin of uncleanness is one of the greatest in the eyes of a pure God.” They prescribed the same penalties for males and females: fines of £5 if both parties ­were unmarried (fornication) or £10 if ­either party was married (adultery), with whipping or sale into servitude if unable to pay the fine. This prescribed punishment for adultery in  West Jersey was lenient compared with Mas­sa­chu­setts, where the 1648 law required death when the w ­ oman was married, though juries generally avoided capital punishment by convicting on a lesser charge.12 In theory, t­hese laws applied to Swedish and Finnish w ­ omen as well as the En­glish and Irish who came with the Quaker expeditions. Many old settler men signed the concessions, purchased land from the West Jersey proprietors, and participated in the county courts. Our knowledge of Swedish and Finnish ­women is ­limited by the failure of scribes to rec­ord their biographical data. The number of ­women who immigrated to New Sweden in the 1640s and 1650s lagged significantly that of men, who sought partners among the Dutch, Lenapes, and En­glish or departed the colony. The identities of many wives in Penn’s Neck and  Raccoon are unknown in part ­because existing Swedish Lutheran church rec­ords date only from 1713 for ­these communities.13 Information we have about Swedish and Finnish ­women suggests they could be spirited and bold, though the Swedish ministers Andreas Rudman and Ericus Björk focused on their impor­tant contributions in domesticity and preservation of ethnic tradition. In letters written soon ­after arriving in the Delaware valley in 1697, the priests wrote that the “­women cook food according to the Swedish custom and brew fine and pleasant tasting drinks,” including apple and peach cider. The families planted Indian corn and “such rye, barley, wheat, buckwheat ­etc.,



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that they make the finest bread that one can find, and also good beer, having daily all kinds of fresh [food] from forest and ­water.” The old settlers lived “very well, blessed by God with ­children and for the most part also grandchildren that they are able to carry on their work with their own [­labor] alone, with few exceptions.” The elite, and yet unmarried, ministers Rudman and Björk viewed w ­ omen of their parishes as wives and m ­ others, indispensable but subordinate support for home, church, and colonization. Like most privileged Eu­ro­pean men, they generally ignored w ­ omen’s impact in parish rec­ords.14 Ella Steelman’s life provides better awareness of the challenges old settler ­women faced in the Delaware valley as well as the opportunities they afforded their ­children. In 1641, Ella Olofsdotter Stille emigrated at age seven from Uppland, Sweden, with her f­ather Olof Petersson Stille, her m ­ other, and younger b­ rother Anders. Olof had been sentenced twice for crimes in Sweden but was able to obtain land on Ridley Creek and served as a justice on the Upland court. Ella married Peter Jochimsson, a soldier who arrived from Holstein in 1643 and became a freeman in 1652. He died in 1654 while on a peace mission in New Amsterdam for Governor Johan Risingh, leaving Ella and their c­ hildren Peter Petersson (Yocum) and Elizabeth Petersdotter. Ella Stille soon married Hans Månsson, who had immigrated as a laborer to New Sweden ­after being sentenced in 1641 to be hanged or transported for destroying fruit trees in the Royal Garden at Varnhem. In addition to Ella’s c­ hildren with Jochimsson, Ella and Hans raised six sons; in 1674, they became the first Eu­ro­pean settlers at Pennsauken Creek, adjacent to several Lenape towns. A ­ fter Hans died around 1691, Ella and their sons ­adopted the surname Steelman, a combination of Stille and Måns. Beginning with Olof Stille, the f­ amily had close relations with the Lenapes, as Ella’s son Peter Petersson Yocum became a principal trader and interpreter in Pennsylvania, and Hans and Ella’s son John Hansson Steelman established a commercial network with Natives in the Susquehanna valley. Sons Peter Hansson and Jöns Hansson acquired large acreages in ­Great Egg Harbor by the 1690s. Ella’s ­daughter Elizabeth married John Ogle, an En­glish soldier who came with the Duke of York’s forces in 1664 and remained in Delaware. Ella Steelman lived ­until 1718 when she was buried in the Swedish Lutheran burial ground in Raccoon. While she performed the domestic duties required of a m ­ other with eight ­children, she also helped to instruct them in diplomacy and trade with neighboring Armewamese, Mantes, and Rancocas communities. With her example, she encouraged her ­children to embrace p­ eople of other ethnic groups and take risks.15 With permission from the Cohanzicks, Christina Hendricksdotter and her husband, Staffan Jöransson, along with three other Finnish families, in 1671 obtained farmland near Salem River at what became known as Finns’ Point. Several of the men had taken part in the Long Swede Rebellion. Christina was a ­widow with a ­daughter, Brita, when she married Staffan in 1670; together they had two ­daughters and two sons and remained active in Holy Trinity Church on

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the west bank. In 1688, Christina and Staffan faced a crisis when the Salem court investigated their teenaged d­ aughter Anna, or Annacka, for infanticide. Peter Bilderback reported that, e­ arlier, when he asked her if she was pregnant, she struck her “belly severall tymes & said she had a young Youdr[ew] [juutas] wch is by interpretation a divill in Finns language.” The justices also asked the wife of William Shute, who lived near the Jöranssons, to appear in court to tell “what she knows of Annacka [ Jöransson] her being with Child formerly,” but no further evidence survives. W ­ hether Anna was pregnant, had an abortion, or miscarried is unknown, as few Salem court rec­ords exist for the years prior to 1706. Annacka and her ­family confronted a serious situation with the charge of infanticide ­because, in En­glish common law, an unwed ­mother was assumed guilty of murder if she concealed the birth and burial of her infant. Annacka’s case was apparently dropped, and five years l­ater she married Matthias Stark and subsequently had two sons, Stephen and Matthias. Though the details are missing of how Christina and Staffan weathered this storm, they remained committed to one another and their f­ amily. When Staffan died in 1700, he bequeathed to Christina their two plantations with the understanding that she would decide how to divide them between the two sons.16 In a rare morals case involving Swedes and Finns in Gloucester County court, the justices in 1697 pursued a fornication charge against Maria Lock, the ­daughter of the deceased Swedish minister Lars Lock, and Hermanus Helm, the son of the Lenape trader Israel Helm. One has the sense that the court heard the case only at Maria’s insistence. She accused Hermanus of promising to marry her as a ruse “to have carnal knowledge of her in the chamber where they usually lodged in Israel Helms House and did then & t­ here get her with child.” She claimed that when she told him of the pregnancy, “he importuned her to destroy it, and sundry times offered to give her some stuff for that purpose wch she always refused to accept or receive from him.” The court said nothing further about the proposed abortion but fined them £5 each for committing fornication and required Hermanus to post security for the child’s maintenance.17 The infrequency of fornication, adultery, and infanticide charges against old settlers in Gloucester County court, where they composed a sizeable percentage of the population in the late seventeenth ­century, suggests that the mostly Quaker bench left supervision of morals to the Swedish and Finnish community. The old settlers apparently preferred to deal with such ­matters within their families or neighborhoods without oversight by a court. The extant rec­ords of the Duke of York’s Upland court, whose jurisdiction included the east bank of the Delaware River north of Oldmans Creek u­ ntil 1680 and the west bank north of Marcus Hook ­until 1681, suggest this was the case. The justices, composed primarily of members of the Swedish community (including West Jersey resident Israel Helm) and several En­glishmen, placed higher priority on changing f­ uture be­hav­ior than ruining their neighbors with harsh fines and punishments pre-



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scribed by the duke’s laws. In June 1680, for example, a­ fter a constable insisted that Claes Cram and Anna Larsdotter be tried for adultery, the court delayed hearing testimony. When the constable persisted with charges in October, the justices simply warned the c­ ouple “not to keep com­pany together any more ­under what pretext soever upon pain of severe punishment.”18 The twenty-­year history of witchcraft accusations against the neighbors Margaret Mattsson and Gertrude Jacobsson of Crum Creek, on the west bank, provides an example of the dif­fer­ent judicial priorities of old settlers and the new Pennsylvania Quaker regime. In early 1684, with Penn presiding, the provincial council tried Mattsson first, receiving testimony that she had bewitched ­cattle and committed similar offenses. One witness claimed that he had heard accusations that Mattson was a witch two de­cades e­ arlier but that the Upland court ignored the charges. Before a petit jury that included no Swedes, Mattsson denied the witness statements as hearsay. The jury found her “guilty of having the common fame of a witch” but innocent of practicing witchcraft. The council released both ­women without trying Jacobsson, but the damage was already done. The Jacobssons relocated to New ­Castle County, while Mattsson and her husband, Nils, immediately moved with their son, Anthony Nilsson, alias Long, and his f­amily to G ­ reat Mantua Creek in West Jersey. Peter and John Mattsson (Dalbo) and Olof Dalbo took up land in the same area that year. Anthony Nilsson, Peter Mattsson Dalbo, and Olof Dalbo became active in Gloucester County government, helping to represent the cultural perspectives and needs of old settler ­women and men.19 Gunnilla and Måns Cock gained notoriety among the Quakers for a dif­fer­ent set of offenses—­their questionable dealings with Lenapes—­yet the Burlington court stepped back from convictions in their cases as well. While most Swedish and Finnish ­women in southern Lenapehoking avoided the scrutiny of county justices in morals cases, the fur traders Gunnilla and Måns Cock committed acts that threatened harmony between the Lenapes and Friends. A mediator with Lenape sakimaòk for William Penn’s government, Måns Cock moved to Cinnaminson with Gunnilla and their ­children by 1697 and ­later relocated to Gloucester County. In March 1699, in Burlington court, he was convicted and fined £5 for selling “strong liquors” to his Lenape neighbors. As traders, Måns and Gunnilla, at the same session, ­were accused but not indicted “for taking fifty shillings and Sixpence from an Indian.” In 1705, Gunnilla faced charges that she cheated the sakima Mechmiquon “of four Pounds it being Money Shee had of him in the Street at Philadelphia.” The Burlington court recorded no convictions in t­ hese two cases, and it is pos­si­ble, as with many West Jersey court cases, that the Cocks and Lenapes resolved the suits out of court. At the same time, the Burlington justices may have been willing to hear complaints from the Lenapes but ­were not prepared to find the colonists guilty without further evidence.20 While meager evidence prevents a clear understanding of the flexibility with which Lenape, Swedish, and Finnish ­women pursued opportunities within their

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figure 10. Burlington Hexagonal Meeting House, completed in 1691, was the site of

the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting in alternate years. (Courtesy of Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, Haverford, Pa.)

communities, the lives of Ojroqua, Ella Steelman, Margaret Mattsson, and Gunnilla Cock demonstrate their challenges, determination, and freedom. The West New Jersey Concessions and fundamental agreements and laws of 1681 mirrored En­glish law in denying ­women po­liti­cal rights and ­legal power to control their property and wages. As sovereign ­people in southern Lenapehoking, Cohanzick, Armewamese, Rancocas, and other Lenape w ­ omen and men rejected the En­glish regime. Many old settler men signed the concessions to ensure property and civil rights, yet Swedes and Finns successfully rejected the l­egal authority of Friends to enforce a moral code in their community. We know much more about Quaker ­women from an abundant secondary lit­er­a­ture and significant (though never adequate) primary sources for West New Jersey meetings. We find that ­women Friends, like Lenapes and old settlers, challenged perceptions of ­women’s inferiority embedded in En­glish common law and po­liti­cal culture.21 Quaker ­women brought ongoing responsibilities from ­England and Ireland as they took care of families aboard cramped ships and during settlement. Several gave birth during the voyage, while ­others arrived in West Jersey with offspring ranging from toddlers to young adults. Ann and Samuel Nicholson arrived in 1675 to help found the Salem colony with their five ­children aged three to sixteen years. Several years ­later, Jane and John Thompson landed at Elsinboro from Ireland with Isabella and Andrew Thompson, John’s ­brother. The families had a total of seven ­children, all ­under age thirteen.22 Burlington Friends such as Elizabeth and Thomas Lambert also traveled with young ­children. Elizabeth was pregnant and had



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six youngsters u­ nder eight years when they departed on the Shield. She gave birth to Samuel aboard ship “in the Downes on the coast of Old E ­ ngland.” Other immigrants on the Shield included Rebecca and Mahlon Stacy with four offspring aged one to seven years and Anne and James Pharo with two toddlers ­under four years old. In 1677, Susanna Farnsworth stayed in ­England when Thomas departed on the Kent; she then sailed with their two c­ hildren the next year. They subsequently had four sons born in West Jersey over the next de­cade.23 Like Lenape and old settler w ­ omen, Quakers faced illness and death in southern Lenapehoking as disease, accidents, and the perils of childbirth took their toll. In 1685, Hannah and George Nicholson grieved for their five-­year-­old son, Samuel; the next year, Robert and Anne Murfin buried two young sons. Sarah Scholey lost a ­daughter in childbirth in 1686 and three years ­later mourned her husband, Robert’s, decease. Elizabeth Leet’s husband, Isaac, died in early 1688, leaving her a w ­ idow with two c­ hildren ­under seven, while Anne Pharo had four young ­children to raise when her husband, James, passed away that year. Though most births recorded in the Quaker rec­ords w ­ ere successful, some ­were not, resulting in the death of the ­mother and/or child. Burlington Monthly Meeting kept a careful rec­ord of births during the early years, including the names of midwives and neighbors who attended and served as witnesses. The experience of Sarah Davenport and her husband Francis of Chesterfield illuminates the ­hazards of trying to raise families in the late seventeenth ­century. Arriving in the colony with three c­ hildren ­under five years old, during the next eight years Sarah successfully bore a son and ­daughter, while two babies died at birth. Sarah then perished in childbed in 1691, memorialized by a unique comment in the Chesterfield Friends burial rec­ords, that “Though her body is laid in the grave her Remembrance is sweet to many.”24 In West Jersey, despite their restricted property rights and prohibitions on female suffrage and office holding, w ­ omen obtained considerable economic power. The province yielded to necessity and the demands of colonists from varied backgrounds in ­England and the Delaware valley by enforcing coverture flexibly and moral laws quite leniently for white settlers. Similar to the historian Clare Lyons’s findings in her study of mid-­eighteenth-­century Philadelphia, elites in West Jersey had ­little enthusiasm for rooting out sexual offenses between consenting adults. The c­ areers of Elizabeth Kinsey, Hannah Salter, Esther Spicer, Elizabeth Haddon, Elizabeth Basnett, Anne Penstone, and other Quaker w ­ omen offer insight into how ­women participated fully in the land-­based economy of West Jersey, ­whether or not they fell ­under the defined status of coverture. They clearly benefitted with their husbands or as feme ­soles from access to Lenape land. They found economic opportunities within a Quaker colony that recognized w ­ omen as leaders in their religion and society.25 At age seventeen, Elizabeth Kinsey assumed control of her f­ amily’s Delaware valley interests in 1677 when her f­ ather John died of a violent fever, shortly a­ fter

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they arrived. He had bought one proprietary share of West New Jersey land from Edward Byllynge and briefly served as a commissioner before his death. John Kinsey apparently de­cided to ­settle on the west bank of the Delaware, however, and initiated purchase of a three-­hundred-­acre residence at Shackamaxon from the Swedish interpreter Lasse Cock and his wife, Martha. In March 1678, Elizabeth completed this sale and then several months l­ater negotiated with four Lenapes, including the female sakima Ojroqua, for rights to use the “greate Island lying before Shak[amaxon].” A ­ fter marrying Thomas Fairman in 1680, Elizabeth yielded ­these rights to her husband but remained in contact with Ojroqua for at least twenty years, gaining formal title to the island when Thomas died in 1714.26 Though settling on the west bank within a few years, the young Elizabeth Kinsey took advantage of support from Burlington Friends through the burial of her ­father, purchase of Shackamaxon Island, marriage to Thomas Fairman, and harassment from other settlers. Prudence Clayton, a Quaker leader, served as a witness to the Shackamaxon Island treaty, reflecting a kind of in loco parentis oversight for Elizabeth’s efforts to administer her f­ ather’s estate. In 1678 and 1679, Clayton’s d­ aughters Prudence and Honor married ­under the care of Burlington Monthly Meeting, as did Elizabeth Kinsey and Thomas Fairman in December 1680. Burlington Friends also assisted Kinsey when individuals slandered her, highlighting both her vulnerability as a young ­woman and her strong ­will. The first attack occurred before she married but ­after her land purchases, when Samuel Cole accused her of an unnamed offense. Kinsey sued him for “Slaunder” in Burlington court, with no further evidence of proceedings. Following her marriage, prob­ably in the early 1680s, Elizabeth had to defend Thomas and herself in a letter to Burlington Monthly Meeting against rumors that they had committed fornication before marriage and neglected meetings for worship, though the Friends met in their home. She also denied that she indulged in excessive alcohol while pregnant, that she consumed “so much of drams that I had dryed up all my milk I can of a Truth make it appear that I drank not much above half a pint in all my Lying in.” She also refuted unspecified charges by Hannah Salter, stating that “what she made mention of in the meeting was of her own Invention.” Elizabeth advised the meeting that ­these “busie bodie & prejudiced persons” had made false reports “­after the worst manner.” She ended the letter with re­spect, that “having given in my Testemony being the naked Truth from the simplicity of my heart ­shall leave the Issue thereof to the Lord & the Judgment of friends.” Burlington Monthly Meeting apparently concluded its investigations t­ here.27 One of Elizabeth Fairman’s accusers, Hannah (or Anna) Salter, had become a ­widow for the second time in April  1679 when her husband, Henry, died less than two years ­after they and their son, John, immigrated to Salem. Hannah was a generation older than Elizabeth, having supported James Nayler in the mid1650s and buried her first husband and c­ hildren during the mid-1660s London



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plague. Hannah and Henry Salter purchased ten thousand acres from John Fenwick and subsequently bought part of a proprietary share in West New Jersey. They also acquired land across the Delaware River at Tacony, where Hannah resided ­until her death in 1688. In addition to speculating in land, they traded in merchandise, with Hannah acting as a full partner rather than accepting the status of married ­women as feme covert. In a court case, Henry had to admit that Hannah “doth frequently as much as himself . . . ​make bargains and buys and sells goods.”28 ­After Henry’s death, when the New ­Castle court designated Hannah as administrator of his estate, she made land deals throughout West Jersey and conducted business internationally. She operated like other colonial speculators, engrossing territory to which Lenapes had ceded some rights but lost possession with Eu­ro­pean settlement and sequential sales. Between 1681 and 1688, Hannah made more than twenty transactions of tracts in the Salem, Burlington, and Gloucester areas. Some sales involved land she and Henry had bought from John Fenwick and their one-­sixth proprietary share in West Jersey. ­After her death, the executors spent years trying to liquidate her considerable property, sometimes with extended negotiations in Burlington court.29 Hannah Salter was an energetic, ambitious ­woman who consistently defended her religious beliefs and economic welfare. She had endured prison and ostracism from other Friends for supporting James Nayler and stood up to her husband, Henry’s, lapse in recognizing their full commercial partnership. Her attack on Elizabeth Kinsey showed Hannah’s negative side, as did her illegal entry, shortly before her death, into Anne Butcher’s ­house, apparently to collect a debt. Two Dutch Labadists traveling through southern Lenapehoking in 1679, Jasper Danckaerts and Peter Sluyter, met Hannah at the h­ ouse of the Quakers Robert and Lydia Wade in Upland. Danckaerts recounted in his journal Hannah’s heated dispute with another ­widow, Elizabeth, who lived “a ­little lower down than Takoney.” They had agreed to exchange their plantations, but when Hannah reneged and asked for the return of her deed, the other ­woman refused. The incessant debate continued into the night, as “Elizabeth charged that Anna was indebted to her for a certain amount of tobacco, which she had taken to ­England for her, and of which she had never been able to obtain a correct account.” They fi­nally agreed to restore the plantations and balance the debts, though “Elizabeth was very unwilling.” Danckaerts concluded from this episode that the Friends ­were “worldly ­people” despite their claims to holiness. “As regards Anna Salters,” he wrote, “it was said she was mundane, carnal, covetous, and artful, although she appeared to be the most pious.” While this critique came from a man with dif­fer­ent beliefs, Salter certainly combined economic ambition with piety.30 Salter’s w ­ ill suggests the breadth of her operations and vision, though not all of her business dealings are known. Her son, John, predeceased her by less than a week in November 1688, leaving her without f­ amily heirs. To Thomas Fairman,

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pursuant to a previous contract and his “many friendly Curticies & Kindnesses,” Hannah gave all the debts owed her in E ­ ngland, Jamaica, Carolina, and Mary­ land as well as two hundred acres at Salem. ­After directing payment of expenses and several other bequests, she appointed five executors, including Fairman and Robert Stacy, to create an endowment with the remainder of her estate for use of the “poore of all Sorts Ranks & Perswasions” of Philadelphia County, particularly impoverished Friends of Oxford Meeting. Though Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting pursued the bequest with the executors, her estate remained unresolved for more than thirty years.31 Quaker w ­ omen in old Gloucester County similarly played an active role in developing the West Jersey society and economy. In 1687, Esther and Samuel Spicer migrated to Newton, in what is now Camden County, where they opened a ferry across Cooper River to ease travel between Burlington and Philadelphia. Esther was prominent in Newton Monthly Meeting and assumed management of the ferry when her husband died. She was killed in September  1703 when lightning destroyed her home. In West Jersey tradition, her funeral took place by torch light ­after dark as ­family and friends accompanied her body to the burial ground. Neighboring Armewamese joined “the solemn pro­cession in their canoes, thus showing their re­spect for one, the cause of whose death struck them with awe and reverence.”32 In 1701, Esther Spicer and other Newton w ­ omen had assisted the young, unmarried Quaker Elizabeth Haddon when she came from ­England to take control of her f­ather, John Haddon’s, real estate. A blacksmith who specialized in ship anchors, John had purchased a one-­eighth proprietary share of West Jersey, including property on Cooper River, but de­cided not to emigrate. He gave Elizabeth power of attorney in July 1700, designating her as his agent in West Jersey. She married the Quaker minister John Estaugh a year a­ fter she arrived and became a leader of Newton meeting. ­Because Estaugh was frequently absent in the ministry, she continued to oversee their property. As in the case of Esther Spicer, local tradition suggests that Elizabeth interacted frequently with Lenapes, who enhanced her knowledge of herbal medicine.33 Some female settlers owned taverns and general stores, often located in their homes, that sold a range of goods, including alcohol. Most had started the business with husbands and then continued when they became ­widows. Each innkeeper, such as Katherine Howell of Gloucester and Mary Feller of Salem, was expected to obtain an annual license, which allowed the court to review their rec­ord before renewal. They could easily get into trou­ble, with or without a license, so frequently appeared in the county courts. In 1693, the Burlington court fined Robert Hutcheson and his wife for selling rum to the Lenapes ­after witnesses testified that “R. Hutchesons wife have sold Rum to the Indians since the last Act made against it” nine months e­ arlier. In 1697, Nathaniel Pettit was fined for selling alcohol without a license and keeping a disorderly ­house. Two years ­later,



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he and his wife, Mary, had obtained a license but lost it when convicted “of keeping bad order in their ordinary, as keeping persons drunk and breaking the Sabbath and other Misdemeanors.” The Quaker ­widow and innkeeper Elizabeth Basnett of Burlington lost her license in 1700 for “countenancing in her h­ ouse an Illegal and clandestine marriage” between a suspected pirate, Robert Hickman, and Dorothy Tatham, the ­daughter of John Tatham, a Burlington merchant and member of the anti-­Quaker po­liti­cal faction. Not only did Basnett permit them to marry, but she allowed “them to go to Bedd together in her ­house to the ­great damage grief and affliction of the parents of said Mrs. Dorothy, the Reproach of the Province, and Scandal to the Christian proffession and Civil Society and Neighbourhood.” Basnett was fined £40 and told to close down within a month.34 Anne Penstone of Cooper River similarly challenged En­glish conventions of ­women’s status, assuming a feme sole trader role—­and committing adultery—­ after her husband Stephen returned to ­England. Anne’s ­father John Willis of Wantage, E ­ ngland, had been fined ­because ­either he or his wife v­ iolated the Conventicle Act of 1670 by attending Quaker worship. He purchased a full proprietary share plus 4/25 of a share in West Jersey land, making him one of the largest investors in the colony. Though he did not immigrate, his son John Willis  Jr., and ­daughter Anne and son-­in-­law Stephen Penstone arrived in the 1680s. They established a tavern or general store for which Anne took responsibility by the time Stephen left for ­England and her ­brother died in June 1691.35 In Stephen’s absence, Gloucester County court permitted Anne Penstone to act in­de­pen­dently in administering her b­ rother John Willis  Jr.’s estate, which included two plantations on Cooper River, another on the south branch of Pennsauken Creek, additional land, and about £60 personal property. She also took over his duties as agent for her ­father, John Willis Sr., dealing in 1692 with a judgment in Gloucester County court to pay Thomas Penstone more than £12. In December 1693, she was named in that court when Mary Burroughs deposed “that she saw the Indians give the sd [Richard] Whitaker fifteen pence which was for a pint of Rum wch he was to fetch from the ­house of Ann Penstone.” Whitaker confessed and was fined £3 ­after another witness said that he saw the Lenapes with the b­ ottle.36 Penstone avoided charges in this case of selling alcohol to Lenapes, but some months e­ arlier, in March 1692, amid efforts to administer her ­brother’s estate, she faced trial in Gloucester County court for adultery with her neighbor, the blacksmith William Lovejoy, when she gave birth to an infant d­ aughter. At the time, West Jersey lacked a law that specifically punished adultery, though the 1683 act for preventing swearing, drunkenness, whoredom, and profaneness covered the crime without specifying a penalty. Penstone confessed, requested judgment, and received a sentence to be imposed the next day of nineteen stripes on her naked body. Lovejoy went to trial, was found guilty, and sentenced to post bond

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for the infant’s support and ­either five stripes or three months in jail, choosing the latter. During the court session, however, twenty-­eight men, including Penstone’s neighbors, members of the jury that found Lovejoy guilty, and other county officials, signed a petition to rescind her punishment. They wrote to the “Worshipfull their Magistyes Justices” of the court at Gloucester that “haveing had a knowledge of the said Anne for severall years last past do humbly Signify that her former life and Conversation hath Admmi[tted?] no Just Reason to presume her Addicted to, nor Guilty of, any such sinfull Actions before this time, her manner of Liveing heretofore Deserving a Just Commendation: and she proveing Exemplary for Credditt, Honesty, Good Repute, and Estimation amongst her Neighbours.” They blamed Lovejoy (and perhaps her husband for leaving her), stating that she would have remained upright “had not the person with her herein offending been unfortunately Admitted into the ­family, in the tyme of her Affliction and sickness, at which time he proved more then Ordinarily ser­ viceable.” The justices unanimously agreed to remit her sentence but warned that this decision should not be considered pre­ce­dent. Though Lovejoy promised not to visit when Penstone and the baby ­were alone, he was back in court in December 1693 answering a complaint that he was still frequenting her h­ ouse. In 1695–1697, they claimed to be married but instead ­were accused of adultery in both the Gloucester and Burlington courts, though charges w ­ ere dropped. In the meantime, Penstone had conducted business on her own and as trustee to John Willis. The ­couple apparently left Cooper River ­after 1697 when Lovejoy sold his property in what is now Haddonfield.37 While raising families, dealing with illness and death of spouses and c­ hildren, and working in­de­pen­dently or with their husbands to set up farms and businesses, ­women Friends also helped to shape the new colony through the Quaker meetings and county courts. They acted institutionally as leaders and members of monthly meetings for business that molded be­hav­ior among Friends and sought to define their relations with other groups. The w ­ omen’s meetings supervised marriages and provided poor relief, gradually endorsing a ban on marrying outside the Society of Friends and adopting standards of dress that distinguished Friends from other West Jersey residents. Their efforts expanded over several de­cades, as they strug­gled during the earliest years with setting up h­ ouse­holds, pregnancies, and caring for young c­ hildren. The meetings’ discipline became more stringent and insular as the second generation grew to marriageable age. Weighty Friends worked within Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to adopt rules to keep their d­ aughters and sons within the fold. By 1700, Quakers who ignored the discipline risked separation from the group.38 Burlington, Chesterfield, and Newton (­later Haddonfield) or­ga­nized separate monthly meetings for w ­ omen in 1681, 1688, and 1693, respectively, while Salem ­women started a separate meeting in 1682 but also continued to meet



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jointly with the men. Burlington Friends created the ­women’s meeting ­because membership had grown and “for the better management of the discipline and other affairs of the Church more proper to be inspected by their sex.” One of the first actions of Burlington ­women, however, dealt with the welfare of men and ­women when in 1682 Sarah Biddle and fourteen colleagues successfully recommended to the men’s meeting that Quakers should not sell their servants to non-­Friends without permission.39 The West Jersey ­women’s meetings disciplined members for vari­ous misdeeds in the 1680s and 1690s but recorded no specific charge of marrying a non-­Quaker ­until ­after the 1694 ­women’s Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, held at Burlington. In 1686, Burlington w ­ omen recorded their first disciplinary case of “out­going” when Mary Renshaw acknowledged herself “a misarable Sinner” without specifying her misconduct. She continued, “I hope & do beleive that through true repentance and a ­humble heart God ­will forgive mee that wicked sin I have Committed.” Several other w ­ omen faced accusations of “loose carriages” and “being undecently overhasty in her marriage ­after the death of her husband.” Then, in 1694, the ­women’s yearly meeting advised meetings to guard “that the C ­ hildren &Youth ­under Your care & tuition may be educated in the Plain Path” and avoid “outward vanities, fashions & evil customs of the World.” Parents should ensure that their ­children avoid “over Intimacy and Society with ­those who e­ ither decline the way of the Lord or are prejudiced against it.” The next year, the Burlington w ­ omen “agreed that enquiry be made at ­every monthly meeting concerning irregular proceedings in marriage & that the persons so offending may be visited in time.” When they dutifully visited Sarah Evans in 1698 to discourage her from marrying a non-­Friend, “she accepted of friends Kindness but . . . ​would proceed in her marriage.”40 Chesterfield w ­ omen’s and men’s meetings w ­ ere ­eager to prevent young p­ eople from marrying non-­Quakers. In 1695 they admonished weighty Friends Sarah and William Biddle for permitting their d­ aughter to marry outside the meeting and in 1697 and 1699 dealt with Mary Wright b­ ecause she was involved with Matthew Grange, who had been disowned several years ­earlier. Wright urged the meeting to readmit him, saying, “He has an honest principall in him,” but Friends refused, and Wright apparently followed their advice. The Newton ­women’s meeting was also concerned about ­children marrying outside the faith, noting in 1698 that t­ here had been marriages “contrary to the good order of truth which hath brought exasise on the honest parants & upon frends as some that have not bin frinds nor frends c­ hildren hath drane away the afections of som that have bin frinds ­children.” They recognized the difficulty of forbidding such marriages when the ­couple had been “so long consarned as to come to lay ther intentions before the meting.” Newton meeting’s solution was to provide timely advice to ­children who consorted with non-­Friends “before t­ hings are gon to fare.” In 1700, they voiced further concerns about fancy clothing and amusements, appointing

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Alice Shackle and Esther Spicer to take oversight that “our youth may be presarved out of the fashons & costoms of the world.” ­Because Salem ­women continued to meet jointly with the men in the late seventeenth ­century, their role in enforcing discipline decisions is unclear. In 1697, Newton’s Esther Spicer and other leaders told Salem to work more autonomously by appointing ­women overseers to inspect that “all ­things may be kept in good order.” The Salem ­women recorded but did not immediately take this advice.41 Within the Society of Friends, se­nior ­women played a major role in supervising the devotion and be­hav­ior of young ­women and girls. As Friends negotiated the pro­cess of colonization in West Jersey, many leaders believed that keeping ­children as faithful members required forbidding marriage with Swedish Lutherans, Anglicans, Lenapes, and Africans. Numerous Quakers opposed this policy, however, and meetings enforced the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting rule inconsistently u­ ntil the 1750s, when the reform movement of Friends required stricter control.42 Quaker w ­ omen also participated in the county courts, which in the late seventeenth ­century enforced colonial laws at a time when factionalism and dysfunction stymied West Jersey provincial government. The county courts operated quite effectively in mediating disputes, punishing criminals, and collecting taxes for roads, bridges, and public buildings.43 Though ­women lacked power to serve as justices and jurors, they provided testimony as witnesses, sometimes in groups enlisted by the justices to investigate cases of fornication and rape. As in the Quaker ­women’s meetings, se­nior ­women held re­spect within the community to deal with cases related to females. Wives and w ­ idows of provincial and county leaders, both Quaker and non-­Quaker, had responsibilities and authority beyond their own families and religion. Evaluation of the ways in which the county courts enforced laws on fornication, adultery, infanticide, and rape provides insight into the par­ameters of ­women’s freedom ­under West Jersey law. In general, as suggested by reluctance to pursue accusations of fornication against the Fairmans and to punish Anne Penstone for adultery, cases of sexual misconduct between consenting adults often took low priority, despite assembly rhe­toric to the contrary. As justices avoided meddling in morals cases among Swedes and Finns, they similarly shunned harsh punishments of En­glish and Irish settlers charged with fornication, adultery, and infanticide. W ­ omen who ­were ill, perhaps recovering from a difficult childbirth, like Penstone, could avoid severe whippings. For the most part, justices pursued fornication cases only when the ­woman was pregnant or had given birth, though they sometimes acted on information that a ­couple was living together out of wedlock. Both the man and ­woman ­were punished when charges proved valid, though the penalties could vary. The requirement for at least one witness in the 1683 law prob­ably had an impact: for an unmarried ­woman who was pregnant or had given birth, her body witnessed her act,



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whereas the male partner could more easily escape prosecution if he refused to confess.44 The assembly set no specific penalties for adultery and fornication ­until 1694, when it prescribed £10 fines for both parties in adultery and £5 fines for fornication. Whipping and servitude w ­ ere options if the persons convicted could not or would not pay the fine. A ­ fter unification of West and East Jersey, the assembly in 1704 prescribed a £30 fine or thirty lashes at three dif­fer­ent times for each partner in adultery cases. For fornication, the w ­ oman would pay £5 or “receive Thirty Lashes or Stripes on the bare back,” whereas a man “adjudged the Reputed ­Father of ­every such Bastard, ­shall be also fined in the Sum of five Pounds Money aforesaid, and give security to save the Town or Precinct harmless from the Charge of such Bastard Child.”45 The 1687 adultery case of Mary Driver and her stepfather, Henry Treadway, caused a par­tic­ul­ar stir in Gloucester County both for the alleged crime and the question of which court had control. Treadway owned a 375-­acre plantation at Red Bank near the Delaware River, where he lived with his wife and her ­children from a previous marriage, including Mary Driver. Gloucester County sheriff William Warner and justice John Wood responded to the complaint by sending the accused to Burlington for trial, despite the jurisdiction of Gloucester County court. The two officials ­later faced charges “as betrayers of the Rights and priviledges belonging to the County of Gloucester.” The Burlington court kept the case, though this was prob­ably the last time they infringed on Gloucester’s prerogatives. At a special court in August 1687, seven justices, including John Wood of Gloucester County, presided at the trial. Treadway and Driver faced accusations that they had “Carnall Copulation,” in Mary’s case “Lewdnesse in defyleing [her] ­Mothers bed.” The ­grand jury reported that by keeping quiet “Shee was willing and assented thereunto.” Mary pleaded guilty and was sentenced to thirty-­nine stripes on her bare back. Treadway was charged with two additional crimes, including “uncivill actions” with Phyllis Richards and attacks on a boy. Treadway was fined £50 for the adultery, required to pay £1 to the abused boy, and jailed ­until he paid the money and gave security of good be­hav­ior. In two similar Burlington cases, the stepdaughters received corporal punishment, while one stepfather received a £20 fine and whipping, and the other stepfather fled before he could be punished.46 Like Annacka Jöransson’s experience in Salem County court, several members of the West Jersey Quaker community faced charges of murder as well as fornication when they miscarried, had a stillborn child, or perhaps killed the newborn to avoid punishment. In none of ­these cases was the w ­ oman found guilty of murder. In 1694, in Burlington County, for example, a Lenape found an infant lying dead in a tub of ­water with “a kind of blackish spott in its neck” near the h­ ouse of the Quakers Sarah and John Bainbridge. Their servant, Jannett Munro, claimed that “the Child was still borne in the night in bed” but could give

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no proof. In the court of oyer and terminer, with Governor Andrew Hamilton and several Burlington court justices presiding, John Bainbridge testified that he had suspected Munro was pregnant and asked his wife to assign her a reduced workload. The coroner believed that the dark spot on the newborn’s neck “might be onely a Setleing of blood” while another witness thought it “was a Signe of vio­lence done to the Child.” The king’s attorney general insisted “that the Prisoner by virtue of an Act of Parliament is Guilty u­ nless shee can make it appeare the Child was dead borne,” which Munro could not do. Ignoring the attorney general, the governor instructed the jury to find her guilty only if ­there was enough proof that she had killed the child. The jury found Munro not guilty, yet she had to serve additional time to pay off nearly £4  in court costs while her unnamed male partner faced no penalty at all.47 The West Jersey court clerks occasionally mentioned committees and individual ­women who served as witnesses in fornication and infanticide cases. It is likely that midwives and other w ­ omen testified regularly in t­ rials of unmarried ­mothers in an effort to identify the child’s f­ather. ­Women of the community became involved as investigators and witnesses to vio­lence, sexual activity, and births, sometimes testifying in trial despite their inability to act as justices or jurors. In this way they helped to shape the evolution of their society, though they ultimately lacked the power to decide guilt or innocence.48 A panel of five Burlington County w ­ omen gave key evidence in the 1688 case of seventeen-­year-­old Elizabeth Hutcheson, who charged rape against Charles Sheepey, a servant or laborer who lived in the ­house­hold of her parents, George and Alice Hutcheson, prominent Burlington Quakers. The w ­ omen included Ann Jennings, who was married to Samuel Jennings and a leader of the Burlington ­women’s meeting; the wives of three sitting court justices, Richard Guy, William Emley, and Edward Hunloke (of whom the first two w ­ ere Quaker); and the wife of the Quaker John Budd. Without the pivotal testimony of the ­women’s panel, the evidence was indecisive. Elizabeth Hutcheson declared that she and her ­sister Martha w ­ ere afraid of Sheepey and asked for help from the Quaker Elizabeth Lambert, wife of Thomas, a justice of the peace, when they learned they would be alone with Sheepey overnight in the ­family home. They asked Elizabeth Lambert to allow her eldest d­ aughter, Betty, aged seventeen, to stay with them, but with eight ­children younger than Betty, she could not be spared.49 At night, though Elizabeth and Martha tried to fight him off, Sheepey pushed into their bedroom and raped Elizabeth. He denied this, countering with the argument “that hee had Carnall knowledge of the body of the said Elizabeth severall tymes . . . ​and sayth that hee never forced her, but Shee was alwayes as willing as hee.” He made several inconsistent statements but might have won the case except for the panel of five ­women who, ­after examining Elizabeth Hutcheson’s body, testified that Sheepey could not have had consensual sex with her several times, for “As to them plainly appeares according to the naturall



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course of ­women, And that to the best of their understandings, What hath beene done, by the said Sheepey hath beene forcibly.” The panel offered Elizabeth—­ and by extension other young female colonists—­the support of a community of elder ­women. ­After the jury found Sheepey guilty, the justices sentenced him to be whipped for an hour upon his “naked Body at a Carts tayle” through the streets of Burlington with “as many stripes laid on as to the Magistrates (who s­ hall be pre­sent at thy execution) S­ hall be thought meet.” He would then be jailed in irons for three months and whipped in similar fashion numerous times over the next two years. Contrary to En­glish law, rape was not a capital crime in West New Jersey, which allowed local courts to determine penalties for violent crimes “according to the nature of the offence.” The Burlington justices thus punished Sheepey harshly for raping the d­ aughter of respected Friends without putting him to death.50 In 1691, Burlington w ­ omen also provided testimony when a servant, Anne Bradgate, who had been incarcerated for theft, claimed that James Blake entered the prison twice with intent to rape her. He denied that he had even visited the prison, a claim Susanna Decou disputed, saying “shee sawe James Blake goe into the said Prison ­house twice and that shee heard him goe up the staires ­there last night.” Three o­ thers, including Elizabeth Basnett, supported her evidence. Blake submitted to the justices, who ordered him to post bond for good be­hav­ior and pay a ten shilling fine. In several other cases, ­women backed up each other’s testimony that men had used abusive language and made threats but failed to convince the court.51 Within the framework of late seventeenth-­century Anglo-­America, in which ­women faced po­liti­cal, ­legal, and educational restrictions, female Quakers in West Jersey had considerable freedom and responsibility. For white colonists, justices and juries enforced morals laws flexibly, avoiding punishments that could result in death. At the same time, they penalized quite severely men who committed adultery and raped white w ­ omen. Elder w ­ omen served as witnesses in court, while female Friends guided their meetings ­toward separation from other ethnic groups. They promoted a “Plain Path” by which Quakers must avoid “outward vanities, fashions & evil customs of the World” and marry within the faith. ­Women like Elizabeth Kinsey, Hannah Salter, Anne Penstone, and Esther Spicer traded actively in real estate and pursued businesses, thus participating fully in colonizing the Lenape homeland. While we know much less about Swedish and Finnish ­women in the region, it is clear that most w ­ ere insulated from the jurisdiction of county courts. Old settler men participated as justices and jurors and employed the l­egal pro­cess to collect debts but successfully prevented the Friends from supervising the morals of their community. Old settler w ­ omen, such as Ella Steelman and Gunnilla Cock, helped to develop trading networks among Swedes, Finns, and Lenapes. Except in rare cases as witnesses or plaintiffs, Lenapes remained separate from the West Jersey ­legal system, carefully

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p­ rotecting their sovereignty, ­children, language, and religion. Lenape w ­ omen like Ojroqua held significant authority as sakimaòk, but Eu­ro­pean rec­ords obscure their full role. Their responsibilities as agriculturalists and heads of families placed them in a vital position to resist Quaker colonization and sustain the Lenape alliance with Swedes and Finns. W ­ omen in southern Lenapehoking thus held respected places and considerable freedom within their distinct groups: Lenapes, Swedes and Finns, and Quakers. As members of their own communities, and in cross-­cultural encounters, they contributed significantly to mutual values of peaceful resolution of conflict and ethnic autonomy.

6 • FORCED SEPAR ATION Enslaved Blacks in the Quaker Colony

In 1686, residents of Burlington heard the Quaker James ­Wills severely beat his enslaved ­woman more than one hundred times as she hanged by her hands tied to a rafter. A neighbor, William Myers, testified at ­Wills’s trial that while walking home, “hee heard at a Considerable distance many blowes or stripes.” As he approached, he “supposed it to be James W ­ ills beating his Negro ­woman, and heard still many Lashes more and Crying out, untill hee was greevd and went into his owne ­house and shut the dore.” He said to his wife, Mary, a prominent Friend, “Oh! yond cruell man.” The Quakers William Peachee and Thomas Gladwin felt grief when they saw W ­ ills “beat his Negro Servant and give her many stripes” but “went againe into the Smithy to worke.” James Hill observed W ­ ills hang her up but said that her feet could touch the ground. A ­ fter the flogging, Hill untied the rope, noting she “was soe stubborne and willfull that might well provoke any Master to use her sharply: But sayth hee sawe nothing done to the Negro that in his Judgment might be the cause of her death; But that hee this Deponent beleeves she was unsound.”1 Katharine Greene also testified that the enslaved ­woman (whose name is not given) visited to talk with an enslaved African in her ­house­hold. Katharine said that she “had some distemper upon her” and, when asked about her sore back, told Katharine “it was with Fum, fum, which is (beating).” Katharine found another sore on the w ­ oman’s abdomen but “did not perceive any blowes that in her judgment might be the cause of her death.” Her husband, Thomas Greene, agreed. The jury accepted the testimony that W ­ ills had killed the w ­ oman, concluding that “it appears the said Negro was unsound.” Still, they thought “it was a fault, that hee did not therefore be the more spareing.” They found him not guilty of murder but recommended that he pay all court charges b­ ecause he buried her without a jury or inquest, with which the justices concurred.2 The episode raises many questions about the relationship between James ­Wills, his ­family, and the enslaved w ­ oman; the reactions of ­Wills’s neighbors, the justices, and jury; and the adoption of slavery as a ­labor system among Quakers 101

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figure 11. Map of the Town of Burlington, 1696, from Ewan M. Woodward and John F.

Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey (Philadelphia: Everts and Peck, 1883), ­after 108. James ­Wills and his ­family lived on High Street.

in West New Jersey. ­Wills was a cooper and son of Dr. Daniel W ­ ills, one of the West Jersey commissioners. In 1680, James married Hester Gardiner, the d­ aughter of the midwife and Quaker leader Elizabeth Gardiner and her husband, Thomas, who was one of the justices who tried James ­Wills along with seven other Quakers, including Deputy Governor John Skene. Elizabeth and Thomas Gardiner Sr. lived near James and Hester W ­ ills so likely witnessed or soon heard about James’s be­hav­ior.3 We know too ­little about the African ­woman and her fellow enslaved workers in Burlington and the surrounding countryside in late seventeenth-­century West Jersey. She was not alone, as the probate rec­ords and court minutes testify to numerous ­people who had been imported and purchased by affluent colonists in the Delaware valley from the West Indies and Africa. The murdered ­woman had given clear warning to W ­ ills’s Burlington neighbors that he might kill her. She shouted as he flogged her during that last whipping and, one gets the sense from William Myers’s testimony, he had beaten her before. James Hill called her stubborn and willful, emphasizing her refusal to accept her debased status in slavery. Katharine Greene explained how the w ­ oman had showed her wounds on her back and abdomen, perhaps from a previous whipping or from the fatal one, we cannot be sure. None of her neighbors helped. During the torture, Myers went



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into his ­house and shut the door, while Peachee and Gladwin returned to work at the smithy. Katharine Greene apparently did nothing to intercede with Hester ­Wills or Elizabeth Gardiner. By the 1680s, a chilling environment existed for Blacks in West Jersey despite the writings of the Quaker leaders George Fox and William Edmundson and hints of antislavery sentiment in the West New Jersey Concessions of 1676–1677. While not all wealthy West Jersey colonists purchased enslaved laborers, suggesting some continued opposition to slaveholding, the practice firmly rooted in the colony. Prior to 1675, slavery existed in the Delaware valley ­under the Swedish, Dutch, and Duke of York’s regimes, though we know of no one on the eastern side of the Delaware who held enslaved Africans when the Quakers arrived. The 1677 censuses of New C ­ astle and Upland courts w ­ ere ­limited to adult men and enslaved ­women and, even so, ­were incomplete. They indicated that most Eu­ro­pe­ans relied on ­family and indentured servant ­labor, with one enslaved African in New Jersey who worked for the En­glish Salem immigrant Samuel Hedge and nine enslaved ­people on the west bank.4 The growth of slavery in West New Jersey during Quaker colonization was significant, particularly among the po­liti­cal and economic elite. Of twelve West Jersey commissioners from Burlington and Salem who led the colony between 1677 and 1681, at least eight purchased enslaved Africans. Five of the seven Burlington court justices who presided at James ­Wills’s 1686 trial w ­ ere enslavers, including Deputy Governor John Skene, William Biddle, Elias Farr, Thomas Gardiner, and George Hutcheson. Members of ­Wills’s jury ­were generally less affluent than the justices and avoided slaveholding, though probate evidence is missing in some cases. Nevertheless, the Burlington innkeeper Richard Basnett, who sat on the jury, held six enslaved p­ eople at his death in 1694. Among the trial witnesses, we know from the court rec­ord that Katharine and Thomas Greene held an enslaved African, but the o­ thers had modest estates and did not hold ­people as slaves.5 As in Philadelphia during the late seventeenth and early eigh­teenth c­ entury, wealthy Quakers and colonists of other religions in West Jersey ­adopted slavery as a sign of social status and for assistance in domestic ­labor, farms, crafts, and commerce. In 1684, the ship Isabella arrived in Philadelphia with 150 Africans, who ­were sold within days to area colonists. Africans taken forcibly from their homelands became increasingly available as West Indies planters migrated to East Jersey and Pennsylvania. According to Gabriel Thomas in 1698, the region’s merchants received “Rumm, Sugar, Molasses, Silver, Negroes” in return for sending grain, livestock, meat, and lumber to the islands.6 In the period before 1730, most Delaware valley slave traders, such as William Trent, who purchased an estate at the Falls in West Jersey, imported enslaved ­people in small groups from Barbados, Jamaica, and other islands on consignment or through direct sale. At his death in 1726, Trent held in bondage four

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figure 12. Enslaved Africans ­were auctioned in Philadelphia a­ fter their importation

from the West Indies or Africa. Watercolor of the London Coffee House, Front and Market Streets, by Edward Mumford. Library Com­pany of Philadelphia. (Detail)

Black men, one ­woman, three boys, and a girl and two Native American men. Traders such as Isaac Norris and Jonathan Dickinson of Philadelphia, who had emigrated from the West Indies, complained that the imported Africans ­were uncooperative and suffered from disease. The importers called them “refuse slaves,” suggesting that they ­were unfit for plantation work ­because of illness and defiance. In fact, they w ­ ere survivors of harsh regimes in which a high percentage of ­people seized from Africa died during the transatlantic passage or from toil and disease in the sugar fields.7 The James W ­ ills case suggests that Burlington Quakers thought l­ittle about the morality and consequences of purchasing ­people who had been kidnapped from their homes, transported in horrendous conditions on slave ships, and then sold as enslaved l­abor in the West Indies and Delaware valley. Quakers bought enslaved p­ eople despite the concerns of Fox, Edmundson, and o­ thers that slavery was inconsistent with Quaker beliefs in nonviolence, the golden rule to do



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unto o­ thers as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12), and the equality of all p­ eople ­under God. W ­ ills’s neighbors seemed unsure of how to deal with a defiant Black w ­ oman, concluding that a whipping of more than one hundred lashes was acceptable as long as witnesses believed it was not the cause of her death. A few years l­ater, in Gloucester County, Anne Penstone’s neighbors protected her from a punishment of nineteen lashes for fear it would take her life. The ­Wills case and o­ thers in Burlington and Salem courts demonstrated that colonists considered Blacks outside the protection of their community, though living and working within their ­house­holds. Several Burlington court cases suggest the ordeals and efforts of African Americans to resist slavery amid a hostile white community. In the 1680s and 1690s, Blacks had recently faced forcible separation from their families in the Bight of Benin, Gold Coast, and other parts of West Africa to endure the slave ship’s deadly conditions. The Africans endured trauma as slave traders and masters tried to turn them into commodities. Delaware valley purchasers considered enslaved Africans to be property as, for example, William Penn encouraged his steward James Harrison to buy “blacks, for then a man has them while they live.” Enslaved p­ eople wrenched from their homelands had lost families, friends, property, familiar environments, connections to ancestors and religious practice, and communal protection ­under the law. Purchasers like James ­Wills failed to recognize the depths of their despair and thus tried to beat them into submission.8 While relatively few Blacks confronted charges in Burlington court, a range of cases indicates the challenges they faced and ways in which they negotiated slavery. In 1696, Sarah, the enslaved ­woman of Thomas Gardiner  Sr.’s ­widow, Elizabeth, confessed to “stealing and defaceing the Indian B ­ elt presented by the Sachem to the Governour.” The court rec­ord provided no evidence about why she committed this act and simply left further l­egal pro­cess “untill the Governours plea­sure be knowne.” In 1699, James ­Wills’s enslaved man ­Will was charged and found guilty with Daniel Mecarty of stealing goods from Elizabeth Basnett and other Burlington residents. Both w ­ ere sentenced to thirty-­nine stripes, and Mecarty was told to leave the province within three days. A stranger and more dubious case occurred in 1692, when Mary Myers and her d­ aughter accused an enslaved man, Harry, of buggering a cow, which he emphatically denied. When the court found him guilty and sentenced him to death, many inhabitants signed a “Petition to the Bench for Spareing the Negroes life.” The justices took this into consideration, and by the next court Harry had ­either escaped or was sold to another jurisdiction by his enslaver Isaac Marriott. The case highlights the extreme isolation and vulnerability of enslaved p­ eople in West Jersey, as they withstood scrutiny and suspicion from white neighbors.9 Several African Americans and whites appeared in Burlington court on charges of fornication, apparently a­ fter the ­women became pregnant. In 1693, William

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Wardell confessed that he “hath had Carnally to doe with Phillis, the Negro ­Woman, servant to Thomas Lambert: And Committs himselfe to the Mercy of the Bench.” He paid a £5 fine, court costs, and £2 to Lambert for the loss of Phillis’s time. The court minutes included no discussion of ­whether Phillis had been raped or in what way she was punished by Lambert, who bequeathed her to his wife when he died the following year. B ­ ecause Wardell’s fine of £5 was consistent with other fornication judgments at the time, the justices apparently did not add to his punishment for engaging in sex with an enslaved person beyond payment for loss of Phillis’s time, presumably during her pregnancy and recovery from childbirth. At the time, West Jersey, unlike Mary­land and V ­ irginia, had no specific law against interracial relations. Several other fornication cases in Burlington court included that of Sarah Appleby who in 1715 had a child with an enslaved man Peter, and a ­free Black man Buck W ­ ill and single w ­ oman Christian Silver in 1717.10 In the summer of 1701, the outcome of a case involving the rape of an enslaved ­woman differed sharply from Charles Sheepey’s 1688 trial for raping Elizabeth Hutcheson, the ­daughter of elite Friends, underlining the vulnerability of Blacks. An enslaved man, Mingo, had protested “that on the 13th day of July last about 9 at night the said John Neve offered and by force did lye with his said Mingo’s Wife (a Negro W ­ oman) and that the said Negro ­Woman cryed out.” Rather than trying Neve for rape, the court heard the case b­ ecause Neve accused Mingo of threatening his life and slandering him with a malicious charge. When the court asked Mingo for proof, he responded “that his Wife told him so and that was all he knew.” Several other witnesses provided alibis for Neve. The justices convicted Mingo of making a “Malicious Scandalous and false report,” sentencing him to “be publickly whipt on the bare back receiveing thirty Stripes Severely laid on, and committed to Prison till all charges be paid.”11 While a full investigation is impossible a­ fter more than three centuries, it is unlikely that Mingo fabricated the story in a society he knew would privilege the word of Eu­ro­pe­ans over African Americans. The difference between this case and Elizabeth Hutcheson’s is stark. Mingo and his wife received no assistance from the white community, leaving the ­couple defenseless ­under West Jersey law. While se­nior w ­ omen had collaborated to protect the safety and reputation of Hutcheson and her peers, we have no evidence that Friends came forward as advocates for Mingo’s wife. A year l­ater, a man enslaved by John Hollingshead attempted suicide but was found by several witnesses before he died. According to William Powell, a girl wondered where the man was so called out for him and located him hanging from a rafter in the barn. She informed Powell, who “found him hang’d with his tongue out of his mouth and a­ fter cutt down was quarter of an hower before he came to himself.” When asked why he had tried to end his life, the man explained that a colonist, Isabella Gleave, said that his master, Hollingshead, had e­ arlier



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“abused and beaten one Negro much and killd another.” The case being heard was brought by Hollingshead, who accused Isabella and her husband, George Gleave, of slander. A ­ fter witnesses testified for each side, the jury found for the plaintiff and awarded twelve shillings in damages. The man’s suicide attempt can be viewed within the larger framework of ways in which ­people dealt with the spiritual and psychological trauma of slavery. West Africans longed for their homelands and viewed death as a way to return home and re­unite with their ancestors. Some considered suicide preferable to debasement and abuse, when pos­si­ ble following ritual to prepare for spiritual return to Africa. Some newly enslaved ­people considered suicide “a reaffirmation of faith.” The slave trader Thomas Phillips in 1693 described how individuals forced to board slave ships on the African coast jumped overboard in the “belief that when they die they return to their own country and friends.” In Salem, Mas­sa­chu­setts, in 1733, an enslaved ­woman said she was returning home and then slashed open her abdomen.12 Like colonists elsewhere in Anglo-­America who imported increasing numbers of African ­women and men as slaves in the late seventeenth c­ entury, West Jersey officials enacted laws that underscored their racist beliefs and fear. While new arrivals from West Africa and the Ca­rib­bean felt dislocation and loneliness, they established ties with other enslaved ­people, as did the Black ­woman murdered by James ­Wills with a confidante in Katharine Greene’s h­ ouse­hold. In 1692, the West Jersey assembly revised its ­earlier law forbidding sales of alcohol to Lenapes, now banning the “selling or giving of rum, or any manner of strong liquor ­either to negro or Indian, or negroes or Indians.” The following year, the legislature de­cided to limit activities on Sunday, “whereas it hath been the practice of all socie­ties of Christian professors to set a part one day in the week for the worship and ser­vice of God.” Though left unsaid, the lawmakers sought in part to restrict the actions of enslaved Africans who refused to attend a Christian ser­vice during their release time on Sundays. The assembly penalized persons who did “any unnecessary servile ­labour, or s­ hall travel upon the Lord’s Day, or first day (except to some religious ser­vice or worship)” or was found drinking, gaming, or other­wise “profaning the Lord’s Day.”13 The newly formed Burlington town government passed two laws that clarified the concerns of Quaker colonists about African Americans socializing with friends. In 1695, the town agreed that Blacks should not work on Sundays but then prohibited them from buying or selling without “some certificate from their Masters.” More generally, the ordinance banned anyone from gaming or “drinking intemperately or unseasonably” on first days. The town meeting in August 1698 passed a more severe law, suggesting that African Americans had created communal networks during f­ree time. The freeholders warned that Blacks “found wandering about within the limits of the said Town” during the hours of religious meetings would be put into stocks u­ ntil the ser­vices ­were over. Further, any Black residing in the town or visiting from outside its borders “found wandering abroad

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or absenting themselves from their respective homes or quarters” on Sunday nights ­after sunset without the master’s permission would be placed in stocks or prison overnight and whipped the following day.14 This 1698 ordinance preceded by one month the yearly meeting in Burlington to which Pennsylvania Friends came presumably attended by enslaved Blacks. Two years e­ arlier, in response to several antislavery papers, the yearly meeting, also at Burlington, advised members to discourage the importation of Africans “& that such that have Negroes be careful of them, bring them to Meetings, or have Meetings with them in their Families, & Restrain them from Loose & Lewd Living as much as in them lies, & from Rambling abroad on First Days or other Times.” In 1693, white Philadelphians had complained about “tumultuous ­gatherings,” leading to bans on meeting together on Sundays without written permission from ­owners. African Americans continued to congregate, on some occasions to bury friends who had passed away. In 1699, at the height of a yellow fever epidemic, Africans protested that they could not obtain leave from their duties to hold funerals before sundown. Their separate burial ground in Philadelphia became an impor­tant gathering place during the colonial period, with “dancing a­ fter the manner of their several nations in Africa, and speaking and singing in their native dialects.”15 While Burlington lacked a similar cemetery for Africans, legislation and court rec­ords demonstrate that they assembled on Sundays, their day off. ­After unification of East and West Jersey, the assembly in 1704 passed two laws that extended the ­earlier West Jersey restrictions on Sunday gatherings. The first act applied to every­one, forbidding “Drunkenness, Cursing, Swearing, or Breaking the Lords Day, by ­doing any ordinary Work or ­Labour.” Innkeepers ­were warned not to permit drinking on Sunday, “especially in the time of Divine Worship (Excepting for necessary refreshment).” At the same session, the New Jersey legislature passed an act that levied fines on persons who entertained “any Negro, Indian or Mallatto Slave” for more than two hours without the enslaver’s permission.16 William Cale, a Burlington laborer, faced the law in September 1707 when the Burlington g­ rand jury presented him for operating, since June  1, “a Common ­house of Drinking Carding and unlawfull gameing” where he had “received harboured and Supported Diverse Vagabond and Other Idle and Suspected persons of Evill conversation as well as Diverse Servants and Negroes of the Inhabitants of the Town aforesaid at unseasonable times.” The prob­lem escalated on September 1 when a card game and “imoderate Drinking” continued u­ ntil two in the morning, creating “the Common nusance and Disturbance of the Inhabitants against the Peace.” Cale was convicted but left town before paying the £10 fine.17 The 1704 New Jersey Act for Regulating Negro, Indian and Mallatto Slaves established a harsher and more extensive code than had existed u­ nder West Jersey law. The assemblymen set specific punishments for enslaved p­ eople who committed crimes, including castration for attempting to rape “any White W ­ oman, Maid



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or Child.” The Crown considered this provision too severe so in 1709 disallowed the law. The inclusion of Native Americans in the law represented the increased importation ­after 1700 of ­people who had been kidnapped and captured in wars in the Carolinas and adjacent regions. Delaware valley slave traders brought in small groups of enslaved Indigenous p­ eople as part of the developing coastal trade.18 At its 1713–1714 session, the assembly wrote an even more comprehensive code that remained effective u­ ntil the Revolution. The act prohibited enslaved ­people from trading and travel without the enslaver’s permission and required creation of special slave courts composed of three justices and five freeholders to try cases of murder, rape, arson, and dismemberment. If convicted, the enslaved person would “suffer the Pains of Death in such manner as the Aggravation or Enormity of their Crimes (in the Judgment of the Justices and Free-­holders aforesaid) ­shall merit and require.” An enslaved person would receive corporal punishment for attempted rape of a white w ­ oman or girl, assault on a f­ ree Christian, and theft. The assembly also passed provisions to restrict the ­future opportunities of Blacks for freedom and prosperity. The law required a £200 bond for each manumission (as opposed to £30  in Pennsylvania) and blocked all freed Black, Native, and Mulatto persons from owning real estate “in his or her own Right in Fee s­ imple or Fee Tail.”19 Salem County convened a special court in 1717 to try three African Americans for murdering their enslaver, James Sherron of Mannington, the county high sheriff. Three justices and five freeholders heard testimony from a w ­ oman named Hagar, a boy Ben, and a man Caesar, as well as John Hunt, who was also implicated in the plot, and a witness, John Hamett. Hagar pleaded innocent but admitted she knew of the plan and was pre­sent at Sherron’s death. Hunt testified that Hagar had urged him “to go and kill her master,” so he sent Ben to obtain the hatchet. John Hamett swore that one night when he was on watch, he overheard Hunt ask Hagar, “­Don’t you remember the poison that you proposed to put in your Masters broth or milk e­ tc.?” Ben then pleaded not guilty, saying that while he retrieved the hatchet and knew its planned purpose, John Hunt committed the deed. Hunt confirmed Caesar’s innocence, declaring he had nothing to do with the planning or execution of the murder. The court found Hagar guilty, condemning her “to be burnt.” They also convicted Ben and sentenced him “to be hanged by the neck till dead and then hung up in gibbets e­ tc.” Caesar was acquitted and discharged.20 A month l­ ater the court of oyer and terminer met to try John Hunt and Mary Williams, apparently ­free white residents, for their role in James Sherron’s murder. Hunt pleaded guilty, but Williams denied any role so faced trial by jury, which originally found her innocent. A ­ fter the justices sent the jury back for more discussion, they found her guilty of concealing knowledge of the plot. John Hunt was then sentenced to death while Mary Williams received a £100 fine. The Salem court closely followed the harsh 1714 slave code in convening the

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special trial and punishing the enslaved Africans by burning Hagar alive and gibbeting Ben’s body to serve as examples to o­ thers who might consider killing their enslavers.21 As West Jersey developed eco­nom­ically during the early eigh­teenth ­century, enslaved Africans remained an impor­tant part of the workforce that also included white indentured servants, apprentices, and f­ amily members. Affluent colonists sometimes bought enslaved Indigenous ­people from other provinces, particularly South Carolina, though they remained a small number of agricultural, craft, and domestic laborers. As the joint capital of New Jersey (with Perth Amboy) and a significant port, Burlington city and its environs had a higher level of slaveholding than Gloucester and Salem Counties. Northampton Township, Burlington County, recorded a census in 1709 that indicated 4.6 ­percent of the population was enslaved, including seven Blacks and six Natives. Of the forty-­seven ­house­holds in the township, thirteen ­percent held enslaved ­people, which was consistent with slaveholding among Burlington County decedents in 1731–1750. According to the New Jersey censuses of 1726, 1738, and 1745, enslaved Blacks and Natives composed about 6 to 7 ­percent of the Burlington County population, 5 ­percent in Gloucester County, and 3 ­percent in Salem County, compared with 8 ­percent in New Jersey overall.22 An En­glish immigrant, William Moraley, who was indentured to the silversmith and master clockmaker Isaac Pearson of Burlington in late 1729, ­later described in his memoirs the oppression of Blacks in West Jersey. Though parts of his narrative ­were fictional, Moraley understood clearly the impact of the 1714 slave code. He wrote, the “Condition of the Negroes is very bad, by reason of the Severity of the Laws, t­ here being no laws made in [their] Favour. . . . ​For the least Trespass, they undergo the severest Punishment.” He continued that o­ wners permitted enslaved p­ eople to marry, but then “all their Posterity are Slaves without Redemption.” If they tried to escape, “they are unmercifully whipped; and if they die ­under the Discipline, their Masters suffer no Punishment.” Moraley noted that enslaved Blacks received some ground on which to grow crops on Sundays to sell at the market in exchange for clothing for themselves and families. On Sunday eve­nings, the men could “converse with their Wives, and drink Rum, or Bumbo, and smoak Tobacco, and the next Morning return to their Master’s L ­ abour.” Moraley affirmed that very few ­people ­were manumitted ­because of the £200 bond requirement, a situation African Americans resented greatly. He recalled, “I have often heard them say, they did not think God made them Slaves, any more than other Men, and wondered that Christians, especially En­glishmen, should use them so barbarously.” He went on to observe that Blacks did not accept their bondage meekly, requiring ­owners to use vio­lence if they wanted to keep control. Moraley wrote, perhaps with the 1712 New York slave rebellion in mind, that West Jersey’s enslaved p­ eople w ­ ere “of an obdurate, stubborn Disposition; and when they have it in their Power to rebel, are extremely cruel.”23



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While slavery developed less extensively in West Jersey than in the Chesapeake tobacco colonies, Carolina rice country, West Indies sugar plantations, and even the eastern division of New Jersey, purchasing and enslaving ­people who had been kidnapped and transported forcibly from their homelands became firmly embedded in Delaware valley society. Many affluent Friends and their colleagues of other religions imported Blacks and Natives from the West Indies and Carolinas, keeping t­ hose who survived and their c­ hildren in perpetual bondage. The ideal of liberty proclaimed in the West New Jersey Concessions was quickly ­limited to whites as the colony’s laws and culture defined enslaved Africans and Natives outside the government’s protection. Lenapes retained sufficient power in the early eigh­teenth ­century to prevent enslavement of their p­ eople and used po­liti­cal influence in Pennsylvania to curtail the importation of Indigenous p­ eople from the Carolinas and other colonies. ­Because merchants imported most enslaved p­ eople destined for the Delaware valley through Philadelphia, the Lenapes—­who controlled lands on both sides of the river—­demanded that the Pennsylvania assembly enact a ban. The legislature responded in January 1706, passing a law to stop the importation of Natives, which, the assemblymen wrote, “hath been observed to give the Indians of this province some umbrage for suspicion and dissatisfaction.” When the law had ­little impact, the Pennsylvania government in 1712 levied a prohibitive duty of £20 on each imported African and Native American, echoing the previous language that Lenapes protested the trade. The British government disallowed the 1712 act b­ ecause of the high tariff. The Lenapes then approached the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, which in 1719 revised its discipline, advising that “to avoid giving [the Lenapes] occasion of discontent, it is desired, that Friends do not buy or sell Indian slaves.” The provision deterred some, but not all, Quakers from purchasing enslaved Native Americans, ­because it lacked a penalty for violating the advice.24 Nevertheless, the Lenapes influenced both Pennsylvania and Quaker policy on slavery, using persuasion and threat of vio­lence against colonial leaders. Beginning in the 1670s with George Fox and William Edmundson—­and indeed contributors to the West New Jersey Concessions—­some Quakers added their voices to t­ hose of Blacks and Lenapes against slavery. Fox had written in The Gospel Family-­Order (1676) “that Christ dyed for all, . . . ​for the Tawnes and for the Blacks, as well as for you that are called whites,” recommending education in Chris­tian­ity and emancipation a­ fter a term of years.25 In 1688, Gerrit Hendricks, Derick op den Graeff, Francis Daniel Pastorius, and Abraham op den Graeff submitted a stirring appeal for emancipation to their local Quaker meeting in Germantown, Pennsylvania, the first antislavery protest by whites in North Amer­i­ca. ­Because Friends in West Jersey and Pennsylvania interacted on a regular basis in religious meetings and trade, James ­Wills’s murder of the African w ­ oman who resisted his coercion likely helped to inspire this petition. The Germantown Quakers presented a comprehensive manifesto “against the traffick of men-­body,”

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acknowledging that Blacks “are brought hither against their ­will and consent, and that many of them are stolen.” They dismissed the notion that Africans could be enslaved ­because of their skin color: though “they are black, we can not conceive ­there is more liberty to have them slaves, as it is to have other white ones.” The petitioners described slavery’s immorality in fostering adultery, theft, and vio­ lence and its inconsistency with the golden rule. They warned that Blacks would rebel when they perceived the opportunity and asked, have they “not as much right to fight for their freedom, as you have to keep them slaves?” The local meeting forwarded the appeal to the yearly meeting held in Burlington, which refused to act, making the excuse that their meeting alone could not prohibit buying and keeping Blacks, “It having so General a Relation to many Other Parts.”26 In the 1690s, as elites on both sides of the Delaware River sought to signify their elevated social and economic standing by purchasing Black laborers, a few whites sounded the alarm. In 1693, a group of Christian Quakers, the followers of George Keith who had recently broken away from orthodox Friends, published An Exhortation and Caution to Friends Concerning buying or keeping of Negroes, arguing that slavery “is a ­great hinderance to the spreading of the Gospel, and is occasion of much War, Vio­lence, Cruelty and Oppression, and Theft & Robery of the highest Nature.” They decried the separation of families and harsh treatment “not only by continual hard ­Labour, but by cruel Whippings; and other cruel Punishments and by short allowance of Food.”27 The Philadelphia Quaker William Southeby went one step further in 1696, recommending to Friends that “­there may be a Law made against bringing any more of Slaves into this countrey.” Southeby had arrived in Mary­land in 1659, where he became a Quaker and met the traveling minister William Edmundson. In 1676, Southeby welcomed the Quaker colonists in Salem, informing them of Mary­land meetings, and then moved to Philadelphia by 1686, where he was elected to the assembly in 1688. He was the first Quaker abolitionist to demand a law against importing enslaved ­people and, in 1712, to petition the Pennsylvania legislature for general emancipation. His 1696 essay incorporated ­earlier antislavery arguments and addressed objections from enslavers. To the question, “what ­shall we doe with ­those we have already,” he suggested following the golden rule, to make arrangements for manumission. On the question, “How ­shall we as ­things are h­ ere carry on our business,” he argued that farmers and craftspeople would work with ­free laborers “with more peace, and a clearer Conscience,” though not “so high & full as now many by the oppression of ­these poor ­people doth.” He also warned against taking advantage of perpetual bondage, “intending to multiply young negroes as a portion for their C ­ hildren and posterity a­ fter them.”28 The 1696 Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, in Burlington, considered Southeby’s paper and another from the Quaker Cadwalader Morgan, issuing its first formal advice on the topic. The weighty Friends, including many enslavers, suggested



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that members avoid the slave trade and encourage enslaved p­ eople to attend meetings and refrain from “Loose & Lewd Living.” The yearly meeting focused much more on Christian instruction and control than on liberty. Quakers on both sides of the Delaware continued to purchase enslaved p­ eople despite the meeting’s advice, which offered no means of enforcement.29 Over the next twenty years, enslavers remained dominant in the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting even as William Southeby and ­others lobbied for change. From 1711 to 1716, the Chester (Pennsylvania) Quarterly Meeting tried to convince Friends to stop importing, purchasing, and selling enslaved p­ eople but was unable to convince the society to impose a prohibition with stated penalties, such as disownment. In 1715, the yearly meeting warned that ­after “much debate being thereupon it is the sence of this meeting that friends avoid judging one another in this m ­ atter publickly or other­wise.” The meeting in 1716, a­ fter discussing Chester’s renewed concern, agreed that members should “avoid buying such Negroes as ­shall hereafter be brought in. . . . ​Yet this is only caution and not Censure.” The Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s 1719 discipline, in addition to its toothless advice against buying and selling enslaved Natives, instructed further that no Friends should import Africans “from their own country or elsewhere” and that enslavers should “treat them with humanity, and in a Christian manner. And as much as in them lies, make them acquainted with the princi­ples of Truth, and inculcate morality in them.” West Jersey and Pennsylvania Friends continued to resist making enslavement a disownable offense, while acknowledging that enslaved p­ eople in their h­ ouse­holds and workshops resisted bondage. Enslaved Africans and Natives found ­little to emulate among their Christian captors.30 In 1729, responding to a surge in importation of enslaved Blacks, Chester Quarter tried once again to strengthen Quaker policy on purchasing slaves. This time, the yearly meeting sent the issue to local meetings for their responses the next year. In Pennsylvania, the Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting replied that they ­were satisfied with the pre­sent policy, while Bucks could not reach agreement. In New Jersey, though Shrewsbury and Gloucester-­Salem Quarters supported Chester’s proposal, the Burlington Quarterly Meeting believed the existing position should stand. Just two monthly meetings recorded their stances on the question. The Salem Monthly Meeting concurred with Chester, and apparently the Haddonfield (formerly Newton) Monthly Meeting agreed for other­ wise the quarter could not have reached a sense of the meeting to support change. The Chesterfield Monthly Meeting opposed additional sanctions on purchasing enslaved ­people, preventing the Burlington Quarter as a ­whole from endorsing Chester’s initiative. In any case, the 1730 yearly meeting made only a slight alteration on the basis of ­these responses, telling members to be “very Cautious” of buying enslaved Africans, “it being Disagreeable to the Sense of this Meeting.”31 Beyond this impor­tant support of the Gloucester-­Salem Quarter for Chester’s proposed ban on purchasing enslaved Blacks, West Jersey Friends showed

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l­ ittle enthusiasm for initiatives against slavery. No one from the region attempted to publish an abolitionist essay u­ ntil the 1740s when John Woolman of Burlington County began his crusade. Prior to that time, John Hepburn of Freehold, Monmouth County, published The American Defence of the Christian Golden Rule (1715) in which he accused Friends of eagerly “making slaves of men.” Benjamin Lay, who lived in Pennsylvania, created an uproar in 1738 when he challenged the yearly meeting in Burlington to awaken to the horrors of slavery. The Quaker leadership denounced Lay ­after his “bladder of blood” demonstration in which he spattered Friends by stabbing a hollowed-­out book resembling a Bible that contained a pouch of red pokeberry juice. He proclaimed, “Oh all you negro-­ masters who are contentedly holding your fellow creatures in a state of slavery. . . . ​ It would be as justifiable in the sight of the Almighty, who beholds & re­spects all nations & colours of men with an equal regard, if you should thrust a sword through their hearts as I do through this book!” Quakers then escorted the fiery abolitionist to the door.32 Though Lay failed to convince the yearly meeting to amend its position on slavery, he influenced young Quakers like John Woolman who observed, or at least heard about, events at the 1738 meeting. Lay helped arouse Woolman to the evils of slavery but also provided a model of how not to convince enslavers. Acknowledging their re­sis­tance, Woolman a­ dopted a milder approach, striving to offer an example of good be­hav­ior rather than discord. Nevertheless, he took strong positions during his ­career, denouncing slavery as sin and boycotting products of enslaved ­labor, such as sugar, rum, molasses, and dye. His essay “Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes: Recommended to the Professors of Chris­tian­ity of ­Every Denomination,” written in 1746 but unpublished u­ ntil 1754 when approved by the Quaker overseers of the press, helped to propel the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting by the 1770s to ban enslavement by its members.33 William Moraley, in his book The Infortunate, recalled an encounter in the early 1730s with a ghost in the Burlington home of his master, Isaac Pearson, the Quaker silversmith and clockmaker. The story exemplifies the serious conflict within West Jersey about African Americans, slavery, morality, vio­lence, and material gain. Moraley explained that he was lying awake in bed one night with his fellow servant when “the Chamber Door opened without any Noise, and I perceiv’d something coming cross the Floor, like a Ghost, in White, with a black Face.” Terrified, Moraley watched it come “to the Bedside, and stooping, grined, and stared me in the Face.” The ghost left the room and then returned and “looked earnestly at me. When I said, Lord! Why do you come h­ ere? It answer’d, Nothing with you, as I well remember, and then went away, the Door shooting ­after it, without any Noise. I was very positive it was a Spirit.” When Moraley asked the Pearson ­family the next morning, they told him “it was a Negro killed some Years since by her Master, and that they had often seen it.”34



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The story is beguiling b­ ecause the “ghost” was likely the African w ­ oman whom James W ­ ills had killed in the neighborhood in 1686. Pearson had married Hannah Gardiner, the ­daughter of Thomas Gardiner  Jr., and then purchased property from the estate of John ­Wills on High Street and built an impressive ­house. At the time of Moraley’s indenture, Pearson held an enslaved person and two white servants. He was a member of the New Jersey assembly and in 1739 sponsored a bill to curtail the slave trade in New Jersey that did not become law. No evidence survives from his 1745 probate rec­ord about w ­ hether he had manumitted the enslaved laborer or the person had died or been sold.35 While Moraley had prob­ably heard the ghost story and created (or dreamed about) his nocturnal encounter, James ­Wills’s murder of the ­woman was not forgotten. Forty-­five years a­ fter her death by harsh blows, residents of High Street in Burlington recalled her fate. Enslaved Blacks remained embattled against the system of colonization that stole their ­labor and ­futures. As Moraley wrote, they suffered u­ nder a ­legal system that punished them severely for even minor offenses and offered ­little hope for freedom. Enslaved African Americans endured many kinds of separation, from their homeland, families, culture, and religion—­even from the protection of local West Jersey courts. The Quaker colonists faced this injustice and w ­ ere afraid.

7 • A DIF­F ER­E NT PATH Defining Swedish and Finnish Ethnicity

In April 1690, near Mantua Creek, the Swedish farmer Peter Mattsson, alias Dalbo, accompanied “the Indian Wisomck to help him to bury his child.” Gloucester County court recorded Mattsson’s testimony b­ ecause he and Wissomick had encountered three men, Israel Helm Jr., Måns Gustafson, and William Cobb, with six dead hogs. Peter’s ­brother, John Mattsson (also known as John Dalbo), recalled that he was with John Rambo that day “at the fishing place in ­great mantoes Creek,” where they met Wissomick, who said that he saw the three men at midday with six swine, five of them marked and one unmarked. John Mattson added that Helm and his comrades had been at his ­house while he was away and wanted his wife to view the hogs, but she refused.1 The witnesses in this case, Wissomick and the Mattssons, demonstrated the close relations among Lenapes and old settlers in the Mantua Creek area as Peter Mattsson assisted in burying Wissomick’s child. The old settlers comprised an ethnically mixed community of Swedes, Finns, Lenapes, Germans, Dutch, Scots, En­glish, and French who had intermarried during the half c­ entury since New Sweden’s founding. They shared resources with Lenapes, easily conversing in one or the other’s language or a combination of tongues. This friendship of Peter and John Mattsson with Wissomick is particularly in­ter­est­ing ­because Native Americans (prob­ably Lenapes or Susquehannocks) had killed their f­ ather, Matts Hansson, in 1653, at the behest of New Sweden’s acting governor Johan Papegoja, for attempting to escape to Mary­land. Their m ­ other, Elizabeth, returned with her two young sons to the Delaware valley ­after Matts’s death, where she married Anders Larsson Dalbo.2 Helm Jr., Gustafson, and Cobb ­were found not guilty of illegally killing the hogs, prob­ably ­because of confusion over earmarks, by a jury that included seven En­glish and five old settlers. Israel Helm Jr. soon faced another accusation of hog stealing in Gloucester County, this one involving his ­father, Israel Helm, the longtime interpreter and trader with Lenapes. Helm Jr., in 1691, was charged in 116



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Chester County, Pennsylvania, for hog theft and killing a goose and then died ­after g­ oing to sea.3 This court testimony highlights several ways in which Swedes, Finns, and other old settlers defined an ethnic identity separate from the Lenape and Quaker communities yet intersecting with both. From the 1670s, in response to the Quaker arrival to found Salem and West Jersey, the old settlers followed three strategies to preserve their autonomy and freedom. They pursued their alliance with the Lenapes through trade, friendship, and mediation; participated in the West Jersey courts to protect their farms, civil rights, and personal liberty; and reinforced their ethnic identity through the Swedish Lutheran church. Few Swedes and Finns ­adopted the Quaker colonization model that relentlessly expropriated Lenape territory and stole the ­labor and lives of enslaved Africans. Still, the Swedes and Finns, like other Eu­ro­pe­ans, had introduced epidemic disease that destroyed Native communities and raised livestock that threatened damage to Lenape crops and property. Over time, the old settlers and Lenapes found ways to coexist as neighbors, negotiating conflicts over roaming pigs and other prob­ lems before they spiraled out of control. ­After 1664, with the settlement of thousands of En­glish immigrants in the Delaware valley, many Swedes, Finns, and other old settlers left the former site of New Sweden on the west bank. Some moved to Mary­land and northwest on the Schuylkill River, while o­ thers built farms along the east bank with the permission of Cohanzicks and other groups. By 1693, one-­third of Swedish Lutheran ­house­holds in the Delaware valley lived between the Salem River and Pennsauken Creek. The Eu­ro­pe­ans subsequently spread out from Penn’s Neck, Raccoon, and Cinnaminson to set up homesteads and trading posts in the Pine Barrens, along the Maurice River, and at the Atlantic shore. Swedish and Finnish w ­ omen raised crops, reared ­children, and maintained h­ ouse­holds with methods that combined Eu­ro­pean and Lenape technologies, while men farmed, hunted, fished, cut and marketed timber, and pursued crafts. Most old settlers improved relatively small acreages for agriculture, leaving forest in which to run livestock and cut wood for sale in Philadelphia and other towns. Some focused on the fur trade with Lenapes, serving as interpreters for the En­glish colonists. Few Swedes and Finns enslaved Africans during the late seventeenth and early eigh­teenth centuries, instead depending on the ­labor of sons, ­daughters, and other members of their community. Before 1730, the large majority left modest estates when they died, suggesting a lifetime focused on goals other than accumulating wealth. Of ninety-­one Swedes, Finns, and Dutch of southern Lenapehoking appearing in the West Jersey deeds between 1665 and 1730, seventy-­ six (84 ­percent) registered three or fewer transactions. Only five entered eight or more deeds during their lifetimes, including the Holsteiner Hendrick Jacobs Falkenburg, Swede Jöns Hansson Steelman, and Dutch colonist Reynier van Hyst.

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In comparison, as discussed in chapter 4, assemblymen from the Burlington and Gloucester areas in 1683 participated in the real estate market much more actively than the old settlers.4 Soon ­after the Lutheran priests Andreas Rudman and Ericus Björk arrived in 1697, they sent letters to their superiors in Sweden describing the Delaware valley, their congregations, the Lenapes, and recent Quaker colonization. Their observations provide a snapshot of the old settler community, albeit through the lens of elite clergymen. The more se­nior Rudman became minister at Wicaco, just south of Philadelphia, while Björk took the pulpit in Crane Hook, at the confluence of the Delaware and Christina Rivers. They praised the fertility of the region with its g­ reat variety of fruit, vegetables, and herbs, tall and beautiful trees, and plentiful ­water birds and other game. The prosperity of the old settlers was remarkable, as they lived “very well, both in regard to food, drink and clothing, yes, as well as the foremost burghers in Sweden.” They ­were able to contribute generously to the church for new buildings and the preachers’ salaries.5 The priests noted that few families held enslaved Africans, saying, “­These ­people live very well, blessed by God with ­children and for the most part also grandchildren that they are able to carry on their work with their own [­labor] alone, with few exceptions.” While the Swedish and Finnish families planted “rye, wheat, barley, buckwheat, rice, peas, beans, pumpkins, melons,” and other crops, Rudman thought the “won­der of God’s blessing is especially noted ­here in a kind of grain called maize,” whose “grains are as large as three-­öre pieces . . . ​ and gives not double seed in return but one hundred fold.” He observed further that the old settlers’ homes “are timbered in the Swedish manner” and that the “­women cook food according to the Swedish custom and brew fine and pleasant tasting drinks” from apples, pears, and peaches. They also baked delicious bread and brewed good beer. The colonists had large c­ attle and generally used oxen or ­horses for plowing, but, for lack of sufficient fences to protect the crops, they chose not to raise goats, which would devour the plants.6 Rudman and Björk appreciated the dedication and enthusiasm of the old settlers but saw difficult work ahead of them, particularly among the young. Parents had managed to educate their c­hildren somewhat, though the last minister at Crane Hook, Lars Carlsson Lock, had died a de­cade ­earlier and the priest at Wicaco, Jacob Fabritius, had become blind and less vigorous over his sixteen-­ year tenure. A Swedish lay reader, Charles Springer, led ser­vices at Crane Hook, and Fabritius preached in Dutch, which the Swedes and Finns could understand. The congregants in 1693 eagerly requested educated ministers from Sweden, noting that a Finnish priest was unnecessary with “all of us, both Swedes and Finns, understanding the Swedish tongue.” They also asked for three sermon books, forty-­two hymnals, two hundred catechisms, and two hundred ABC books, for which they promised to pay. The Swedish king Carl XI and church hierarchy responded positively, funding the ministers and sending hundreds of books,



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which the p­ eople quickly scooped up. In a letter to Bishop Israel Collmodin, Björk desired more books, “especially two church Bibles . . . ​­because they tore all the Bibles from our hands so that we ­were not allowed to keep any for the churches, and also all the other books, so that not a copy was left.” Björk noted that most ­children in the churches could read, though they formerly had only three books to share, and that they continued to exchange the new volumes: no book “lies without-­use.” He complained quite bitterly, however, that the youth ­were undisciplined and hoped “that with the help of God it ­shall become better ­here with churches, parsonages, rules, examinations in the catechism, and other discipline, so that the young ­people ­shall not come to their pastor with a pipe to their mouth and a hat on their head.”7 Björk and Rudman complimented the old settlers for sustaining their churches and communities for many de­cades despite lack of support from Sweden. They had kept to the Swedish Lutheran faith despite entreaties to join the Society of Friends. Rudman and Björk called the Quakers “weeds,” of which “the w ­ hole country is practically filled.” The old settlers ­were overjoyed when the Swedish ministers arrived, Björk wrote, b­ ecause they “­were in deepest distress in regard to their salvation and on all sides overrun with Quakers,” especially since Fabritius recently died. The priests noted that while the Swedes and Finns lived on scattered farms, and many had moved across the Delaware River to West Jersey, church attendance was strong. In November 1700, Rudman explained in significant detail how almost half of the Swedes and Finns had established homesteads on the east bank making it difficult to attend church in bad weather ­because of the “gravest peril from the floating ice which follows ebb and flood and sometimes breaks large boats right in two.” The old settlers, he went on, “are farmers and countrymen, who have ­cattle, ­etc. and therefore must have space.” The En­glish who accompanied William Penn included wealthy investors “who usurped property the Swedes held, especially along the w ­ ater, cleared the land and made it bald, and crowded the Swedes,” who ­were unwilling to resist. Thus, the Swedes and Finns sold this prime land and obtained “more land now, in the woods, but gain no more income, for they ­haven’t the least understanding of business, except to sell oxen, sheep, e­ tc. The En­glish grasp more and more for themselves, u­ ntil now they have nearly every­thing. They are of a dif­fer­ent nature, crafty, subtle and shrewd, wherefore most of them pull themselves upward and have the country ­under them.”8 The Swedish priests wrote quite a bit about relations between the Lenapes and old settlers, suggesting the strength of their alliance. The Lenapes confirmed that the Swedes and Finns w ­ ere “like ­brothers and s­ isters, and . . . ​call them their own ­people and their b­ rothers, which they do not call the En­glish.” The Swedes and Finns helped to foster this friendship, Rudman and Björk believed, b­ ecause the majority “know all kinds of languages, Swedish, German, Finnish, Dutch, sometimes French, En­glish, and American [Lenape],” while the En­glish could

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only speak their own. The Natives and old settlers “live together in the most friendly manner, in trade, in council and justice.” Björk specifically described the continuing alliance, stressing the Lenapes’ concern for the welfare of Swedes and Finns, “so that if they should hear some harm would be done them by someone, they give themselves no peace ­until they have made it known. They also always help to prevent such ­things.”9 Björk’s words describing the alliance evoked ­earlier agreements between the Lenapes and Swedes g­ oing back to Governor Johan Risingh’s 1654 treaty with ten Lenape sakimaòk endorsing mediation to resolve conflict and forming a mutual pact against external enemies. The Lenape spokesman, Naaman, pledged that the Swedes’ “enemies would be theirs, and if they heard or saw anything evil, they would call our attention to it and inform us, even in the m ­ iddle of the night.” The Lenapes fulfilled this promise the following year by warning of New Netherland’s attack on New Sweden, though they could not prevent the Dutch conquest. The simultaneous Munsee assault on New Amsterdam forced Governor Peter Stuyvesant to withdraw quickly, leaving the Swedish and Finnish community intact. The Lenapes and old settlers preserved their alliance over subsequent de­cades, mutually defying Dutch and En­glish threats of forced migration and war. Intermarriage helped to sustain the Lenape population as epidemics took a deadly toll.10 Swedes and Finns had visited the eastern shore of the Delaware since the 1640s when Governor Peter Holländer Ridder met with Cohanzicks to obtain rights to land and Governor Johan Printz ordered construction of Fort Elfsborg at Varkens Kill (Salem River). The colonists also traded with the Armewamese who moved from the Delaware’s west bank in the 1660s in response to increasing En­glish settlement, combining forces with the Rancocas, Mantes, and other groups. This land pressure on the west bank, as well as opportunities for trade and hunting, spurred Dutch, Swedes, and Finns to relocate closer to the Lenapes, some near the Salem River and ­others at Raccoon and Pennsauken Creeks. Swedes and Finns assisted the 230 Quakers who arrived in 1677 at Raccoon, where, according to the eighteenth-­century historian Samuel Smith, “the Swedes had some scattering habitations; but [the new colonists] ­were too numerous to be all provided for in h­ ouses; some w ­ ere obliged to lay their beds and furniture in cow stalls, and appartments of that sort.” Despite this crucial assistance, the Burlington court in 1684 required the old settlers to document their prior claims to land. Some had oral agreements with Lenapes rather than En­glish deeds so had to obtain rights through the West Jersey public account or from individual colonists. By the 1690s, the Swedish Lutheran censuses indicated seven families living on Cinnaminson and Pennsauken Creeks, thirty ­house­holds residing from ­Little Mantua to Oldmans Creek, thirty-­six in Salem County, and several near the Atlantic shore. Old settlers unaffiliated with the churches also lived throughout ­these areas.11



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The Lenapes and old settlers maintained their alliance during En­glish colonization, defending their power and autonomy even as Armewamese, Rancocas, and Cohanzick populations declined from Eu­ro­pean disease. Lenapes remained dominant, preventing Quaker elites from imposing ­legal authority on their communities and helping to insulate Swedes and Finns. The West Jersey proprietors employed Lenape protocol in their interactions with sakimaòk, carefully preserving peace through diplomacy, while systematically usurping land. The old settlers, as discussed in chapter  5, protected their families from West Jersey laws against such conduct as fornication and adultery, keeping most cases out of the county courts. Likewise, Lenapes, Swedes, and Finns mediated disputes that arose between their communities, continuing their practice since the 1650s. The Swedish priests Rudman and Björk emphasized in 1697 that the Natives and old settlers not only traded and lived together amicably but met “in council and justice, as [the Lenapes] also call all Swedes their own ­people.”12 The issue of Eu­ro­pean livestock had the greatest potential for causing trou­ble between the old settlers and Lenapes as occurred frequently in other colonies. In ­Virginia, for example, En­glish settlers permitted their c­ attle and swine to run loose, resulting in the destruction of Native fields. The “roaming livestock,” argued the historian ­Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “acted as the advance guard of En­glish settlement” in combination with an “insatiable drive for land, fueled by demographic growth.” The scholar Robert S. Grumet described how livestock provoked Kieft’s War with the Munsees in 1640: “Settlers moving onto lands sold by Indians put both ­peoples in closer contact than ever before. Settlers’ ­horses and ­cattle trampled nearby Indian gardens while pigs broke into homes and fields of Indian neighbors. Colonists demanded compensation for livestock shot by Indians or killed by their dogs. Authorities ordered Indians to fence their fields and kill their dogs. Relations worsened as rumors of Indian conspiracies, fueled by the realities of Indian wars in Canada, ­Virginia, Connecticut, and elsewhere, spread insidiously throughout New Netherland.” Conflict over livestock, escalating as Natives killed cows and pigs in retaliation for destroyed crops, led to combat. Colonists in V ­ irginia, New Netherland, and New E ­ ngland used incidents involving animals to justify military offensives against Native towns and expropriate land.13 Lenape sakimaòk and New Sweden governor Johan Risingh chose a dif­fer­ent path in 1654 when they met to renew land treaties and peace. Lenape primacy in the Delaware valley largely dictated the treaty outcome, yet the Swedes and Finns accepted the terms by which they could remain on Indigenous land. When Risingh pledged that “we wished to damage neither their ­people nor their plantations and possessions,” the sakimaòk “promised that they would not do us any harm or kill our ­people or animals.” The Lenapes suggested that the Swedes and Finns build a fort and homes in one of their towns on the Delaware’s west bank to facilitate prompt resolution when prob­lems arose. The old settlers and

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Lenapes fostered a strong alliance to address arguments through mediation rather than vio­lence, retaining that practice as Swedes and Finns moved across the Delaware.14 Livestock created prob­lems between Lenapes and Eu­ro­pean settlers in southern Lenapehoking as roaming hogs razed fields of corn, beans, and squash and ate wild plants that Lenapes gathered. The Gloucester County clerk kept a rec­ ord of earmarks, beginning in 1686, by which heads of h­ ouse­hold asserted owner­ship of the pigs they set loose to forage for food. By 1706, about 160 residents registered their marks, of whom 34 (one-­fifth) ­were old settlers. Disputes ­were fairly common among the colonists over who owned swine and unmarked shoats, with charges of hog theft, such as the 1690 case against Helm, Gustafson, and Cobb. One complaint involving Lenapes survives from 1689, a petition to the Gloucester County court from a colonist, Samuel Taylor of Big Timber Creek. He asked the justices to pursue his accusation, on which the g­ rand jury had previously failed to act, that neighboring Armewamese had killed “5 ­great Breeding Sowes with several Hoggs.” He failed to acknowledge how his animals had spoiled Native property. Taylor believed that Lenapes ­were responsible ­because other pigs had returned home injured by arrows and a “Tammehauck.” ­After a man confessed to killing several of the swine, Lenapes delivered goods as compensation, of which thirty-­seven shillings went to Taylor and the rest paid for court fees and time spent in negotiations.15 If Lenapes similarly retaliated against hogs owned by Swedes and Finns in the late seventeenth c­ entury, the cases failed to reach Gloucester County court. Old settlers and Lenapes met together to resolve differences, prob­ably at the point livestock ravaged Lenape property. The loss of crops and wild foods exacerbated the destructive force of colonization, as Eu­ro­pe­ans altered the landscape of southern Lenapehoking. Still, the Swedes, Finns, and Quakers—­though imposing their livestock on Lenape neighbors—­used diplomacy to resolve differences rather than war. The old settlers had reached an accommodation with the Lenapes in the 1650s that remained effective four de­cades ­later. The pacifist Friends sought to retain peace by arbitrating disputes over livestock and other issues, even while engrossing Lenape land. Old settlers continued to serve as go-­betweens and pursued trade with Natives throughout the mid-­Atlantic region. ­These roles reflected the commitment of Swedes and Finns to prosper as neighbors of Lenapes rather than try to force them from their homeland, but the intermediaries also helped to facilitate Quaker colonization. The interpreter Israel Helm, who since the 1660s had traded and participated in treaties with the Lenapes, in 1677 received from the sakimaòk six hundred acres at Clonmell Creek in Gloucester County, which the Burlington court refused to recognize. Helm subsequently received a deed in 1686 from Andrew Robeson for one hundred acres on which Helm’s h­ ouse already stood, and by 1690 he obtained additional land. Two sons of the Gloucester



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County Swede Olof Dalbo, Lars and Charles Dalbo, traded with Lenapes and other Natives from Cape May through West Jersey to Mary­land u­ ntil their deaths in the early 1720s. Their m ­ other, Catharine, was the d­ aughter of Nils Larsson Frände, who in 1668 had negotiated land rights to ­settle in West Jersey. The merchants Måns and Gunnilla Cock in 1697 settled with their ­family in Cinnaminson and l­ ater moved to Gloucester County. Måns was fined £5 in Burlington court for selling alcohol to Lenapes, while both ­were accused but not convicted of sharp trading practices.16 Several other old settlers negotiated land from the Lenapes as part of ongoing business and personal relationships. Hendrick Jacobs Falkenburg, a native of Holstein in what is now Germany, whose first wife was the ­daughter of a Finn, Sinnick Broer, and who attended the Swedish Lutheran church at Wicaco, in 1677 helped the West Jersey proprietors acquire the territory between Rancocas and Assunpink Creeks. In 1674, Falkenburg had negotiated a deal for himself for eight hundred acres at ­Little Egg Harbor on the Atlantic coast for which he received confirmation in 1697 from the Lenape sakima Nanacussy to prove possession to the West Jersey government. In the meantime, Falkenburg rented land at Lessa, or Lazy, Point (at the confluence of Assiscunk Creek and the Delaware) from Peter Jegou, who had purchased the tract from three Dutch men who had carefully obtained rights from the Lenapes. Jegou failed to renew this permission with gifts and, according to his report, was “plundered by the Indians, & by them utterly Ruined as is wel knowne to all the world.” He abandoned Lessa Point and, by 1677, rented the land to Falkenburg, whose excellent relations with the Lenapes helped Jegou safeguard his possession through diplomacy and gifts. The Dutch traveler Jasper Danckaerts described his November 1679 visit to Lessa Point, where Falkenburg “received us very kindly, and entertained us according to his ability” in his log cabin. He frequently served as intermediary between the West Jersey proprietors and Lenapes, including the 1682 conference between the ­dying Ockanickon and Burlington leaders Thomas Budd and John Cripps. Falkenburg helped to negotiate huge land deals in 1688 for Governor Daniel Coxe, including territory north of the Falls; the interior region of southern Lenapehoking between the headwaters of the Cohansey, Oldmans, Big Timber, and ­Little Egg Harbor; and the region on Stephens’ Creek from Cape May to ­Little Egg Harbor. When he died in 1710, Falkenburg was living at L ­ ittle Egg Harbor with his second wife, Mary, a Quaker, and their minor son. John Hansson Steelman, a son of Ella Steelman, became an intermediary ­under Falkenburg’s tutelage. John left for Mary­land, where he traded with and interpreted for Native communities in the Susquehanna valley in their dealings with Mary­land and Pennsylvania.17 Eric Pålsson Mullica, son of the Finn Pål Jönsson, emigrated from Sweden with his parents in 1654. He married Ingeri by 1667, settled at Tacony, and witnessed the 1678 agreement for Shackamaxon Island between Elizabeth Kinsey

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and four Lenape sakimaòk. ­After Ingeri died in 1693, Mullica married Ingeborg, a ­daughter of Israel Helm, and moved their ­house­hold to the L ­ ittle Egg Harbor River, l­ ater known as the Mullica. Three of his sons, Olof, Eric, and John, in 1704 bought land on Raccoon Creek, now Mullica Hill in Gloucester County.18 The Swede Peter Ericksson, who in 1684 lived near Israel Helm at Repaupo Creek and then moved to Cohansey several years ­later, like Helm and Falkenburg received land from the Lenapes for mediating with the En­glish. Among other ser­vices, Ericksson helped to broker the 1693 agreement between Mehocksett, Cuttanoque, and other Cohanzick sakimaòk with Jeremiah Basse, agent for the West New Jersey Society in London, for land between the Cohansey and Maurice Rivers. The Cohanzicks perhaps considered the treaty a good deal, receiving twenty guns, ammunition, twenty blankets, fifty stroudwaters and duffels, many tools, other clothing, rum, and beer. With goods worth about £145, the exchange marked the most valuable for Lenapes south of the Falls since the three 1677 purchases between Oldmans and Assunpink Creeks. In Ericksson’s individual grant of July  1694, Mehocksett and Cuttanoque transferred a tract between the head of Cohansey and Maurice River “for the Love that wee beare unto Peter Erickson of Chohansey . . . ​and for the ser­vice he hath don uss as Interpreter betwixt uss & our Bretheren the En­glish in all Treat[ie]s That wee have occation for him.” This land was “excepted” out of the tract that the Cohanzicks transferred to the West New Jersey Society in 1693, suggesting that Mehocksett and ­others insisted that Ericksson be compensated with acreage. Without this direction from the sakimaòk, Basse could have paid Ericksson with cash or goods.19 In the 1690s and subsequent de­cades, Swedes and Finns settled at the Atlantic shore and Maurice River adjacent to Lenape communities. The Eu­ro­pean population remained fairly sparse, as livestock raising, timbering, shipping, fishing, oystering, and hunting sustained their economy rather than extensive agriculture. According to the scholar Peter Wacker, old settlers along the Maurice River adapted to the generally poor soils of the outer coastal plain by producing livestock, lumber, and fuel for the Philadelphia market and West Indies. Rather than clear land for large-­scale cultivation, they built sawmills and ran ­cattle, ­horses, and hogs in the salt marshes and woods, where animals could invade Lenape fields and sources of wild plants. While the old settlers and Natives developed ties as neighbors and trading partners, they needed to broker conflicts on a regular basis.20 Bolstered by their alliance with the sovereign Lenapes, the old settlers dealt cautiously with the West Jersey government to safeguard their land and civil rights while protecting their freedom. As discussed in chapter 3, at least twenty-­ one Swedes, Finns, and Dutch residing in the Salem area, and prob­ably additional men in Gloucester and Burlington Counties, signed the West New Jersey



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Concessions as a replacement for naturalization oaths, such as Peter Stuyvesant had required in 1655. Several old settlers served in the West Jersey assembly, and many more participated in the county courts, the administrative centers of West Jersey during the proprietary period. The Swedes and Finns in southern Lenapehoking developed a dif­fer­ent relationship with West Jersey authorities than their counter­parts in Pennsylvania, where William Penn replaced the single Upland court with Bucks, Philadelphia, and Chester County courts dominated by affluent Friends. The old settlers, who ­until 1681 had governed the west bank north from Marcus Hook to Tacony, lost po­liti­cal control, and just a few Dutch, Swedes, and Finns served in the Pennsylvania assembly. Swedes and Finns continued to seek redress in Pennsylvania courts ­until the 1690s, when the provincial court executed the Bucks County Swede Dirick Johnsson for murder on the basis of circumstantial evidence. A ­ fter witnesses found blood in Johnsson’s ­house, he was arrested for killing an unidentified person whose body lay nearby at Neshaminy Creek. On this basis, the provincial court declared Johnsson guilty, making him one of only two ­people executed in Pennsylvania prior to 1718. In response, Pennsylvania Swedes and Finns withdrew from the courts, finding alternative means of resolving conflicts between h­ ouse­holds. Between 1681 and 1695, forty-­two old settlers in Pennsylvania sued one another, while from 1696 to 1710, the colony’s courts heard only one similar case. The old settlers’ suits against En­glish colonists also dropped.21 In West Jersey, from the 1680s to 1720s, Swedes, Finns, and Dutch participated in the Quaker government, though not at levels that influenced colonial policy. They assisted in executing law in local courts but lacked the clout to determine the dynamics of colonization in the province. In the 1680s and 1690s, most of the old settlers who won election to the West New Jersey legislature, including Michael Baron, Olof Dalbo, Israel Helm, Marcus Lawrence, Peter Mattson (Dalbo), Anthony Nilsson, and John Rambo, served for just one or two sessions. ­After New Jersey’s unification in 1703, election to the assembly became much more difficult, as the Crown required legislators to possess at least one thousand acres and voters to own one hundred acres in freehold. Though the assembly in 1709 agreed to permit legislators to substitute £500 personal wealth for the real estate, the bar of eligibility remained too high for many New Jersey men, including most Swedes and Finns. No old settlers in West Jersey gained election to the assembly from 1703 to 1709, and none emerged among the provincial leadership in the eigh­teenth ­century when wealthy Quakers and Anglicans dominated the West Jersey Division.22 Old settlers quite consistently represented their communities in Gloucester and Salem Counties as constable and juror, though less often as justice of the peace, the highest county position. The Swedes and Finns continued to participate in court business unlike their compatriots in Pennsylvania who withdrew ­after Dirick Johnsson’s execution. In Gloucester County, John Rambo and Olof

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Dalbo served as justice of the peace and constable and sat on numerous g­ rand juries. Anthony Nilsson acted as constable, tax assessor, trea­surer, and juror before his decease in 1695. Andrew Robeson, the younger, of “New Stockholm” north of Raccoon Creek, whose wife, Maria, was the ­daughter of Israel Helm, succeeded his ­uncle, West Jersey proprietor Andrew Robeson, as justice in Gloucester County court. Though prob­ably a Scot, the younger Robeson became a member of the Swedish Lutheran community and helped to protect land titles that the old settlers had received from the Lenapes.23 In Gloucester County, from 1686 to 1718, at least fifty old settlers, primarily Swedes and Finns, participated in court as justice or juror. Their numbers remained in the minority on ­grand and petit juries, occasionally reaching five or six members out of fifteen or more on the ­grand inquest. An exception occurred in 1698 ­after Jeremiah Basse arranged his appointment as governor by the En­glish proprietors, the West New Jersey Society. He had undermined Governor Andrew Hamilton’s position by questioning his qualification for office b­ ecause he was a Scot, thus alienating leading West Jersey Quakers who favored Hamilton. A ­ fter Basse arrived in West Jersey with faulty documents (he failed to pay a required £1,000 security bond) and named anti-­Quakers to his council, Friends and their allies refused to serve in the county courts.24 In September 1698, when Basse and several anti-­Quaker appointees took the bench in Gloucester County court, they faced a nearly empty courtroom as most jurors and constables, apparently Friends and other Hamilton supporters, failed to appear. Basse attempted to take advantage of the ethnic divide between Quakers and old settlers. The justices deputized Staffan Johnsson Ekoren (often called Stephen Jones) to bring in the late sheriff, William Warner, for his misdemeanors against Basse and deferred most other actions. At the next session, in December 1698, the six justices, led by Basse ally Thomas Revell, swore in and attested thirteen g­ rand jurors, of whom eight ­were old settlers: Eric Cock, John Cock, Staffan Johnsson Ekoren, Caspar Fisk, John Lock, Matthias Mattsson, Olle Petersson, and John Rambo. The ­grand jury indicted Andrew Robeson, the younger, a recent justice, for “speaking of Severall Dangerouse Words and threatening language against and in Contempt of the pre­sent [Basse’s] Government.” The petit jury, with old settlers numbering ten out of twelve members, heard a trial for hog theft, finding the defendants not guilty.25 Through 1699, for the remainder of Basse’s governorship, the Gloucester court took ­little action as Swedes and Finns joined the Quaker boycott. With the charges against their ally and fellow Swedish Lutheran Andrew Robeson, they de­cided to oppose Basse. Though thirteen colonists, including eight old settlers, served on the March 1699 g­ rand jury, no one showed up for the petit jury scheduled to try Robeson. The new sheriff made the dubious claim that he was unable to collect fines or distress levied on jurors who had failed to attend ­earlier: “That ­there was no Goods to be found Except of Tho: Sharp,” an iron pot. The court



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scheduled action against Jeremiah Bate for rejecting jury ser­vice and asserting “that the Sherriff was no lawfull Sherriff ” and against Edward Burroughs for refusing to act as constable, as well as the cases of Robeson and the previous sheriff, William Warner. Apparently insufficient jurors appeared at the June 1699 session, where the bench for “Sundry Considderations” continued all business to September, when they deferred action once again. Gloucester held a special court session on January 25, 1700, ­after Andrew Hamilton returned as governor, with Quakers again serving as justices and members of the ­grand jury, along with the old settlers Michael Lycon, Olof Dalbo, and Peter Cock. William Warner resumed his duties as sheriff and Andrew Robeson appeared as justice at the next regular session in March 1700. When the clerk John Reading reminded the bench of the charges and presentments made during Basse’s administration, they thought “fitt to take no further notice thereof then to suspend all further procedure therein for the pre­sent.”26 Finding themselves in a difficult position, old settlers in Gloucester County must have caucused on how to negotiate the factional divide between the Quaker leadership, allied with Andrew Hamilton, and the anti-­Quaker party of Jeremiah Basse. Normally, partisan conflict related to the West New Jersey provincial government unfolded in Burlington, but in 1698–1699 Basse brought his cronies to the county courts. Swedes and Finns who regularly participated in court business in Gloucester at first filled places on the g­ rand and petit juries but then realized the threat to their colleague Andrew Robeson. The old settlers then helped to close down court business almost entirely u­ ntil Hamilton returned. Residents in Salem County also shuttered their court in 1698–1699, though we lack the court minutes for details.27 In Burlington County court, old settlers played a more restricted role as their proportion in the population was much smaller than in Gloucester. Frederick King and Elias Toy of Cinnaminson served as constable and juror, while Hendrick Jacobs Falkenburg, Jonas Keene, Måns Skeen, and Charles Steelman each sat on a few juries.28 The lack of rec­ords for Salem County court before 1706 makes comparison difficult, but according to provincial rec­ords, the Dutch settler Reynier van Hyst and wealthy Swede William Slubey each served as justice for several years. No old settlers ­were appointed justice from 1706 to 1727, though during t­ hose years at least twenty-­three Dutch, Swedes, and Finns held office as constable and fourteen supervised the highways, representing their communities of Penn’s Neck and Pilesgrove. At least thirty sat on petit and ­grand juries, with frequent ser­vice by Andrew Hopman, Erick Johnson, Hans and Gabriel Petersson, and Måns Skeen.29 Thus, from 1665 to the 1720s, the old settlers acted for their neighborhoods in local government, defining themselves as separate from the dominant En­glish colonists while cooperating with them to protect their land and liberty. They helped to decide conflicts involving Quakers as well as Swedes, Finns, and Dutch

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but, as discussed in chapter 5, prevented most morals cases in their own community from reaching court. The old settlers also employed mediation and reciprocity with Lenapes rather than court suits to address disputes over livestock and land. Few old settlers gained—or perhaps even sought—­election to the West Jersey assembly and thus had ­little impact on provincial policy. They collaborated with the Quakers as necessary in the county courts, the administrative centers of West Jersey, hoping thereby to preserve their autonomy. In 1693, old settlers in West Jersey composed one-­third of the Swedish Lutheran ­house­holds who requested ministers and religious books from Sweden. They emphasized their goals to renew ties to the Swedish crown and church hierarchy and to maintain the Swedish language and religion. They wanted priests who “would defend [the Holy Scriptures] and us against all false opposers who can or may oppose any of us . . . ​that if tribulation should come amongst us, and we should suffer our faith, that we are ready to seal it with our blood.” The ­people of Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, German, and other backgrounds who belonged to the Swedish Lutheran community and became known in West Jersey and Pennsylvania as “the Swedes” considered the churches central to their ethnic identity.30 Swedes and Finns in Burlington, Gloucester, and Salem Counties helped to lead the 1693 initiative to attract Lutheran preachers from Sweden and bolster education through Swedish books. They also supported the construction of new churches at Wicaco and Christina. Andreas Rudman’s accounts of pledges for building Gloria Dei Church at Wicaco indicate that twenty-­one ­house­holds from Cinnaminson south to Repaupo Creek contributed between £1.6 and £15 apiece, qualifying them for pew assignments in 1700. According to Ericus Björk, ­house­holds in Penn’s Neck and Raccoon Creek made up nearly one-­half of his congregation. In 1697, they agreed to contribute to the new church at Christina, named Holy Trinity, with the understanding that the members in Delaware would donate equally when the West Jersey Lutherans had sufficient numbers and resources to support their own church. Many congregants from the east bank fulfilled pledges of money, l­abor, and food to complete construction and consecrate Holy Trinity in July 1699.31 By May 1702, the old settlers on the east bank de­cided that the journey by canoe or ferry across the Delaware was too dangerous in winter and too time-­ consuming in other seasons when they needed to tend crops and livestock. Though Rudman was opposed to a separation for financial reasons, he acknowledged that “many ­were lost when they tried to cross with a corpse” to be buried in the churchyard. Members at Penn’s Neck and Raccoon leaped at the opportunity to hire Lars Tolstadius, who in 1701 had come to the Delaware valley without permission of the Swedish church hierarchy when he heard that Rudman planned to return to Sweden. Tolstadius briefly assumed Rudman’s post u­ nder false pretenses and then lost the position when Andreas Sandel arrived. To the dismay of Rudman and Björk, Penn’s Neck and Raccoon invited Tolstadius to



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figure 13. Trinity Episcopal (Old Swedes) Church, Swedesboro, New Jersey, was built

in 1784 to replace the ­earlier log church on Raccoon Creek. (Photo­graph courtesy of Kenneth S. Peterson, Swedish Colonial Society.)

serve as minister and made plans to build a church at Raccoon Creek. Björk wrote in July 1702 to his archbishop in Sweden, “It still cannot be comprehended that fi­nally (­after both congregations [at Wicaco and Christina] had been re-­ organized in the midst of so many foreigners) one came to us from our own Fatherland, and especially lately to violate and destroy me and my congregation, a preacher by the name of Mr. Lars Tolstadius.”32 Though most Penn’s Neck and Raccoon settlers had modest incomes and had contributed £1 to £2 to the Holy Trinity building fund, Ericus Björk lost his most generous patron with the split. The committee who asked Tolstadius to become their preacher and justified their action to the Swedish archbishop included substantial members: William (Olle) Slubey of Boughttown, Olle Petersson and Frederick Hopman of Raccoon Creek, Michael Lycon and Olof Dalbo of Mantua Creek, and Anders Lock of Repaupo Creek. Prob­ably the greatest shock to Björk was the loss of Slubey, who pledged the largest contribution, at least £30, for the Holy Trinity church and took responsibility for collecting donations from members on the east bank. The son of a Finnish immigrant from Sweden, Slubey married Sarah More, who received a large inheritance from her ­father, Dr. Nicholas More, Speaker of the Pennsylvania assembly, chief justice, and provincial secretary.33

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Together, the six-­man committee represented their neighbors, inviting Tolstadius to become their pastor and explaining to the Swedish archbishop why they had taken this step without his permission. They had expected one of the priests who came in 1697 to serve at Penn’s Neck and Raccoon and found the church locations at Christina and Wicaco incon­ve­nient. The Delaware River, they argued, was impassible for half the year in winter, and “in the summer, the greater part of us, who live deep in the forests, often come in vain to the shore, and b­ ecause of a lack of vessels, must turn around and go 12 miles more or less to home again, mourning our loss of church.” They pointed to “the danger of life from strong storms which arise,” with the recent case in which three ­people drowned trying to convey a corpse to the burial ground “and a fourth, still among us, won­ders how he was driven to land and was revived.” They had the numbers and resources to support their own church and requested the archbishop’s “good w ­ ill and f­ avor” so that they could strengthen their ­children “more in the fear of the Lord than in the ­free spirits of the world, bringing them up as true Christians, rather than through force only attempt to retain the name of Christian without thorough knowledge of a true Chris­tian­ity.”34 The Swedish Lutherans of West Jersey affiliated with the state Church of Sweden and ­later gradually merged with the Anglican (Episcopal) Church, which most closely aligned with their beliefs and organ­ization. The Swedish Lutherans ­were one denomination among many, including the po­liti­cally dominant Quakers and growing numbers of Presbyterians, Baptists, German Lutherans, and Moravians. ­Because of the established status of Lutheranism in Sweden, the Swedish priests—­like Anglicans—­chafed at efforts of other ministers to gain converts but at the same time enjoyed broad religious liberty. The same freedom allowed many colonists to ignore or­ga­nized Eu­ro­pean religion altogether, creating challenges for churches to obtain support. Beginning in 1702, Lars Tolstadius served the Swedish Lutherans of Penn’s Neck and Raccoon, directing their effort to build a log church at Raccoon Creek. ­After his 1706 death by drowning in the Delaware River, Ericus Björk stepped in to lead monthly worship at Penn’s Neck, while Raccoon convinced Jonas Aurén, who had arrived in the Delaware valley in 1697 with Rudman and Björk, to become their pastor. The two congregations remained separate though closely affiliated even ­after 1712–1713, when the Swedish priest Abraham Lidenius agreed to serve both communities.35 Despite the distance from Philadelphia, Penn’s Neck, and Raccoon, Swedish ministers paid pastoral calls to members who moved to the Atlantic shore and Maurice River. Andreas Sandel of Wicaco described his tour from September 27 to October 3, 1704, to “the ocean, to a place that is called Eggherbour, ­because some Swedes lived ­there, to preach for them.” From Cinnaminson, he traveled to ­Little Egg Harbor with o­ thers to give a sermon to the f­ amily of Eric Mullica, who had died. Sandel observed that L ­ ittle Egg Harbor was lightly populated by Eu­ro­ pe­ans, with the Mullicas and “one En­glish f­amily [who] lived alongside.” ­After



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figure 14. Trinity Episcopal (Old Swedes) Church chalice and paten, 1731, made of coin

silver. (Photo­graph courtesy of Kenneth S. Peterson, Swedish Colonial Society.)

worship, they departed for G ­ reat Egg Harbor, “a very difficult way” of about twenty miles. They used a flatboat and two canoes tied together to cross the river with six ­horses and eight men, facing the added “hardship of g­ reat masses of mosquitoes.” Sandel marveled at the expanse as they left the forest: “­Toward the ocean we could see salt meadows, vastly wide, and among them are ­here and ­there broad and deep ­water basins, which they called ‘Pannor.’ ” He noted that the En­glish and Swedes “live right by the salt strand,” though not on the beach, ­because salt meadows intervened. The congregation of Swedes and En­glish met at the h­ ouse of Giösta (Gustavus) Fisk, where Sandel preached in En­glish and christened Swedish and En­glish ­children. The next day they took canoes to the seashore, which Sandel described as “a valuable hard sand beach” with turtles, fish, and some “other ­things oysters,” which they ate. Sandel ­later wrote that he visited ­Great Egg Harbor annually to hold catechism examinations and pre­sent sermons in Swedish and En­glish. The shore residents thus remained within the Swedish Lutheran fold, though dependent upon the willingness of their minister to make the journey.36 By the 1740s, clergymen periodically visited the old settlers and their interested neighbors at Maurice River. The Lutheran priest Johan Sandin in 1747 wrote to Sweden that Swedes and Finns in West Jersey “have increased in many places and become scattered,” that the Maurice River, for example, “was 10 or

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12 years ago uninhabited land, where now some 20 Swedish families live, of ­those and their ­children who [formerly] lived ­here in Racoon.”37 For several years previous to Sandin’s report, Moravians had made pro­gress in attracting old settlers ­because they sent missionaries to places lacking clergy. The Moravian minister Abraham Reincke, a Swede, in 1745 traveled from the Moravian headquarters in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to preach at Penn’s Neck and Raccoon. From t­ here, he set out for the Maurice River, where he stayed with George Keen and visited “the Church, some years ago begun by the Moravians. It stands on a hill, not far from the Morris River, very con­ve­niently located for all the p­ eople.” Reincke then “went to old John Hopmann’s, who looks like an Indian, and met t­ here his wife, and the wife of William Cobb.” On the next day, Reincke preached to a larger congregation than he expected, “first in Swedish, and l­ater in En­glish.” He baptized the infant son of Eric and Catherine Keen and was pleased that numerous Germans who burned tar at Cohansey ­were pre­sent. The Moravian missionary noted many colonists who had been affiliated with the Swedish Lutheran church and knew Swedish but believed he “found in this country scarcely one genuine Swede left, the most of them are ­either in part or in ­whole on one side or the other descended from En­glish or Dutch parents. . . . ​Many of them can just recollect that their grand-­fathers or ­mothers w ­ ere Swedish.” He claimed the “En­glish are evidently swallowing up the ­people and the Swedish language is so corrupted” that he could not understand their conversation ­unless he knew En­glish. In Salem and Gloucester Counties as well, the old settlers became quite acculturated by the mid-­eighteenth ­century, as the Penn’s Neck Swedish Lutheran church changed to all En­glish ser­vices by 1742 and only a few ­people attended the Swedish ser­vices at Raccoon. By the 1770s, both congregations ­adopted the Anglican liturgy.38 Though Swedes and Finns became more assimilated with the Dutch and En­glish through marriage and cultural accommodation, many continued to reject the dominant colonization model of West Jersey leaders. In the late seventeenth and early eigh­teenth centuries, the old settlers’ pattern of dispersed homesteads rather than more systematic colonization facilitated cooperation with Lenape towns. Through a mixed economy rather than extensive agriculture, the Swedes and Finns continued the practice of shared resources expected by Cohanzick, Armewamese, and Rancocas sakimaòk. As late as 1749, the Swedish botanist Peter Kalm observed that the Swedes and Finns of Raccoon lived on “unconnected” farms rather than in villages. “The greatest part of the land, between ­these farms so far apart,” Kalm wrote, “was overgrown with woods, consisting of tall trees. However, t­ here was a fine space between the trees, so that one could ­ride on h­ orse­back without incon­ve­nience in the woods. . . . ​In some parts of the country the trees ­were thick and tall, but in ­others large tracts covered with young trees, only twenty, thirty, or forty years old. On t­ hese tracts, I am told, the Indians formerly had their ­little plantations.”39



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When the Quakers landed in 1675, old settlers drew on more than three de­cades of experience in the Delaware valley. They understood their minority status in cooperating with Lenapes, practicing the treaty protocol and reciprocity required to occupy land. As allies of Armewamese, Cohanzick, and other groups, Swedes and Finns retained significant autonomy, shielding their neighborhoods from unwelcome moral supervision by Quaker justices. Old settlers similarly reconciled disputes with Lenapes outside of county courts, dealing with damages by pigs and ­cattle through mediation rather than lawsuits or vio­ lence. The Swedes and Finns ­adopted three interlocking strategies to negotiate Quaker colonization. They cultivated their long-­term alliance with the Lenapes, managing to preserve their friendship despite the ravages of disease and roaming livestock. At the same time, old settlers participated in local county courts, cooperating with the En­glish while keeping control of morals cases within their own community. Equally impor­tant, through membership in the Swedish Lutheran church, many Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans embraced an ethnic identity by which they became known as “the Swedes,” supported for generations by Swedish language, religion, and culture despite increasing anglicization by the mid-­eighteenth ­century.

CONCLUSION

At the 1757 conference in Easton, on the west side of the Delaware River, the New Jersey sakimaòk Teedyuscung and Cawkeeponen ( John Pompshire) explained to Governor William Denny of Pennsylvania why Lenapes attacked colonists in the Seven Years’ War. “You may easily see the reason of the gloomy and dark days,” Teedyuscung declared. “They have proceeded from the earth. . . . ​as well as [from] our differences and grievances that have passed and repassed.” When asked for more specifics, the interpreter Cawkeeponen clarified that expropriation of Lenape territory was a principal cause of war, “and thô the first settlers might purchase the lands fairly yet they did not act well nor do the Indians Justice for they o­ ught to have reserved some place for the Indians.” Their critiques of colonization in the Delaware valley—­and En­glish North Amer­i­ca more generally—­ reflected the long witness of Lenapes against Eu­ro­pean colonization since the Sickoneysincks in 1631 destroyed the Dutch colony at Swanendael. Lenapes in West Jersey considered the results of Eu­ro­pean, especially En­glish, settlement as catastrophic both ­because of the colonists’ expectation that they would vacate the land and the devastating impact of epidemic disease.1 ­Earlier in the war, in 1756, the New Jersey Indian commissioners had directed Lenape representatives to submit a list of lands they still owned. The New Jersey government wanted to tighten control over Lenapes in the province b­ ecause of the conflict in Pennsylvania and attacks by Munsees on settlers in northwestern New Jersey. The Lenapes brought a list of tracts to the Crosswicks conference in February 1758 that overlapped with deeds for extensive areas of southern New Jersey for which John Fenwick, Dr. Daniel Coxe, and the West New Jersey Society had negotiated in the late seventeenth c­entury. The sakimaòk contested Eu­ro­pean possession of some parcels ­because colonists had forfeited the land by failing to occupy it promptly or had not provided adequate payment.2 The Lenapes explained to the commissioners “that the lands they claimed, could not be by them described by lines, . . . ​as they went to hollows, and small brooks, which had no certain names.” They described territories primarily on the upper reaches of New Jersey rivers, starting from the Pompton and Raritan Rivers south to the G ­ reat Egg Harbor River and Cape May. In Salem and Cumberland 134

Conclusion 135

Counties, the Lenape Robert Kekott claimed tracts in Pilesgrove, and Cohanzicks listed the site of Deerfield’s Presbyterian church and acreage of three Eu­ro­pe­ans. The Lenape sakima Isaac Still possessed land on the east side of G ­ reat Egg Harbor River while Abraham Loques owned the “Cedar-­Swamp, on the east side, Tuckahoe Branch, which John Campion and Peter Campbell have, or had in possession. Also Stuypson’s island, near Delaware River.” Jacob Mullis listed large tracts in the Pine Barrens, including some that became part of the Brotherton reservation.3 Not all Lenape communities had adequate repre­sen­ta­tion at the Crosswicks treaty, as the attendance of Crossweeksung and Cranbury sakimaòk was much stronger than among Rancocas, Armewamese, and Cohanzick leaders farther south. Thus, while the list of landholdings provides some information about the scope of Lenape territory through the Pine Barrens, Jersey shore, and Mullica River, such impor­tant sites as Cohanzick towns in Salem and Cumberland Counties fail to appear. ­Because John Fenwick recognized in 1675–1676 that the Cohanzicks would keep “the Plantations in wch they now Inhabite” ­until “they ­shall thinke fitt to Remove from the same,” the Lenapes may have assumed that they needed no further treaty with the New Jersey government. The Presbyterian minister John Brainerd in the 1760s preached to Lenapes and whites throughout southern New Jersey, including Cohansey, Woodbury, Crossweeksung, Coaxen, the Pine Barrens, and Jersey shore. In 1773, the Swedish priest Nicholas Collin noted in his journal that Methodist missionaries w ­ ere working among the Lenapes “in the woods east of Raccoon,” explaining that they had “for the most part not confessed any par­tic­u­lar religion before,” referring, of course, to Eu­ro­pean denominations rather than their own faith. ­Later, in 1786, Collin baptized an infant child “whose f­ ather and ­mother are Indians” and had several years e­ arlier associated with a Presbyterian missionary.4 When the New Jersey Indian commissioners dismissed most of the Lenapes’ claims at the 1758 Crosswicks conference, the delegates appointed a committee of sakimaòk to work with the Philadelphia Quaker Israel Pemberton to find supporting evidence in the colonial land rec­ords. When that effort failed, the sakimaòk signed the September  1758 deed ceding all territory except Coaxen and several tracts held by individual Lenapes. They kept rights to hunt and fish on uncultivated lands in New Jersey and received the three-­thousand-­acre Brotherton reservation in Burlington County, where a minority of Lenapes in New Jersey chose to reside. In a separate deed, the Munsees released their territory north of the Raritan River for one thousand Spanish pieces of eight. In 1802, with the New Jersey assembly’s consent, Lenapes at Brotherton sold the reservation and moved to New Stockbridge, New York, retaining rights to hunt and fish in New Jersey ­until 1832. Wars in the Ohio valley forced o­ thers to travel farther north and west, to Ontario, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and elsewhere in North Amer­i­ca, while many Lenapes remained in West Jersey, “hiding in plain sight” through centuries of discrimination and prejudice.5

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Despite common values for peace, religious freedom, local autonomy, and ­ omen’s authority among the Lenapes, Swedes and Finns, and Quakers in the w late seventeenth and early eigh­teenth centuries, the outcome of colonization in West New Jersey was similar to results in other En­glish provinces. Though Quakers could argue that they purchased territory in West New Jersey without military force, Teedyuscung and Cawkeeponen correctly claimed that the proprietors sought to exclude Lenapes from all their land. The Quaker minister John Woolman, of Burlington County, reflected the Friends’ mentality in his first essay against slavery written in 1746: He that sleeps not by day nor night hath watched over us and kept us as the apple of his eye. His almighty arm hath been round about us and saved us from dangers. The wilderness and solitary deserts in which our ­fathers passed the days of their pilgrimage are now turned into pleasant fields. The natives are gone from before us, and we establish peaceably in the possession of the land, enjoying our civil and religious liberties. And while many parts of the world have groaned ­under the heavy calamities of war, our habitation remains quiet and our land fruitful.6

By 1763, however, in the midst of Pontiac’s War, Woolman awakened to the impact of the En­glish colonization on Lenapes, linking their loss of land with the oppression of enslaved Africans in North Amer­i­ca. He surveyed “a prospect of the En­glish along the coast for upward of nine hundred miles where I have travelled. And the favourable situation of the En­glish and the difficulties attending the natives in many places, and the Negroes, ­were open before me. . . . ​And ­here luxury and covetousness, with the numerous oppressions and other evils attending them, appeared very afflicting to me, and I felt in that which is immutable that the seeds of ­great calamity and desolation are sown and growing fast on this continent.”7 The West New Jersey proprietors had rejected the Lenape’s plea, published by Thomas Budd in 1685, to live together as ­brothers, establishing “a broad Path for you and us to walk in.”8 The Friends ignored the possibilities offered by Lenape friendship and generosity as well as the model of old settlers who had endorsed the “broad Path.” The Quaker choice remains somewhat surprising given their persecution in ­England and Ireland and their professed commitment to nonviolence, equality of all ­people before God, and the golden rule to behave ­toward ­others as you wish to be treated. The West New Jersey Concessions of 1676–1677 promised a radical approach to government with broad religious freedom, re­spect for Lenape property rights, due ­legal pro­cess, and republican government, yet with Quaker settlement its limitations became clear. The proprietors expected the Lenapes to leave, even welcoming the deadly effects of Eu­ro­pean disease. Elite Friends purchased imported Africans and Natives, treating them as outside the protection of West Jersey law and community. Like other En­glish colonial-

Conclusion 137

ists, Quakers accepted racial divisions of humanity in which Africans and Native Americans could be enslaved and Indigenous ­people removed from their homeland. The proprietors of West New Jersey discovered, however, that Lenapes remained power­ful, despite the ravages of epidemics. While Quakers pushed Lenapes from the rich agricultural lands of the inner coastal plain, Cohanzicks, Armewamese, Rancocas, and other groups moved their towns to the heads of streams, which they claimed formally in 1758, and continued to reside ­there a­ fter the New Jersey government denied ­these rights. The West Jersey proprietors thus insisted on separate paths that undermined the possibility of an inclusive commonwealth. Despite efforts to mediate conflicts over livestock and fraud that could have resulted in war, leading Friends had ­little interest in sharing land and resources. They employed propaganda blaming the Lenapes’ decline in population on use of alcohol. The Quakers wanted peace but considered the Rancocas, Mantes, and Armewamese ­people as heathens who could corrupt their c­ hildren. In fact, Quaker meetings increasingly separated themselves from other colonists, such as Swedes, Finns, and Anglicans, to keep young men and ­women from marrying outside the faith. Elder Quaker w ­ omen placed significant emphasis on controlling sons and d­ aughters and differentiating themselves from other Eu­ro­pe­ans by avoiding fash­ion­able attire. At the same time, ­women Friends benefitted with their husbands, ­fathers, and ­brothers from buying and selling Lenape real estate and participated broadly in the Delaware valley economy. Swedes, Finns, and other old settlers pursued a dif­fer­ent path from the West Jersey colonizers, maintaining their ethnic identity while interacting with Lenapes and Friends. Men and w ­ omen guarded the alliance with Cohanzicks and Armewamese that they had developed since the 1650s, negotiating with their neighbors when prob­lems arose over livestock and personal disputes. Most Swedes and Finns focused on small-­scale agriculture, livestock, crafts, and trade with the Lenapes, managing with a single farm and resources in surrounding woodlands and streams. Few purchased enslaved Blacks, depending primarily on f­amily ­labor. Old settler men participated in West Jersey government, signing the concessions and serving in county courts. Thus, they protected their civil rights and property, while monitoring the actions of Quaker justices ­toward their families. Continuing the pattern of the Upland court ­under old settler control ­until 1681, the Swedes and Finns kept the West Jersey courts from supervising most morals cases in their community. In addition, many old settlers preserved and developed their ethnic identity through the Swedish Lutheran church. In 1693, they assisted fully in recruiting ministers from Sweden and contributed to building new churches at Wicaco and Christina. When travel across the Delaware became cumbersome, the members at Penn’s Neck and Raccoon established their own congregations. Though subsequent generations ­adopted ser­vices in En­glish and became part of the Anglican denomination, both churches continue to reflect their Swedish heritage.

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Africans came to the Delaware valley by force, most on ships from the West Indies. Some had toiled in the sugar fields of Barbados or other islands. Though their numbers w ­ ere smaller in West Jersey than in plantation economies, enslaved Blacks in Burlington and the surrounding countryside endured a harsh regime, as elite Quakers expected obedience from unpaid and unwilling workers. West Jersey enslavers and officials—­often the same individuals—­considered African Americans separate from white colonists, unprotected by law and neighborly concern. The Burlington County court failed to convict James ­Wills of murder ­after flogging his enslaved w ­ oman more than one hundred times, leading to her death. The justices also refused to investigate the rape of an African w ­ oman by a white man, severely punishing her husband for raising the alarm. Blacks faced scrutiny, false charges, and rigorous penalties for even minor infractions. Though abolitionism developed gradually during the eigh­teenth ­century, revealing the ambivalence of Delaware valley Friends, early Quakers had readily ­adopted enslavement based on racial difference. During the seventeenth c­ entury, the Lenapes defended their homeland from the east bank of the Delaware River to the Atlantic shore, maintaining po­liti­cal sovereignty in autonomous towns. Though welcoming the Swedes and Finns to southern Lenapehoking and permitting Quakers to establish homes, the Cohanzicks, Armewamese, Mantes, Rancocas, and other groups preserved their ethnic and religious identity. They refused to divulge the intricacies of their religion while rebuffing efforts to convert them to Chris­tian­ity. They taught the newcomers what became known as the Unami pidgin rather than their much more sophisticated language as a strategy to prevent assaults on their culture, including forced conversion of their ­children. The Lenapes maintained their primacy through the late seventeenth c­ entury, avoiding military conflicts, such as Bacon’s Rebellion in the Chesapeake and King Philip’s War in New ­England, though conducting restricted mourning war to stop Eu­ro­pean intruders. The Lenapes formed alliances with the old settlers, negotiating within a reciprocal framework of gifts, re­spect, and shared resources rather than colonial dispossession of land. The Cohanzicks spelled out to John Fenwick and his colonists in 1675 that their towns would remain on the Cohansey River; the Friends would receive rights to use territory in return for gifts, not exclusive owner­ship. The Quaker immigrants, seeking new opportunities and escape from religious persecution, found considerable peace in the colony they called Salem in large part ­because they shared values with the Cohanzicks and acknowledged their sovereignty. The Armewamese, Mantes, and Rancocas faced a sustained challenge from the West New Jersey settlers, who systematically purchased land in Burlington and Gloucester Counties, expecting the Lenapes to vacate fertile agricultural territory on the inner coastal plain. Lenape sakimaòk such as Ockanickon opposed the new colonial regime that spread plantations and epidemic disease across the land. They protested in 1703 when the colonists interpreted the 1677 deeds as

Conclusion 139

figure 15. Logo of the Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation, headquartered in

Bridgeton, New Jersey. Their website can be accessed at www​.­NLLTribe​.­com. (Courtesy of the Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation.)

figure 16. Sign of the Turtle Trading Post in Bridgeton, New Jersey. (Courtesy of the

Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation.)

incorporating more territory than the sakimaòk intended and saved Coaxen in 1714 when a colonist tried fraudulently to seize the land. The Lenapes threatened war, successfully forcing the Quakers to pull back. Despite large-­scale Eu­ro­pean settlement, the Lenapes held on to towns at Crossweeksung and Coaxen, as well as territory in the Pine Barrens and near the Atlantic shore. Cohanzicks also remained on the Cohansey River but faced severe persecution during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They avoided attention from whites as much as pos­si­ble while protecting their families and identities through tribal churches. Members of several Nanticoke communities of the Delmarva peninsula, already allies, moved to southern New Jersey and intermarried with the Cohanzicks. The Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation formally or­ga­nized in the 1970s as civil rights laws introduced l­egal protections and, in June 1995, reclaimed twenty-­eight acres in Fairton, Cumberland County, honoring its original status with the name Cohanzick—­the Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Grounds. They affirm “this portion of our homeland, ‘ours,’ ” as a sacred connection to “ancestors [who] stayed or returned to watch over the land (and one

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day reclaim it) and honor our ancient ways.” Members of the Nanticoke Lenni-­ Lenape Nation elect a tribal government, with a nine-­member council and chief, and require that enrolled tribal citizens have at least one-­fourth blood quantum from documented Lenape and Nanticoke families. Their community development organ­ization offers a full range of ser­vices in health, education, cultural activities, job training, and se­nior benefits. They hold an annual powwow and traditional and Christian religious ser­vices. The Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation emphatically bans tribal participation in casinos and such other practices as managing slot machines and selling cigarettes and alcohol. Like the Cohanzicks who confronted Eu­ro­pe­ans in the seventeenth and eigh­teenth centuries, the nation upholds its po­liti­cal sovereignty, cultural identity, and heritage while interacting with outsiders who attend powwows and other events. In the words of tribal leaders, “Our ancestors never surrender their tribal identity or inherent sovereignty. From the mid 1660’s through to the establishment of the United States, we shared our homeland with the Swedes and Finns, Dutch and British . . . ​ but, always kept our tribal community alive and well.” As an autonomous community in alliance with other Natives, Pastor John Norwood writes, “We are still ­here!”9 In the seventeenth c­ entury, the continued dominance of Cohanzicks, Armewamese, Mantes, Rancocas, and other groups in southern Lenapehoking distinguished colonization in West New Jersey from other En­glish provinces. Though ravaged by smallpox and other Eu­ro­pean diseases, Lenape men and ­women ­shaped the growth of regional society through their values and po­liti­cal organ­ ization. They nurtured their alliance with the Swedes, Finns, and other old settlers, working together to reject the Quaker model of colonization, including subordination to West Jersey courts. Lenapes and most old settlers similarly opposed the scourge of slavery, as Lenapes lobbied the Pennsylvania government and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to ban the importation of enslaved Native Americans. The commitment to peace and religious freedom of the three groups—­ Lenapes, old settlers, and Friends—­permitted the development of autonomous communities without forts or palisades. They interacted with one another to resolve conflicts yet retained their ethnicity through separate religious and cultural traditions. The Lenapes protected their po­liti­cal sovereignty despite Quaker efforts to create an En­glish country and deprive imported Blacks and Native Americans of their rights to liberty and justice.

ACKNOWL­E DGMENTS

My research for this book began in the mid-1990s when I planned to investigate the history of Lenapes in southern New Jersey. That work led to my book Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (2015), which focused primarily on the history of the west bank of the Delaware before 1681. In the pro­ cess, I discovered that the rich collections of West Jersey deeds, county court minutes, and religious rec­ords called for a cross-­cultural study of southern Lenapehoking. Since 2015, I have benefited from the insights and suggestions of many colleagues, including Zachary Baer, Robert Barnett, Robert Craig, Mark Demitroff, Bonnie Beth Elwell, Claude Epstein, Edward Fox, Peter Hamilton, David Larsson, Michelle LeMaster, Maxine Lurie, Douglas McVarish, Peter Mickulas, Monica Najar, John Norwood, Dennis and Trudy O’Hare, Jim Rementer, Daniel Richter, Paul Schopp, Robert Shinn, Rudy Soderlund, Robert Thompson, Richard Veit, Richard Waldron, Richard Watson, Margaret Westfield, Lorraine Williams, John Yates, Curtis Zunigha, and the anonymous readers for Rutgers University Press. I am grateful to the New Jersey Historical Commission, a division of the Department of State, for its grant to conduct research at a number of manuscript repositories and archives in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Over the years, colleagues from many institutions have helped me to find relevant materials, including the American Philosophical Society Library, Burlington County Historical Society, Camden County Historical Society, Cape May County Historical Society, Cumberland County Historical Society, Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, Gloucester County Historical Society, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Moravian Archives, National Archives of Scotland, New Jersey Historical Society, New Jersey State Archives, Prince­ton University Library, Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College, Rowan University Archives, Rutgers University Special Collections, Salem County Clerk’s Office, and Salem County Historical Society. In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic closed research facilities, I was fortunate to have help from Veronica Calder and Joseph Klett to locate a second version of the West New Jersey Concessions of 1676–1677 at the state archives. I also benefitted greatly from the wealth of digital resources available through Lehigh University Libraries. For images and maps, I received help and guidance from Richard Adamczyk and Brittney Ingersoll of the Cumberland County Historical Society; Veronica Calder of the New Jersey State Archives; Ty “Dancing Wolf ” Ellis and Pastor John Norwood of the Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal 141

142

Acknowledgments

Nation; Sarah Horo­witz of the Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College; Joseph Mathews of the New Sweden Com­pany; Kenneth Peterson of the Swedish Colonial Society; Edie Rohrman of Trinity Episcopal Church, Swedesboro; Michael Siegel of Rutgers University Cartography Lab; and Andrew Williams of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. It has been a plea­sure to work with Peter Mickulas, executive editor at Rutgers University Press, who has offered expert guidance, encouragement, and enthusiasm throughout peer review, revisions, and preparation for book production. It is an honor to have Separate Paths accepted as one of the first titles in Ceres: Rutgers Studies in History, edited by Professor Christopher T. Fisher of the College of New Jersey and Professor Lucia McMahon of William Paterson University. Alissa Zarro, Jennifer Blanc-­Tal, Michelle Scott, Matthew Perez, and their colleagues at Rutgers University Press and Westchester Publishing Ser­vices have managed the pro­cess ­toward publication with vision and skill. I am indebted to my friends and ­family for their continuing support and to my husband, Rudy Soderlund, who shares my interest in the early history and admiration of the beautiful countryside of southern Lenapehoking.

NOTES

introduction 1. ​John Cripps, “A True Account of the ­Dying Words of Ockanickon” (London: Benjamin

Clark, 1682), reprinted in Journal of the Friends Historical Society, supplement, 9 (London, 1912): 164–166; Samuel Smith, The History of New-­Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 148–150; Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1752; 2nd ed., Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman, 1881), 442–443, 451–452; John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1956), 286; Robert S. Grumet, “Linking Modern-­Day Delaware Indians to the Abbott Farm National Historic Landmark with Documents,” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 68–70 (2013–2015): 97, 124, 137; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 51, 161, 179, 315. 2. ​Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-­Jersey in Amer­i­ca (1685), 28–33; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 87–90, 145–147, 156–157, 177, 285; Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 440–444, 452–453; Robert  L. Thompson, Burlington Biographies: A History of Burlington, New Jersey, Told through the Lives and Times of Its P ­ eople (Galloway, N.J.: South Jersey Culture and History Center, Stockton University, 2016), 3–12. 3. ​Daniel K. Richter, “Land and Words: William Penn’s Letter to the Kings of the Indians,” in Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Strug­gle for Eastern North Amer­i­ca (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 135–154; Patrick M. Erben, A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 116–124; Vine Deloria Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (repr. with new preface, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1988), 27, 200–202; Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial ­Virginia (New York: W.  W. Norton, 1975), 76, 83; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and En­glish: Facing Off in Early Amer­i­ca (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000), 93–95, 172; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Proj­ect (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 1–3, 125; Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World (New York: Vintage Books, 2005), 48–50. 4. ​Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 112–148. 5. ​Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with En­glish Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984); Richard White, The M ­ iddle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the ­Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Michael N. McConnell, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its P ­ eoples, 1724–1774 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992); Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Re­sis­tance: The North American Indian Strug­gle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999); Fred Anderson, Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North Amer­ic­ a, 1754–1766 (New York: Vintage Books, 2000); Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early Amer­i­ca (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001); Gregory Evans Dowd, War ­under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,

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Notes to Pages 4–5

2002); Jane  T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on a Mid-­Atlantic Frontier, 1700–1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); William A. Pencak and Daniel K. Richter, eds., Friends and Enemies in Penn’s Woods: Indians, Colonists, and the Racial Construction of Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004); Peter Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early Amer­i­ca (New York: W. W. Norton, 2008); Patrick Spero, Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). 6. ​South of Assunpink Creek, several new counties have been carved out of the original four in West New Jersey, including Mercer, Camden, Cumberland, and Atlantic. My study focuses on old Burlington, Gloucester, and Salem Counties, for which rec­ords exist for the late seventeenth ­century. 7. ​Among many valuable archaeological and historical studies of Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland stretching from southern New York through New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania to Cape Henlopen in Delaware, see Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape-­Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 b.c.–­a.d. 2000 (n.p.: Lenape Books, 2001); Grumet, Munsee Indians; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972); Amy C. Schutt, ­Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Gunlög Fur, A Nation of ­Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Richard Veit and David Orr, eds., Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014); and many informative articles in the Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey. 8. ​Pomfret, West New Jersey; Maxine N. Lurie and Richard Veit, eds., New Jersey: A History of the Garden State (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2012); Richard F. Veit, Digging New Jersey’s Past: Historical Archaeology in the Garden State (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Peter O. Wacker, Land and ­People: A Cultural Geography of Pre­industrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975); Thomas  L. Purvis, Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, 1703–1776 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986); and William M. Offutt Jr., Of “Good Laws” and “Good Men”: Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680–1710 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). Many other impor­tant books and articles on specific topics related to West Jersey history are cited in the chapters below. Two volumes on the social and po­liti­cal history of colonial East Jersey that have influenced my thinking are Ned C. Landsman, Scotland and Its First American Colony, 1683–1765 (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ ton University Press, 1985); and Brendan McConville, ­These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Strug­gle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 9. ​Budd, Good Order Established, 32–33. 10. ​Augustine Herrman and W. Faithorne, sculpt., V ­ irginia and Mary­land as it is planted and inhabited this pre­sent year 1670 (London, 1673), accessed August 30, 2019, https://­www​.­loc​.­gov​ /­item​/­2002623131​/­; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 12–148. On the continuing power of Indigenous ­people in eastern North Amer­ic­ a, see Daniel K. Richter, “His Own, Their Own: Settler Colonialism, Native ­Peoples, and Imperial Balances of Power in Eastern North Amer­i­ca, 1660–1715,” in The World of Colonial Amer­ic­ a: An Atlantic Handbook, ed. Ignacio Gallup-­Diaz (New York: Routledge, 2017), 209–233; Susanah Shaw Romney, “Settler Colonial Prehistories in Seventeenth-­Century North Amer­i­ca,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd  ser., 76 (2019): 375–382. Kathleen DuVal discusses the success of Natives of the Arkansas valley in incorporating Eu­ro­pean colonists into their economic, social, and po­liti­cal networks from the sixteenth to early nineteenth centuries in The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the



Notes to Page 12

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Continent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). Elizabeth Ellis describes how Indigenous nations in the lower Mississippi valley permitted French colonists to ­settle nearby and conduct trade in “The Natchez War Revisited: Vio­lence, Multinational Settlements, and Indigenous Diplomacy in the Lower Mississippi Valley,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 77 (2020): 441–472.

chapter 1  Defending the Lenape Homeland 1. ​Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial ­Virginia

(New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), 71–91; April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic ­Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth C ­ entury (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 24–25; Helen C. Rountree, “The Powhatans and the En­glish: A Case of Multiple Conflicting Agendas,” in Powhatan Foreign Relations 1500–1722, ed. Helen C. Rountree (Charlottesville: University Press of V ­ irginia, 1993), 194–195; Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Indians and En­glish: Facing Off in Early Amer­i­ca (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); Daniel K. Richter, “Tsenacommacah and the Atlantic World,” in The Atlantic World and ­Virginia, 1550–1624, ed. Peter C. Mancall (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 29–65; James  D. Rice, “ ‘­These Doubtfull Times, between Us and the Indians’: Indigenous Politics and the Jamestown Colony in 1619,” in ­Virginia 1619: Slavery and Freedom in the Making of En­glish Amer­i­ca, ed. Paul Musselwhite, Peter C. Mancall, and James Horn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 215–35; Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North Amer­ic­ a (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1–64, 81–95; Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015), 125–217; Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Eu­ro­pe­ans, and the Making of New ­England, 1500–1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, En­glish, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New ­England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 54–81; Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-­Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006); Oliver A. Rink, Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986); Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-­Century Amer­i­ca (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009); Stephen T. Staggs, “Declarations of Interdependence: The Nature of Dutch-­Native Relations in New Netherland, 1624–1664,” in Dutch and Indigenous Communities in Seventeenth-­Century Northeastern North Amer­i­ca, ed. Lucianne Lavin (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021), 43–78. 2. ​Benjamin Schmidt, “Mapping an Empire: Cartographic and Colonial Rivalry in Seventeenth-­ Century Dutch and En­glish North Amer­ic­ a,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54 (1997): 549–578; Ken McMillan, “Centers and Peripheries in En­glish Maps of Amer­i­ca, 1590–1685,” in Early American Cartographies, ed. Martin Brückner (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 87; C. A. Weslager and A. R. Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, Traders and Settlers in the Delaware Valley 1609–1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), 43–81, 215–232; Christian J. Koot, A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake (New York: New York University Press, 2018), 90–91. 3. ​Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape-­Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 b. c.–­a. d. 2000 (n.p.: Lenape Books, 2001), 257–312; Dorothy Cross, Archaeology of New Jersey, 2 vols. (Trenton: Archaeological Society of New Jersey and New Jersey State Museum, 1941, 1956), 1:207–212, 2:167–197. For analyses of the lit­er­a­ture on late Woodland and Contact period archaeology in New Jersey,

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Notes to Pages 13– 15

see Peter Pagoulatos, “Native American Contact Period Settlement Patterns of New Jersey,” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey [BASNJ] 62 (2007): 23–40; Peter Pagoulatos, “A Reconsideration of Forager-­Collector Settlement System Models and Native American Land Use Patterns in New Jersey,” BASNJ 63 (2008): 48–60; R. Michael Stewart, “The Status of Late Woodland Research in the Delaware Valley,” BASNJ 53 (1998): 1–12; R. Michael Stewart, “Rethinking the Abbott Farm: Oral Tradition, Context, and Historic Perspective,” BASNJ 49 (1994): 61–66. 4. ​“From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1630–1633, 1643 (1655),” in Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707, ed. Albert Cook Myers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 25; “Relation of Captain Thomas Yong, 1634,” in Myers, Narratives, 47–49; C. A. Weslager, “Robert Evelyn’s Indian Tribes and Place-­Names of New Albion,” BASNJ 9 (1954): 2. 5. ​Kraft, Lenape-­Delaware Indian Heritage, 257–277, 291–307; Cross, Archaeology of New Jersey; Stewart, “Status,” 1–12; Dorothy Cross, “Delaware and Related Horizons in New Jersey,” BASNJ 6 (1953): 7–11; Adolph  B. Benson, ed., Peter Kalm’s Travels in North Amer­i­ca, vol. 1 (New York: Wilson-­Erickson, 1937), 259–262. 6. ​Kraft, 240–247, 277–290; Amy C. Schutt, ­Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 13–14, 198; Gunlög Fur, A Nation of ­Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 15–31; Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 18–19; Robert Steven Grumet, “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen: M ­ iddle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian W ­ omen During the 17th and 18th Centuries,” in W ­ omen and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock (New York: Praeger, 1980), 43–62; Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018). 7. ​Kraft, 313–317; C.  A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 55–56, 65–72; Schutt, ­Peoples, 25–30; Gregory Evans Dowd, A Spirited Re­sis­tance: The North American Indian Strug­gle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 1–22; Gregory Evans Dowd, The Indians of New Jersey (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1992), 27–30. 8. ​“Letter of Reverend Jonas Michaëlius, 1628,” in Narratives of New Netherland 1609–1664, ed. J. Franklin Jameson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1909), 126–128; “Printz to Oxenstierna, April 14, 1643,” and “Brahe to Printz, November 9, 1643,” in Amandus Johnson, The Instruction for Johan Printz Governor of New Sweden (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1930), 153, 156; Campanius to the Archbishop, January 20, 1647, quoted in Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006), 192; Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-­Eric Williams, eds., Colonial Rec­ords of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006–2009), 1:7; Thomas Campanius Holm, Description of the Province of New Sweden, trans. Peter S. Du Ponceau (Philadelphia: M’Carty & Davis, 1834; repr., Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint, 1975), 74–76, 144–159; Patrick M. Erben, A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 106; Benson, Peter Kalm’s Travels, 270. 9. ​Ives Goddard, “The Use of Pidgins and Jargons on the East Coast of North Amer­ic­ a,” in The Language Encounter in the Amer­ic­ as, 1492–1800: A Collection of Essays, ed. Edward G. Gray and Norman Fiering (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 62–78; Ives Goddard, “The Delaware Jargon,” in New Sweden in Amer­ic­ a, ed. Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara  E. Benson (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 137–143;



Notes to Pages 15–18

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Sean P. Harvey, Native Tongues: Colonialism and Race from Encounter to the Reservation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2015), 22–25; “From the ‘New World,’ by Johan de Laet, 1625, 1630, 1633, 1640” in Jameson, Narratives, 58–60. See also the excellent work of James  A. Rementer in the Lenape Talking Dictionary (2019) http://­www​.­talk​-­lenape​.­org​ /­detail​?­id​=­2295. 10. ​“Letter of Reverend Jonas Michaëlius, 1628,” in Jameson, Narratives, 126–129; D. L. Noorlander, Heaven’s Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Com­pany in the Atlantic World (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2019), 97–101, 183–185. 11. ​West Jersey Deeds, Salem Surveys #2, 64–68 (upside down), New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA); Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:17–19, 82–83; 3:53–56; Isak Collijn, “The Swedish-­Indian Catechism: Some Notes,” Lutheran Quarterly 2 (1988): 93–96; Erben, Harmony, 106; Goddard, “Use of Pidgins,” 64–66; Jean R. Soderlund, ed., William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 312–313. 12. ​Soderlund, Lenape Country, 23–24; “Letter of Isaack De Rasieres to Samuel Blommaert 1628(?),” in Jameson, Narratives, 109; “The Repre­sen­ta­tion of New Netherland, 1650” in Jameson, Narratives, 288, 302–303; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 42; Kraft, Lenape-­Delaware Indian Heritage, 250–251. 13. ​Soderlund, 55–58, 72–85; Kraft, 425–427; Joshua Piker, “Lying Together: The Imperial Implications of Cross-­Cultural Untruths,” American Historical Review 116 (2011): 964–986; Greer, Property and Dispossession; John R. Norwood, We Are Still H ­ ere! The Tribal Saga of New Jersey’s Nanticoke and Lenape Indians (Moorestown: Native New Jersey, 2007); Francis Jennings, The Invasion of Amer­ic­a: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975); William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecol­ogy of New E ­ ngland (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); Salisbury, Manitou and Providence. 14. ​Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 48–51, 63–64, 79–81; Cynthia J. Van Zandt, ­Brothers among Nations: The Pursuit of Intercultural Alliances in Early Amer­i­ca, 1580–1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 122–123; Jacobs, Colony of New Netherland, 22–31; “Instructions for Willem Verhulst, Director of New Netherland [ January 1625],” in A. J. F. van Laer, trans. and ed., Documents Relating to New Netherland, 1624–1626 (San Marino, Calif.: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1924), 51; Charles  T. Gehring, “Sources Relating to Dutch-­Indian Relations,” in Lavin, Dutch and Indigenous Communities, 17–41. 15. ​The Susquehannocks lived in a palisaded town on the Susquehanna River thirty-­five miles north of its mouth on Chesapeake Bay. Daniel K. Richter, “The First Pennsylvanians,” in Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, ed. Randall  M. Miller and William Pencak (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2002), 41; Weslager and Dunlap, 48–81, 121–127; Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 70–74, 87–88, 143; “Letter from Isaack de Rasière to the Directors of the Amsterdam Chamber of the West India Com­pany, September 23, 1626,” in Van Laer, Documents, 208–209; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 30–34. 16. ​Rink, Holland on the Hudson, 94–116; Soderlund, 35–36; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1, Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of Amer­i­ca, 1979), 2–7; Weslager and Dunlap, Dutch Explorers, 85, 257–270. 17. ​Consistent with Lenape land practices, the Sickoneysincks and Kechemeches understood that they w ­ ere making a treaty with the Dutch for trade and small settlements. Soderlund, Lenape Country, 36–40, 43–48; Weslager and Dunlap, 90–99, 271–272; Rink, 107–111; “De Vries,” in Myers, Narratives, 16–18. 18. ​“De Vries,” 9, 15–21; Weslager and Dunlap, 95–96.

148

Notes to Pages 19– 24

19. ​“De Vries,” 18–21. 20. ​“De Vries,” 21–26. 21. ​“Relation of Captain Thomas Yong, 1634” in Myers, Narratives, 37–40. 22. ​Weslager, “Robert Evelyn’s Indian Tribes,” 1–14; Robert Evelyn gave a lower total count,

but his numbers add up to 940. C. A. Weslager, The En­glish on the Delaware: 1610–1682 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 72–88. 23. ​Weslager, “Robert Evelyn’s Indian Tribes,” 2; Jennings, Invasion of Amer­i­ca, 82–83, 135–38; Salisbury, Manitou and Providence, 176–77, 197–200; Pulsipher, Subjects, 2. 24. ​Kent, Early American Indian Documents, 11–14, 19–20; A. R. Dunlap and C. A. Weslager, “More Missing Evidence: Two Depositions by Early Swedish Settlers,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 91 (1967): 35–45; Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth ­Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 54–55; Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638–1664, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911): 1:182–184, 199–201; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 55–57, 61. 25. ​Weslager, En­glish, 85, 111–112, 126, 128; Soderlund, 61–64, 73, 76–77, 90; Thompson, Contest, 81; “Repre­sen­ta­tion of New Netherland,” in Jameson, Narratives, 287–292, 314. 26. ​Soderlund, 65–72; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 2:700–710; Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 171–172; Johnson, Instruction, 113–114, 116–117, 127, 129, 136. 27. ​Soderlund, 70–72, 79–85; Johnson, Swedish Settlements, 1:7, 2:514, 755–756; Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655  in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1988), 74, 126, 121–122, 175–179, 187–189, 199, 237, 239; Johnson, Instruction, 127–43; Francis Jennings, The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with En­glish Colonies from Its Beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), 80–81; Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes XVIII–­XIX Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1981), 26, 34; Fur, 134–136, 156–157, 164–165; Holm, Description, 153–56; Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 126–132, 154. 28. ​Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 167, 169–171; Governor Johan Printz’s 1644 report in Johnson, Instruction, 117; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 199, 205, 207, 215. 29. ​Lindeström, 154, 165–67. 30. ​Lindeström’s note in 1654 regarding the population of the six towns near the Schuylkill was ambiguous, suggesting that e­ ither 1,200 Lenape men or a total population of 1,200 lived in that area of the west bank. If we accept the lower figure of at least 1,200 p­ eople, with the addition of the Sickoneysincks at Cape Henlopen and other communities located in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Lenape population totaled at least 4,000 at midcentury. In the 1690s, the Swedish ministers Andreas Rudman and Ericus Björk reported that many Lenapes had lived on the Schuylkill in 1650, while Peter Kalm wrote circa 1750 that the Lenapes “previously lived quite densely, where Philadelphia now stands, and moreover lived everywhere in the country; but they became extinct through the measles, which they got from the Eu­ro­pe­ans, when many 100s died.” Quoted in Fur, Colonialism in the Margins, 214; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 18. 31. ​Soderlund, 106–108, 113; Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vols. XX–­XXI, Delaware Papers (En­glish Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 11; Gehring, Dutch Period, 243, 264, 305, 314, 317, 320–323. The Lenapes’ population declined between the 1630s and 1670s, with epidemics of smallpox, influenza, measles, and other Eu­ro­ pean diseases for which Natives lacked immunity, but less severely than occurred in other



Notes to Pages 24–26

149

parts of North Amer­i­ca. The Hurons and Haudenosaunee endured epidemics in the 1630s, losing at least one-­half of their p­ eople by the 1640s and 90 to 95 ­percent in subsequent years. Several Dutch officials wrote that Native populations in New Netherland also declined by at least 90 ­percent by 1650. Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop 1630–1649 (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996), 402–403; John Romeyn Brodhead et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (hereafter NYCD), 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, 1853–1887), 1:366; Conrad E. Heidenreich, “Huron,” in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15, Northeast, ed. Bruce G. Trigger (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1978), 387; Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Long­house: The ­Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of Eu­ro­pean Colonization (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 58–59. 32. ​Augustine Herrman and W. Faithorne, sculpt., V ­ irginia and Mary­land as it is planted and inhabited this pre­sent year 1670 (London, 1673), https://­www​.­loc​.­gov​/­item​/­2002623131​/­; Koot, Biography, 15–54; Christian  J. Koot, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-­ Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713 (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 77–79. 33. ​Herrman and Faithorne, ­Virginia and Mary­land; Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 154, 165–167. See also Dutch mari­ner Cornelius Hendricksen’s 1616 map reprinted in Susan  E. Klepp, “Encounter and Experiment: The Colonial Period,” in Miller and Pencak, Pennsylvania, 50–51; Weslager, “Robert Evelyn’s Indian Tribes,” 1–14; Joan Vinckeboons, Caerte vande Svyde Rivier in Niew Nederland [1639?], Library of Congress, https://­www​.­loc​.­gov​/­item​ /­2003623407​/­; Nicolaus  J. Visscher, New Netherland and New E ­ ngland (1656), reprinted in John P. Snyder, The Story of New Jersey’s Civil Bound­aries 1606–1968 (Trenton, N.J.: Bureau of Geology and Topography, 1968), 51; Lorraine E. Williams, “Indians,” in Mapping New Jersey: An Evolving Landscape, ed. Maxine  N. Lurie and Peter  O. Wacker (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 83–87; John Seller, A Map of New Jersey (c. 1680), reprint in Snyder, Story, 53. 34. ​Lindeström, 154, 165–167, 169–171; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 205, 207, 215; Gehring, Dutch Period, 243, 264, 305, 314, 317, 320–323; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 113–114, 117; WJ Deeds Book B, Pt. 1:4, Lenapes to West New Jersey Proprietors, September 10, 1677, NJSA. 35. ​Norwood, We Are Still H ­ ere!, 30–32. With epidemic disease and war resulting from Eu­ro­ pean colonization, many ­people of North Amer­i­ca adapted to declining population by merging communities. For examples, see Daniel  K. Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience,” in Richter, Trade, Land, Power: The Strug­gle for Eastern North Amer­i­ca (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 69–96; James H. Merrell, “The Indians’ New World: The Catawba Experience,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., 41 (1984): 537–565. 36. ​Soderlund, Lenape Country, 17–18, 35–49, 112–116; Samuel Smith, The History of New-­ Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 72. 37. ​The clerk, Matthias de Ring, recorded the town’s name as Annockeninck but gave no specific location. Beginning in the 1680s, West New Jersey land rec­ords cited the town as Honehonickon or, more often, Oneanickon. Gehring, Dutch Period, 17–19; William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives), 2 ser., 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: vari­ous publishers, 1880–1931), 21:355–356, 361, 363, 365, 431; Ewan M. Woodward and John F. Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey (Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1883), 435–438. 38. ​Lenape Talking Dictionary (2019) http://­www​.­talk​-­lenape​.­org​/­detail​?­id​=­2295; Nora Thompson Dean interview, “Delaware Indian Reminiscences,” BASNJ 35 (1978): 6, 17. 39. ​Gehring, Dutch Period, 16–17; Gehring, En­glish Period, 71, 296; Edward Armstrong, ed., “Rec­ord of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,” Memoirs

150

Notes to Pages 26– 31

of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 49; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 74, 126, 136–137, 139–140, 145–147, 168–172, 177–178; WJ Deeds, Book B, Pt. 1:3–4, NJSA; WJ Deeds, Book B: 644–645, NJSA; Deed for Shackamaxon Island from Lenapes to Elizabeth Kinsey, July 12, 1678, Document Signed, Richard Reeve Wood papers in Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College; Confirmations of Kinsey deed dated 1698 are filed ­under Ojroqua in the Deeds file, Camden County Historical Society, Camden, N.J.; Mary Maples Dunn and Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987), 2:261–269; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 51, 129, 138, 156, 160, 345, 347, 353, 354, 363; Robert S. Grumet, “Linking Modern-­Day Delaware Indians to the Abbott Farm National Historic Landmark with Documents,” BASNJ 68–70 (2013–2015): 97, 137–138; John Cripps, “A True Account of the ­Dying Words of Ockanickon” (London: Benjamin Clark, 1682), reprinted in Journal of the Friends Historical Society, supplement, 9 (London, 1912): 164–166; Robert A. Shinn and Jean R. Soderlund, “The G ­ reat Island Lying Before Shackamaxon: Petty Island, Lenape-­Colonist Relations, and Provincial Rivalries, 1678–1701” SoJourn 4 (Summer 2019): 7–24; Jean  R. Soderlund and Claude  M. Epstein, “Lenape-­Colonist Land Conveyances in West New Jersey: Evolving Expectations in Space and Time,” New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2018): 199–202, http://­dx​ .­doi​.­org​/­10​.­14713​/­njs​.­v4i2​.­129. 40. ​Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), 18, 22–23, 25, 60–62, 64; Gehring, En­glish Period, 15, 17–19, 30–33, 49–50; Schutt, ­Peoples, 70. 41. ​Gehring, 17–19; Schutt, ­Peoples, 10. 42. ​Gehring, 17–19; Craig, 1671, 12–13, 69–71; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 138, 140–142; H. Clay Reed and George  J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Rec­ord of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), 67–68; Robert L. Thompson, Burlington Biographies: A History of Burlington, New Jersey, Told through the Lives and Times of Its ­People (Galloway, N.J.: South Jersey Culture and History Center, Stockton University, 2016), 19n29, 246; Bartlett Burleigh James and J. Franklin Jameson, eds., Journal of Jasper Danckaerts 1679–1680 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 98–99; West Jersey Historical Proj­ect, The NJ Colonial Conveyances, www​.­westjerseyhistory​.­org​/­docs​/­cc​/­index​.­shtml, 265; Soderlund and Epstein, “Lenape-­ Colonist Land Conveyances,” 203–204. 43. ​Richter, Trade, Land, Power, 69–96. 44. ​Gehring, En­glish Period, 11–12. 45. ​ NYCD, 12:484–485; Craig, 1671 Census, 12–13; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 149; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 69–72. Eu­ro­pe­ans often used the name Manitou instead of Kètanëtuwit, the Master Spirit or Creator, in discussing the Lenapes’ religion. 46. ​“Repre­sen­ta­tion of New Netherland,” in Jameson, Narratives, 301–303. 47. ​Lindeström, Geographia Americae, 126–132; Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 175–179; Dowd, Spirited Re­sis­tance, 27–36; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 83–84. 48. ​ NYCD, 12:484–486, 488–449; Gehring, En­glish Period, 30–33, 49–50; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 71–72. 49. ​Soderlund, Lenape Country, 132–137; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 132–135, 314–315; Gehring, 71–72; NYCD, 12: 516–520; Kent, Early American Indian Documents, 41–50.

chapter 2  Seeking Peace in Cohanzick Country 1. ​C. A. Weslager, The En­glish on the Delaware: 1610–1682 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Uni-

versity Press, 1967), 91–106; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick,



Notes to Pages 32–33

151

N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 119, 126; Amandus Johnson, The Instruction for Johan Printz Governor of New Sweden (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1930), 68–70, 229–243; Gunlög Fur, Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2006), 148–149; Jean  R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 61–64, 69–95; Mark L. Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth ­Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013), 68–69, 74–77; Donald Einer Bjarnson, “Swedish-­Finnish Settlement in New Jersey in the Seventeenth C ­ entury,” Swedish-­American Historical Quarterly 27 (1976): 240–242, http://­ collections​.­carli​.­illinois​.­edu​/­cdm​/­ref​/­collection​/­npu​_­sahq​/­id​/­3710; Edward Armstrong, ed., “Rec­ord of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,” Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 80, 86. Rec­ords on Ancestry​.­com suggest that four of the Varkens Kill En­glish subsequently moved to Kent County, Delaware; New York; and East Jersey, while no evidence exists for two of the men. For the Fort Elfsborg garrison, see Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999); Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993); Amandus Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638–1664, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1911), 2:700–709. See also Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 126–132, 235–236. 2. ​East Jersey Liber 1:9, 21, 33, 35, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA); Copy and translation, Indian Grant to Peter and Michael Lacroy, 1667, temporary box 34, accessed December  2017, Stewart Collection, University Archives and Special Collections, Rowan University, Glassboro, N.J.; William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecol­ogy of New E ­ ngland (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983); ­Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early Amer­i­ca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). See chapter 7, below, on conflict arising from damages to Lenape property by livestock. 3. ​Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vols. XX–­XXI, Delaware Papers (En­glish Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1977), 114, 145, 147; John Romeyn Brodhead et al., eds, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, Printers, 1853–1887; hereafter NYCD), 12:553; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 120; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 114–119; Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North Amer­i­ca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 241–270; Fredrik Ekengren, “Materialities on the Move: Identity and Material Culture Among the Forest Finns in Seventeenth-­Century Sweden and Amer­i­ca,” in Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity, ed. Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin (New York: Springer, 2013), 147–165. 4. ​Soderlund, 120–124; NYCD, 12:463–472, 483, 490–492; Gehring, En­glish Period, 5–10, 27–30; Israel Acrelius, A History of New Sweden; or, The Settlements on the River Delaware, trans. William M. Reynolds, Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 11 (Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1874), 106–107; Evan Haefeli, “The Revolt of the Long Swede: Transatlantic Hopes and Fears on the Delaware, 1669,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 130 (2006): 137–180; Craig, 1671 Census, 12, 13, 15–18, 22, 25, 32–33, 40–42, 44; Craig, 1693 Census, 12, 59–82, 135–158; Samuel Smith, The History of New-­Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 53; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 77–80. 5. ​Craig, 1671 Census, 34, 55, 72–73; Craig, 1693 Census, 135–136, 138–139; East Jersey Liber 1:22, Permit to Lucas Pieters, September 10, 1668, NJSA; Indian Deed to Luycas Peterson, 1671,

152

Notes to Pages 34– 37

temporary box 34, accessed December 2017, Stewart Collection, Rowan University; Frank H. Stewart, Indians of Southern New Jersey (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1932), 72–73; Martha Helms Bates, “Israel Helm—­Swedish Pioneer 1627–1701 of Pennsylvania and New Jersey” (Ridley Park, Pa., 1960; typescript in Historical Society of Pennsylvania), 28–29. 6. ​Norman Penney, ed., The Journal of George Fox, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), 2:205–206, 211, 227–228, 250, 445, 499; H. Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 237–240. 7. ​Weslager, En­glish, 216–218; NYCD, 12:513, 515–520; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 132–136; Peter R. Christoph and Florence A. Christoph, eds., The Andros Papers 1674–1676 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), xiii–­xvi, 131–133, 291; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 132–135, 314–315; Mary Lou Lustig, The Imperial Executive in Amer­ic­ a: Sir Edmund Andros, 1637–1714 (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2002), 25–41. 8. ​Gehring, En­glish Period, 71–72; Christoph and Christoph, Andros Papers 1674–1676, 131; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1, Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of Amer­ic­ a, 1979), 41–50; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 137. 9. ​John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1956), 57, 60–61, 71–85, 103–104; Mary Maples Dunn, Richard S. Dunn, et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987; hereafter PWP), 1:383–387, 411–418, 649–654; Peter O. Wacker, Land and P ­ eople: A Cultural Geography of Pre­industrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 178, 225, 228, 275–283; William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives) (hereafter NJA), 2 ser., 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: vari­ous publishers, 1880–1931), 1st  ser., 21:559–560; Gehring, En­glish Period, 132–136, 186–188; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 79–80; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Rec­ord of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), xiv–­x xi; Joseph S. Sickler, The History of Salem County New Jersey (Salem, N.J.: Sunbeam, 1937); Frank  H. Stewart, Major John Fenwick (Salem, N.J.: Salem County Historical Society, 1964); R. G. Johnson, An Historical Account of the First Settlement of Salem in West Jersey (Philadelphia: Orrin Rogers, 1839). 10. ​Pomfret, West New Jersey, 69–73; Salem Deeds #1, p. 32, NJSA; NJA, 21:560. 11. ​“Fenwick’s Proposal for Planting His Colony of New Cæsaria or New Jersey,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 6 (1882): 86–90. 12. ​“Fenwick’s Proposal,” 86–90. 13. ​In many of the transactions, purchasers included husbands and wives. In several, the purchasers ­were related other­wise, such as b­ rothers or in-­laws. 14. ​ NJA, 21:559–564; Receipt, Accomes et al. to Hipolit Lefever and John Pledger, March 27, 1675, and Deed, Meopony et al. to Lefever and Pledger, April 20, 1676, originals in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, reproduced in Albert Cook Myers, William Penn: His Own Account of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians 1683 (Moylan, Pa.: Albert Cook Myers, 1937), 60–61. While Myers suggests that the receipt should have been dated 1676 b­ ecause March 27 would have fallen in the new year (old style), other primary documents suggest that the 1675 date is correct. John Fenwick Day Book, Salem County Historical Society, Salem, N.J., 151–152.



Notes to Pages 37–43

153

15. ​Rec­ords of the Society of Friends in G ­ reat Britain and New Jersey, accessed through Ancestry​.­com; NJA, vols. 21, 23, 30; Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the ­People called Quakers for the Testimony of a Good Conscience, 2 vols. (London, 1753); Fenwick Day Book, Salem County Historical Society; H. Stanley Craig, comp., Salem County New Jersey Genealogical Data, 2 vols. (Merchantville, N.J.: H. Stanley Craig; repr., Gloucester County Historical Society, 1980–1981); Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1752; 2nd ed., Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman, 1881). 16. ​Stephen  W. Angell and Pink Dandelion, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Rosemary Moore, The Light in Their Consciences: Early Quakers in Britain 1646–1666 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000); Craig  W. Horle, The Quakers and the En­glish ­Legal System 1660–1688 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988); William C. Braithwaite, The Second Period of Quakerism (London: MacMillan, 1919). 17. ​William C. Braithwaite, Beginnings of Quakerism (London: MacMillan, 1912), 246–248, 251–253; Phyllis Mack, Visionary ­Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-­Century E ­ ngland (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 146, 199, 209–210, 415–420, 431; Ingle, First Among Friends, 141–147; Moore, Light, 36–39, 254. 18. ​Quarterly Meeting of London and Middlesex: Burials (1661–1700), and Marriages (1658–1690), 18, Society of Friends, accessed through Ancestry​.­com; Andrew Fincham, “Faith in Numbers—­Requantifying the En­glish Quaker Population during the Long Eigh­teenth ­Century,” Religions 10, no.  2 (2019): 7, 10; Rec­ords of the Court of New C ­ astle on Delaware 1676–1681, vol. 1 (Lancaster, Pa.: Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1904; hereafter NCCR), 209–210, 360–363; Besse, Sufferings, 1:366, 431; NJA, 21:564, 23:401; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 99; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 102; Gehring, En­glish Period, 176–177. 19. ​Besse, 1:366, 408, 428–431, 436–437; Horle, Quakers and the En­glish ­Legal System, 101–159, 284. 20. ​Horle, 16–17, 101–104, 150, 255–284; Braithwaite, Second Period, 115; Fincham, “Faith in Numbers,” 13; Hannah Reeve, “Research Note: To What Extent W ­ ere Quakers Being Prosecuted a­ fter 1670?,” Quaker Studies 23 ( June 2018): 109–120. 21. ​Quarterly Meeting of London and Middlesex: Burials (1661–1700), 26, 31, 34, 35, 40, 48, 51; Horle, 267. 22. ​ A Further Account of New Jersey, In an Abstract of Letters Lately Writ from thence, By several Inhabitants ­there Resident (London, 1676), 4–5; Quarterly Meeting of London and Middlesex: Burials (1661–1700), 239, 252; NJA, 21:543, 548, 568; Salem Men’s and Joint Monthly Meeting Minutes, 1676–1827, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Jan. 1679/1680. 23. ​ Further Account of New Jersey, 8–9. 24. ​ Further Account of New Jersey, 6–7, 10–13; Craig W. Horle et al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 1997), 1:723; NJA, 21:571; Craig, Salem County New Jersey, 1:190. 25. ​ NJA, 21:563–564; Deed, Meopony et al. to John Fenwick, November 17, 1675, MG3 #4, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark. 26. ​Deed, Meopony et al. to Fenwick, November 17, 1675. 27. ​Deed, Meopony et al. to Fenwick, November 17, 1675; NCCR, 1:387–389. 28. ​Agreement of Indians with John Fenwick, January 8, 1675/1676, MG3 #6, New Jersey Historical Society; Stewart, Indians, 63–64; Salem Deeds #1:42, NJSA (dated March  14, 1676, “New Stile”). 29. ​Salem Deeds #1:42, NJSA.

154

Notes to Pages 44– 49

30. ​Salem Deeds #1:20; West Jersey Book B, Pt. 1:3, 325, NJSA; Deed, Indians to John

Fenwick, March 2, 1676, MG3 #8, New Jersey Historical Society.

31. ​ NCCR, 1:16, 39–40; Craig, 1671 Census, 60–61; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book,

xxi.

32. ​ NJA, 21:554–557; Sickler, History of Salem County, 28–29; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 80–84.

­ ntil 1680, the Duke’s New ­Castle court extended its jurisdiction across the Delaware River to U include the Salem area, while farther north on the west bank, the Upland court, subordinate to the New ­Castle court, incorporated the east bank north of Oldmans Creek within its jurisdiction. 33. ​ NCCR, 1:34–40; NJA, 1:185–192; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, xxi–­x xii; Sickler, 34–37. 34. ​ NCCR, 1:12, 19–20, 70–71, 134–135; Craig, 1671 Census, 50; Craig, 1693 Census, 152–153. 35. ​ NCCR, 1:206–208; Craig, 1671 Census, 73; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, xxii–­x xiii. 36. ​ NYCD, 12:610; Reed and Miller, xxiii–­x xv; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 83–84; Gehring, En­glish Period, 209–210, 274. 37. ​Stewart, Major John Fenwick, 34; Pomfret, 84–85, 110–112, 127–138.

chapter 3  Promising Liberty and Property 1. ​Mary Maples Dunn, Richard S. Dunn, et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987) (hereafter PWP), 1:387–411; Henry H. Bisbee, ed., The Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors, Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Province of West New Jersey in Amer­i­ca (Burlington, N.J.: Burlington, 1951); Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1752; 2nd ed., Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman, 1881), 382–411; Maxine N. Lurie, “New Jersey: The Unique Proprietary,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 111 (1987): 77–97; Caroline Robbins, “Laws and Governments Proposed for West New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 1676–1683,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 105 (1981): 373–392; John E. Pomfret, “The Prob­lem of the West Jersey Concessions of 1676/7,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 5 (1948): 95–105; John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ ton University Press, 1956), 86–101; Julian P. Boyd, ed., Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of New Jersey 1664–1964 (Prince­ton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1964), 9–16; John  E. Pomfret, “Edward Byllynge,” in The Governors of New Jersey: Biographical Essays, ed. Michael  J. Birkner, Donald Linky, and Peter Mickulas (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 29–32; Mary R. Murrin, “New Jersey and the Two Constitutions,” in A New Jersey Anthology, ed. Maxine N. Lurie (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 125–126; Paul W. Schopp (Jerseyman), “The Best Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft Agley,” History—­Now and Then (blog), October  2010, http://­jerseyman​-­historynowandthen​.­blogspot​.­com​/­2010​/­10​ /­best​-­laid​-­schemes​-­o​-­mice​-­men​-­gang​-­aft​.­html; Andrew R. Murphy, Liberty, Conscience, and Toleration: The Po­liti­cal Thought of William Penn (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 99; Andrew R. Murphy, William Penn: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 116–118. 2. ​[Edward Byllynge], A Mite of Affection, Manifested in 31. Proposals, Offered to all the Sober and Free-­born P ­ eople within this Common-­wealth (London: Giles Calvert, 1659); John  L. Nickalls, “The Prob­lem of Edward Byllynge: II. His Writings and Their Evidence of His Influence on the First Constitution of West Jersey,” in C ­ hildren of Light: In Honor of Rufus M. Jones, ed. Howard H. Brinton (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 111–131.



Notes to Pages 50–55

155

3. ​Stephen Saunders Webb, The Governors-­General: The En­glish Army and the Definition of the

Empire, 1569–1681 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); Daniel K. Richter, Before the Revolution: Amer­ic­ a’s Ancient Pasts (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 241–294; PWP, 2:211–220. 4. ​ PWP, 1:396–397; Robbins, “Laws and Governments,” 387; Evan Haefeli, “The Pennsylvania Difference: Religious Diversity on the Delaware before 1683,” Early American Studies 1 (2003): 50–52; Evan Haefeli, “Pennsylvania’s Religious Freedom in Comparative Colonial Context,” in The Worlds of William Penn, ed. Andrew R. Murphy and John Smolenski (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019), 333–345; Carla Gardina Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Mas­sa­chu­setts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Rebecca Larson, ­Daughters of Light: Quaker W ­ omen Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–1775 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), 7, 370. 5. ​ PWP, 1:387–411, 2:225; [Byllynge], Mite of Affection, 8; J. William Frost, A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 1–21. 6. ​ PWP, 1:397–399. 7. ​Council of West Jersey Proprietors Minutes, Books 1, 2, 3, 3A, microfilm, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA); Pomfret, West New Jersey, 86–90. 8. ​ PWP, 1:388–394. 9. ​ PWP, 1:389, 401. 10. ​ PWP, 1:400–401; Patrick Cecil, “William Penn and Security Communities: A ­Career,” in Murphy and Smolenski, Worlds, 364. 11. ​Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 16–17, 19, 20–23; Frost, Perfect Freedom, 17–18. 12. ​ PWP, 1:399. 13. ​Leaming and Spicer, 20–21; PWP, 1:391–392. I am grateful to Robert Barnett for discussing this evidence with me. 14. ​George Fox, Gospel Family-­Order, Being a Short Discourse Concerning the Ordering of Families, Both of Whites, Blacks and Indians (1676), in J. William Frost, ed., The Quaker Origins of Antislavery (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1980), 46–49; William Edmundson, Letters (1676), in Frost, Quaker Origins, 66–68; H. Larry Ingle, First among Friends: George Fox and the Creation of Quakerism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 231–243. 15. ​ PWP, 2:30, 235, 3:66–67, 256; Nicholas P. Wood and Jean R. Soderlund, “ ‘To Friends and All Whom It May Concerne’: William Southeby’s Rediscovered 1696 Antislavery Protest,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 141 (2017): 177–198; Geoffrey Plank, “Discipline and Divinity: Colonial Quakerism, Chris­tian­ity, and ‘Heathenism’ in the Seventeenth ­Century,” Church History 85 (2016): 519–528. 16. ​Pomfret, West New Jersey, 74–75; PWP, 1:418–421. 17. ​ PWP, 1:410–418; Schopp, “Best Laid Schemes.” 18. ​Samuel Smith, The History of New-­Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 79–80, 92; PWP, 1:389–390; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 88–89. 19. ​The Concessions printed in vari­ous collections all have 151 signatures: PWP, 1:388–408; Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 383–419; William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives) (hereafter NJA), 2 ser., 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: vari­ous publishers, 1880–1931), 1st ser., 1:241–270; and Bisbee, Concessions and Agreements, which includes photo­graphs of the four signature pages. For the analy­sis in ­table 2, I have worked with the Concessions published in PWP, 1:388–408 (West New Jersey Proprietors Papers, NJSA), and obtained residence and biographical data of signers from a variety of sources, including NJA, vol. 21; Leaming and Spicer; Pomfret, West New Jersey; Smith, History of New-­Jersey; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Rec­ord of Quaker Jurisprudence in West

156

Notes to Pages 56– 64

New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944); H. Stanley Craig, comp., Salem County New Jersey Genealogical Data, vol. 1 (repr., Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1980); Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999); Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993); Craig  W. Horle et  al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 1997), vol. 1. 20. ​Pomfret, 127; Leaming and Spicer, 412–419; Smith, 124–126. 21. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, xxiii. 22. ​Soderlund, Lenape Country, 95–96, 98. 23. ​This second copy was previously filed in the Department of State, Secretary of State’s Office Rec­ords, but is now in RG West Jersey Assembly, Acts of the General Assembly, 1681–1701, Concessions and Agreements [includes Acte of the General Assembly, 1681–1699], vol. 2, NJSA. This is prob­ably the copy that Reed and Miller cited in Burlington Court Book, xxx. Pomfret mentions two copies of the Concessions (with Byllynge’s name first on both), one with 151 and the other with 225 signatures, in Pomfret, West New Jersey, 92. ­Either his tally of 225 signatures on the second copy is an error, or he had access to a third copy of the Concessions. 24. ​Maxine N. Lurie, “Tax Protest Document 1676: The First in a Long History of New Jersey Protests against Taxes,” New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2018): 179–200, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­14713​/­njs​.­v4i1​.­108. 25. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, xxviii–­x xxi; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 107–112, 124–125; PWP, 1:390–391. 26. ​Reed and Miller, 1–9. 27. ​Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 423–426; PWP, 1:388–408; Pomfret, 127–128. 28. ​Leaming and Spicer, 426–441; PWP, 1:388–408; Pomfret, 129–130. 29. ​Leaming and Spicer, 456–462; Pomfret, 135–136, 236; PWP, 1:388–408; Concessions and Agreements, RG West Jersey Assembly, Acts of the General Assembly, 1681–1701, vol. 2, NJSA; Robert Shinn, Andrew Levecchia, and Sandra White Grear, “The Newton Union Burial Ground: The Site of Camden County’s Origin and the Resting Place of Its Early Pioneers,” SoJourn 3 (Winter 2018–2019): 63–65. 30. ​Leaming and Spicer, 457, 462–470; Pomfret, 135–140. 31. ​Leaming and Spicer, 469, 471; Pomfret, 135–140; Boyd, Fundamental Laws, 15–16. 32. ​Pomfret, 136. 33. ​Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 469–484; Pomfret, 139–149.

chapter 4  Quaker Colonization without Violence or Remorse 1. ​Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-­Jersey in Amer­i­ca (1685), 28, 29, 32, 33; John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1956), 102–103; Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 12–54, 112–119; Herbert  C. Kraft, The Lenape-­Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 b.c.–­a.d. 2000 (n.p.: Lenape Books, 2001); Amy C. Schutt, ­Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007); Daniel K. Richter, “The First Pennsylvanians,” in Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth, ed. Randall M. Miller and William Pencak (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press and the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 2002), 3–46; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma



Notes to Pages 65–67

157

Press, 2009); Gunlög Fur, A Nation of ­Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Peter O. Wacker, Land and ­People: A Cultural Geography of Pre­industrial New Jersey; Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975); C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972); Frank H. Stewart, Indians of Southern New Jersey (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1932); Jean R. Soderlund and Claude M. Epstein, “Lenape-­Colonist Land Conveyances in West New Jersey: Evolving Expectations in Space and Time,” New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2018):179–211, http://­dx​.­doi​.­org​/­10​.­14713​/­njs​.­v4i2​.­129; Mary Maples Dunn, Richard S. Dunn et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987) (hereafter PWP), 1:400–401; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Rec­ord of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), xxviii. 2. ​Marcus Gallo, “William Penn, William Petty, and Surveying: The Irish Connection,” in The Worlds of William Penn, ed. Andrew R. Murphy and John Smolenski (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019), 109–111; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 143; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 281; David S. Jones, “Virgin Soils Revisited,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 60 (2003): 704–742; Allan Greer, Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North Amer­i­ca (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 241–270; Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject ­Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-­American Frontier, 1500–1676 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 158–159, 272–274. 3. ​Deed, Meopony et al. to John Fenwick, November 17, 1675, MG 3 #4, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark (hereafter NJHS); Salem Deeds #1:20, 42, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA); A Further Account of New Jersey, In an Abstract of Letters Lately Writ from thence, By several Inhabitants ­there Resident (London, 1676), 6–7. 4. ​ An Abstract, or Abbreviation of Some Few of the Many (­Later and Former) Testimonys from the Inhabitants of New-­Jersey, and Other Eminent Persons Who Have Wrote Particularly Concerning That Place (London: Thomas Milbourn, 1681), 19–20; John W. Barber and Henry Howe, Historical Collections of New Jersey (New Haven, Conn.: by subscription by John W. Barber, 1868), 89–90; H. Stanley Craig, comp., Salem County New Jersey Genealogical Data, vol.1 (Merchantville, N.J.: H. Stanley Craig; repr., Gloucester County Historical Society, 1980), 302–303. 5. ​West Jersey Book B, Pt. 1: 3–4, NJSA; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 124–135; Wacker, Land and ­People, 283–298; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, xxxi–­x xxvii; Samuel Smith, The History of New-­Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 93–95; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), 13, 18, 25, 71–72; Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993), 26–27, 29–30, 70–71; Edward Armstrong, ed., “Rec­ord of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,” Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J.  B. Lippincott, 1860), 50–53; Soderlund and Epstein, “Lenape-­Colonist Land Conveyances,” 203–204. 6. ​Charles T. Gehring, trans. and ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Volumes XVIII–­XIX Delaware Papers (Dutch Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1981), 16–17; Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vols. XX–­XXI, Delaware Papers (En­glish Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1977), 17–18; Francis Jennings, “Glory, Death, and Transfiguration: The Susquehannock Indians in the Seventeenth ­Century,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 112 (February 15, 1968): 35, 39–41; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 49; Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1, Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of Amer­i­ca, 1979), 36; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 315; Robert S. Grumet,

158

Notes to Pages 68– 70

“Linking Modern-­Day Delaware Indians to the Abbott Farm National Historic Landmark with Documents,” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 68–70 (2013–2015): 97, 124, 137–138; Thomas Budd, Good Order, 30–31; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 177–80. 7. ​For Mehocksett, see chapter 2, above. For Tallaca, see Isaac Mickle, Reminiscences of Old Gloucester (Philadelphia: Townsend Ward, 1845), 53–54. 8. ​Gehring, En­glish Period, 17–19; Robert A. Shinn and Jean R. Soderlund, “The G ­ reat Island Lying Before Shackamaxon: Petty Island, Lenape-­Colonist Relations, and Provincial Rivalries, 1678–1701,” SoJourn 4 (Summer 2019): 7–24. 9. ​Augustine Herrman and W. Faithorne, sculpt., V ­ irginia and Mary­land as it is planted and inhabited this pre­sent year 1670 (London, 1673), https://­www​.­loc​.­gov​/­item​/­2002623131​/­; Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 154, 165–167. 10. ​East Jersey Liber 1:19, NJSA; Rec­ords of the Court of New C ­ astle on Delaware 1676–1681, vol. 1 (Lancaster, Pa.: Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1904) (hereafter NCCR), 462–466; Craig, 1693 Census, 70–71, 76–82; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 80; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 25–29. 11. ​Grumet, Munsee Indians, 51, 129, 138; Grumet, “Linking,” 94, 97, 109; Gehring, En­glish Period, 17–18; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 126, 136, 139, 145–147. 12. ​Grumet, Munsee Indians, 74, 143–144, 159–160, 169, 314, 347–348, 354; Meopony et  al. to John Fenwick, November 17, 1675, MG3 #4; Agreement of Indians with John Fenwick, January  8, 1675/1676, MG3 #6, NJHS; West Jersey Book B, Pt. 1:4; Salem Deeds #1:42 (dated March  14, 1676, “New Stile”), NJSA; Receipt, Accomes et  al. to Hipolit Lefever and John Pledger, March 27, 1675, and Deed, Meopony et al. to Lefever and Pledger, April 20, 1676, originals in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, reproduced in Albert Cook Myers, William Penn: His Own Account of the Lenni Lenape or Delaware Indians 1683 (Moylan, Pa.: Albert Cook Myers, 1937), 60–62; Kent, Early American Indian Documents, 65–67, 72; PWP, 2:263; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 136; Weslager, Delaware Indians, 162–163; Shinn and Soderlund, “­Great Island,” 13–14. 13. ​Shinn and Soderlund, 13–14; Stewart, Indians, 20, 76. 14. ​Deed for Petty Island from Lenapes to Elizabeth Kinsey, July 12, 1678, Document Signed, Richard Reeve Wood papers in Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College; Deed Confirmations to Thomas Fairman, July 4, 1698, filed u­ nder Ojroqua in the Deeds file, Camden County Historical Society, Camden, N.J.; “From Thomas Fairman,” August  7, 1700, in PWP, 3:611. Though the document indicates “gilders,” it is clear that the deal was for guilders sewant, a book currency commonly used in the Delaware valley in the 1670s and early 1680s. With a value of forty guilders sewant (often abbreviated in accounts as “g.s.”) to the En­glish £ sterling and four g.s. to the Holland guilder, the amount Kinsey paid per acre for rights to Shackamaxon Island is consistent with, though still higher than, payments some West New Jersey colonists paid for other parcels. The Dutch, Swedish, and En­glish colonists developed this book currency based on the value of wampum b­ ecause of the lack of Eu­ro­pean coin. Similar to checks or credit cards ­today, the Lenapes could use Kinsey’s note to purchase goods in New ­Castle or New York or from local traders. For examples of documents with accounting in guilders sewant, see Gehring, En­glish Period, 7–10, 51–53, 62, 65, 150–151. 15. ​Mickle, Reminiscences, 53–54; John Clement, Sketches of The First Emigrant Settlers in Newton Township, Old Gloucester County, West New Jersey (Camden, N.J.: Sinnickson Chew, 1877), 293–297. 16. ​West Jersey Book B:644–645; Salem Deeds #6:194; Salem Deeds #1:43; West Jersey Liber A-­V:526, NJSA; Stewart, Indians, 76; Affidavit, William Goodbody, September 10, 1686, Gloucester County Court Rec­ords, Gloucester County Historical Society, Woodbury, N.J.



Notes to Pages 71–75

159

17. ​Yoma Wandonek to William Heuling, Deeds File, Camden County Historical Society;

William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives) (hereafter NJA), 2 ser., 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: vari­ous publishers, 1880–1931), 1st ser., 21:362, 371, 408, 417. 18. ​Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1752; 2nd ed., Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman, 1881), 382, 401, 465–466, 471. 19. ​Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 456–457; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 285–289; C. Miller Biddle, William and Sarah Biddle 1633–1711: Planting a Seed of Democracy in Amer­i­ca (Moorestown, N.J.: C. Miller Biddle, 2012), 352–56; West Jersey Historical Proj­ect, The NJ Colonial Conveyances, www​.­westjerseyhistory​.­org​/­docs​/­cc​/­index​.­shtml. 20. ​Leaming and Spicer, 491, 493–496, 500, 502, 506; Carlos  E. Godfrey, “Pages of Some Unpublished Parts of Leaming & Spicer’s ‘Grants and Concessions, 1681–1699,’ ” Camden History 1, no. 4 (1922): 3–8; West Jersey Deeds Book M:447–450, NJSA; Pomfret, 150–157, 177. 21. ​Council of West Jersey Proprietors Minutes, microfilm, NJSA, book 1, 1–66, quotation on p. 26; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 177–180; Pomfret, 156–158. 22. ​West Jersey Deeds Book B:179–181, 202–203, 325, NJSA; Council of West Jersey Proprietors Minutes, Book 1:1, 66. 23. ​Council of West Jersey Proprietors Minutes, Book 2:16; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 95–97; Burlington County Court [of Quarter Sessions] Minutes, 1709–1717, MS #14, p. 48, Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington, N.J.; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 92–93. 24. ​Hunter’s 1717 report included depositions indicating that the fraud occurred in February 1713/1714; NJA, 4:275–285; Richard Sears Walling, “The Coaxen Indian Plantation and Its Quaker Protectors: Assuaging Cultural Conflict” (paper presented at the Quakers and American Indians conference, Bryn Mawr College, November 11, 2016). 25. ​For excellent discussions of the intersection of epidemics, expropriation of land, and such social ­factors as alcohol on Native Americans, see Peter C. Mancall, “ ‘The Bewitching Tyranny of Custom’: The Social Costs of Indian Drinking in Colonial Amer­i­ca,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 17 (1993): 15–42; Michael Goode, “Dangerous Spirits: How the Indian Critique of Alcohol S­ haped Eighteenth-­Century Quaker Revivalism,” Early American Studies 14 (2016): 258–283; and Jones, “Virgin Soils Revisited,” 703–742. 26. ​John Romeyn Brodhead et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, Printers, 1853–1887) (hereafter NYCD), 12:462–463; Gehring, En­glish Period, 25–27, 39, 76, 79. For examples of liquor sales and fraternization between colonists and Lenapes, see Gehring, Dutch Period, 60, 179–180. On alcohol sales to Natives in other North American colonies, see Peter C. Mancall, Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early Amer­i­ca (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995), 39–49; Sharon V. Salinger, Taverns and Drinking in Early Amer­ic­ a (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 27–28, 99–101. 27. ​Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 67, 74–75, 81; Gehring, En­glish Period, 166, 175, 253; NYCD, 12:623–624. 28. ​ NYCD, 12:626; Gehring, 256–257, 271, 275–276, 295–297; Kent, Early American, 37–40; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 315. 29. ​Gehring, 311, 316; NYCD, 12:645–646, 650; Craig  W. Horle et  al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 1997), 1:745–746. 30. ​Gehring, 316, 340–341; NYCD, 12:658–660; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 143–147; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 194; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, xxxi, 9–10, 84.

160

Notes to Pages 75– 80

31. ​Reed and Miller, 2–3. 32. ​Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 435, 445, 451, 512–513; Reed and Miller, 45, 69,

84, 101, 125, 209.

33. ​ Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Men’s) Minutes, 1681–1746, 15/7M/1685, 8/7M/1686,

7/7M/1687; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (­Women’s) Minutes, 1681–1742, 9/7M/1691; PYM 1704 Book of Discipline; Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College; Goode, “Dangerous Spirits,” 270; William M. Offutt Jr., Of “Good Laws” and “Good Men”: Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680–1710 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), 192, 213. 34. ​Stewart, Indians, 73; Receipt, Accomes et al. to Hipolit Lefever and John Pledger, March 27, 1675, and Deed, Meopony et al. to Lefever and Pledger, April 20, 1676; Myers, William Penn, 60–62; Martha Helms Bates, “Israel Helm—­Swedish Pioneer 1627–1701 of Pennsylvania and New Jersey” (Ridley Park, Pa., 1960; typescript in Historical Society of Pennsylvania), 28–29; West Jersey Book B, Pt. 1:3–4; West Jersey Book M:447–50; West Jersey Book B:202, 203; West Jersey Book B:325, NJSA. 35. ​Budd, Good Order, 28–29. 36. ​Budd, 32.

chapter 5  Women, Ethnicity, and Freedom in Southern Lenapehoking 1. ​Samuel Smith, The History of New-­Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), v–vi, 92–99; Thomas L. Purvis, Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, 1703–1776 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 55, 114, 258. 2. ​Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), 25, 34; Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993), 70–72, 76–82; Edward Armstrong, ed., “Rec­ord of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,” Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 80; Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 68–69, 118–119, 123–124, 181; Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 87–92. 3. ​Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape-­Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 b.c.–­a.d. 2000 (n.p.: Lenape Books, 2001), 237–247, 277–290; Amy C. Schutt, ­Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 13–14, 198; Gunlög Fur, A Nation of ­Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters Among the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 1–50; Robert Steven Grumet, “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen: M ­ iddle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian W ­ omen during the 17th and 18th Centuries,” in W ­ omen and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock (New York: Praeger, 1980), 43–62; Jordan and Kaups, American Backwoods Frontier, 53–60; Anthony F. C. Wallace, “­Woman, Land, and Society: Three Aspects of Aboriginal Delaware Life,” Pennsylvania Archeologist 17 (1947): 1–35; Kelly L. Watson, “Mary Kittamaquund Brent, ‘The Pocahontas of Mary­land’: Sex, Marriage, and Diplomacy in the Seventeenth-­Century Chesapeake,” Early American Studies 19 (2021): 24–63; Susan Sleeper-­ Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American Conquest: Indian W ­ omen of the Ohio River Valley, 1690–1792 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018), 1–104. Susanah Shaw Romney explores w ­ omen’s role in creating networks among Native American, Eu­ro­pean, and African ­women and men in New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-­Century Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014).



Notes to Pages 80–84

161

4. ​John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1956), 65–126, 235–240, 277–278; Peter O. Wacker, Land and P ­ eople: A Cultural Geography of Pre­industrial New Jersey; Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 275–298; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 79–125; Paul W. Schopp ( Jerseyman), “The Best Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft Agley,” History—­Now and Then (blog), October 2010, http://­jersey​ man​-­historynowandthen​.­blogspot​.­com​/­2010​/­10​/­best​-­laid​-­schemes​-­o​-­mice​-­men​-­gang​-­aft​ .­html; Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-­Eric Williams, Colonial Rec­ords of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, vol. 2 (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006), 181–185. 5. ​Soderlund, Lenape Country, 68–69, 118–119, 123–124, 181; John R. Norwood, We Are Still ­Here! The Tribal Saga of New Jersey’s Nanticoke and Lenape Indians (Moorestown: Native New Jersey, 2007), 3, 13–20, 32–33; Amy Hill Hearth, “Strong Medicine” Speaks: A Native American Elder Has Her Say: An Oral History (New York: Atria Books, 2008), 6; Nanticoke Lenni-­ Lenape Tribal Nation (website), “About Us,” accessed December  10, 2021, https://­nlltribe​ .­com​/­about​-­us​/­. 6. ​“From the ‘Korte Historiael Ende Journaels Aenteyckeninge,’ by David Pietersz. de Vries, 1630–1633, 1643 (1655),” in Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 21; Soderlund, 78, 180, 189–90; John Cripps, “A True Account of the ­Dying Words of Ockanickon” (London: Benjamin Clark, 1682), reprinted in Journal of the Friends Historical Society, supplement, 9 (London, 1912): 164–166; Deed, Meopony et al. to John Fenwick, November 17, 1675, MG3 #4; and Agreement of Indians with John Fenwick, January 8, 1675/6, MG3 #6, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark; Salem Deeds #1:42 (dated March 14, 1676, “New Stile”) and Indians to Nathaniel Cripps, West Jersey Deeds B-­B-­B, 437–38, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA). 7. ​The name endings of Ojroqua and Matollionequay are similar in pronunciation to the Lenape word for ­woman: xkwe; Delaware Tribe of Indians, Lenape Talking Dictionary (website), https://­www​.­talk​-­lenape​.­org​/­results​?­query​=­­woman; Deed for Shackamaxon Island from Lenapes to Elizabeth Kinsey, July  12, 1678, Document Signed, Richard Reeve Wood papers in Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College; 1698 confirmations filed u­ nder Ojroqua in the Deeds file, Camden County Historical Society, Camden, N.J. For an excellent discussion of the female leader Weetamoo of Pocasset, see Lisa Brooks, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018). 8. ​Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vols. XX–­XXI, Delaware Papers (En­glish Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1977), 17–19; West Jersey Book B, Pt. 1:3, NJSA. The name Apperinges appears on the only known version of the conveyance, which is a recorded abstract in the New Jersey State Archives. Of known Lenapes at the time, Ojroqua is most likely to have signed. The difference in spelling prob­ably arises from the copyist’s interpretation of handwriting on the original document. 9. ​Robert A. Shinn and Jean R. Soderlund, “The ­Great Island Lying before Shackamaxon: Petty Island, Lenape-­Colonist Relations, and Provincial Rivalries, 1678–1701,” SoJourn 4 (2019): 7–24. 10. ​Marylynn Salmon, “Equality or Submersion? Feme Covert Status in Early Pennsylvania,” in ­Women of Amer­i­ca: A History, ed. Carol Ruth Berkin and Mary Beth Norton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 92–113; Marylynn Salmon, W ­ omen and the Law of Property in Early Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 14–18, 48–49, 163–168. 11. ​Mary Maples Dunn, Richard S. Dunn, et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987) (hereafter PWP), 1:388–408. For more discussion of the Concessions, see chapter 3, above.

162

Notes to Pages 84– 88

12. ​Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of

the Province of New Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1752; 2nd ed., Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman, 1881), 423–587; Carlos  E. Godfrey, “Pages of Some Unpublished Parts of Leaming & Spicer’s ‘Grants and Concessions, 1681–1699,’ ” Camden History 1, no. 4 (1922): 3–8; Julian P. Boyd, ed., Fundamental Laws and Constitutions of New Jersey 1664–1964 (Prince­ton, N.J.: D. Van Nostrand, 1964), 15; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Real­ity in the Lives of ­Women in Northern New ­England 1650–1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 94. 13. ​Soderlund, Lenape Country, 65–69, 115–119; Federal Writers’ Proj­ect of the Works Pro­ gress Administration, State of New Jersey, The Rec­ords of the Swedish Lutheran Churches at Raccoon and Penns Neck 1713–1786 (Elizabeth, N.J.: Colby and McGowan, 1938). 14. ​Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:66–71, 76, 88. On similar attitudes in the Netherlands and New Netherland, see Susanah Shaw Romney, “ ‘ With & alongside his ­house­wife’: Claiming Ground in New Netherland and the Early Modern Dutch Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 73 (2016): 187–224. 15. ​Craig, 1693 Census, 43, 46, 59–63; Peter Stebbins Craig, “The Stille F ­ amily in Amer­ic­ a 1641–1772,” Swedish American Genealogist 6 (1986): 142–149; PWP, 2:547–549. 16. ​Craig, 1693 Census, 135–136, 142, 152–154; Salem Surveys No. 2, p. 55, upside down, NJSA; William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives) (hereafter NJA), 2 ser., 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: vari­ous publishers, 1880–1931), 1st ser., 21:553, 645; Sharon Ann Burnston, “Babies in the Well: An Under­ground Insight into Deviant Be­hav­ior in Eighteenth-­Century Philadelphia,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 106 (1982): 151–186; Cornelia Hughes Dayton, ­Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 210–213. 17. ​Transcription of the Minute Book Quarter Sessions Common Pleas Gloucester County New Jersey (hereafter Glou. Co. Court minutes), no. 1, 1686–1713 (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1938), 180–182 (page numbers at bottom); Transcription of the First Quarter ­Century documents of Old Gloucester County New Jersey, vol. 1 (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, n.d.), 183; Craig, 70–71, 73–74. For discussion of abortion in other colonies, see Susan  E. Klepp, Revolutionary Conceptions: ­Women, Fertility, and F ­ amily Limitation in Amer­i­ca, 1760–1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 180–187; Cornelia Hughes Dayton, “Taking the Trade: Abortion and Gender Relations in an Eighteenth-­ Century New E ­ ngland Village,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 48 (1991): 19–49. 18. ​Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 46, 51–52, 62, 83, 127, 165, 170, 175, 180, 182; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 152–154. In 1682–1683, William Penn and his settlers in Pennsylvania established a rigorous moral code. PWP, 2:222–25; Jean R. Soderlund, William Penn and the Founding of Pennsylvania: A Documentary History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 250–251. 19. ​ Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Jo. Severns, 1852), 93–96; Craig, 1693 Census, 66–70, 111; Craig, 1671 Census, 81. This was the only known trial for witchcraft in Pennsylvania or West Jersey. 20. ​Donald H. Kent, ed., Early American Indian Documents: Treaties and Laws, 1607–1789, vol. 1, Pennsylvania and Delaware Treaties, 1629–1737, gen. ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Washington, D.C.: University Publications of Amer­ic­ a, 1979), 76–78, 81–82; PWP, 3:106–108, 113; Craig, 1693 Census, 30–31; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Rec­ord of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944); 218, 277–278, 294–295. 21. ​Phyllis Mack, Visionary ­Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-­Century ­England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Rebecca Larson, ­Daughters of Light: Quaker ­Women



Notes to Pages 88–91

163

Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–1775 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); Jean  R. Soderlund, “­Women’s Authority in Pennsylvania and New Jersey Quaker Meetings, 1680–1760,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 44 (1987): 722–49; Mary Maples Dunn, “­Women of Light,” in Berkin and Norton, ­Women of Amer­i­ca, 114–136; Mary Maples Dunn, “Latest Light on ­Women of Light,” in Witnesses for Change: Quaker ­Women over Three Centuries, ed. Elisabeth Potts Brown and Susan Mosher Stuard (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 71–89; Amanda E. Herbert, “Companions in Preaching and Suffering: Itinerant Female Quakers in the Seventeenth-­and Eighteenth-­Century British Atlantic World,” Early American Studies 9 (2011): 73–113; Michele Lise Tarter, “Quaking in the Light: The Politics of Quaker W ­ omen’s Corporeal Prophecy in the Seventeenth-­Century Transatlantic World,” in A Centre of Won­ders: The Body in Early Amer­i­ca, ed. Janet Moore Lindman and Michele Lise Tarter (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001), 145–162; Jean R. Soderlund, “Quaker W ­ omen in Lenape Country: Defining Community on the West New Jersey Frontier,” in New Critical Studies on Early Quaker ­Women, 1650–1800, ed. Michele Lise Tarter and Catie Gill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 221–239; Naomi Pullin, Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Salmon, ­Women and the Law. 22. ​H. Stanley Craig, comp., Salem County New Jersey Genealogical Data, vol.1 (Merchantville, N.J.: H. Stanley Craig; repr., Gloucester County Historical Society, 1980), 180–181, 254–260, 298, 301. 23. ​Chesterfield Monthly Meeting, 1659–1884, Births and Deaths, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, 6, 9, 10, 11; Ewan M. Woodward and John F. Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey (Philadelphia: Everts and Peck, 1883), 10; Craig, Salem County, 300, 303. 24. ​Chesterfield Monthly Meeting, 1659–1884, Births and Deaths, 1659–1884, 1, 1A, 3, 3A, 6–8A, 13, 13A; Burlington Monthly Meeting, 1677–1765, Marriages, Births and Deaths, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College: Births, 1–37. 25. ​Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 33–36. On economic power among married ­women and ­widows, see Lisa Wilson, Life ­after Death: ­Widows in Pennsylvania, 1750–1850 (Philadelphia: ­Temple University Press, 1992), 101–131; Ulrich, Good Wives, 35–50; Salmon, ­Women and the Law, 40–57. 26. ​ Burlington Monthly Meeting, 1677–1765, Marriages, Births and Deaths: Deaths 1; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 89, 103–105; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 103; Armstrong, “Rec­ord of Upland Court,” 116–118; Shinn and Soderlund, “­Great Island,” 7–24. 27. ​Burlington Monthly Meeting, 1677–1765, Marriages, Births and Deaths: Marriages, 214, 217–218; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 1, 4; Burlington Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1678–1737, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, 273–274. On the vulnerability of in­de­pen­dent w ­ omen in early New ­England, see Ulrich, Good Wives; Carol  F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a W ­ oman: Witchcraft in Colonial New E ­ ngland (New York: Norton, 1987). 28. ​For Hannah Salter’s early life, see chapter 2, above; Rec­ords of the Court of New ­Castle on Delaware 1676–1681, vol. 1 (Lancaster: Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1904), 209–210, 360–363. 29. ​Burlington Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1678–1737, 5M 1682; NJA, vol. 21; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book. 30. ​Reed and Miller, 89; Bartlett Burleigh James and J. Franklin Jameson, eds., Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679–1680 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 104–107; Craig, 1671 Census, 33.

164

Notes to Pages 92– 96

31. ​Minute and Copy, W ­ ill of Anna Salter of Tacony, Philadelphia County, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1679–1703, 7M 1689, 22, 26; Philadelphia Quarterly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1682–1711, 7M 1690, 1M 1692/1693, 4M 1693, 7M 1693, 10M 1693, 1M 1693/1694; Philadelphia Monthly and Quarterly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1682–1705, 1M 1703/4, 4M 1704; Philadelphia Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1715–1744, 8M 1723; Abington Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1629–1812, 273; accessed through Ancestry​.­com. 32. ​John Clement, Sketches of the First Emigrant Settlers in Newton Township, Old Gloucester County, West New Jersey (Camden, N.J.: Sinnickson Chew, 1877), 293–97; John R. Stevenson, Samuel Spicer and His Descendants: With Some Notices of the Early Settlements of Camden and Cape May Counties, New Jersey (n.d.: n.p.), 47–50; Jeffrey M. Dorwart and Elizabeth A. Lyons, Elizabeth Haddon Estaugh, 1680–1762: Building the Quaker Community of Haddonfield, NJ, 1701–1762 (Haddonfield, N.J.: Haddonfield Historical Society, 2013), 81–82. 33. ​Dorwart and Lyons, Elizabeth Haddon Estaugh, 69–84; NJA, 21:660, 675–676, 683; Clement, Sketches, 109–114; Margaret Hope Bacon, M ­ others of Feminism: The Story of Quaker ­Women in Amer­i­ca (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986), 63–64; This Is Haddonfield (Haddonfield, N.J.: Historical Society of Haddonfield, 1963), 17, 65. 34. ​Glou. Co. Court minutes, 1:114; Minutes of Quarter Sessions Court, Salem County, Salem County Clerk’s Office, Salem, N.J., 1706–1722, 246, 273, 299; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 155, 163, 192, 194–196, 203, 216–218, 220, 228–229, 263, 267; Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 512–513, 555–556, 576–577; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 158, 195–197, 200–201; Mark G. Hanna, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 278–279. 35. ​Joseph Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the ­People called Quakers for the Testimony of a Good Conscience, 2 vols. (London, 1753), 1:28, 30; Mack, Visionary ­Women, 333–336; Pomfret, 287–88; NJA, 21:420, 430, 450, 457, 666, 674, 678, 682. 36. ​ NJA, 23:511; Glou. Co. Court minutes, 1:99, 126–128. 37. ​Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 460; Petition re Anne Penstone wife of Stephen March  1, 1691/1692, Gloucester County Historical Society Petitions 1689–1726, Microfilm Reel no.  1–323, NJSA; Glou. Co. Court minutes, 1:94–95, 97, 99–100, 103, 126–128, 130–131, 137–138, 146, 157, 178, 182, 188; Transcription . . . ​Gloucester Co. documents, 1:17, 38–42, 127, 219–221; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 182, 185; NJA, 21:513, 666, 674, 678; Clement, Sketches, 131–132, 171, 335. 38. ​Though some early Quaker monthly meeting minutes ­were sketchy, the rec­ords show significant variation among meetings in their enforcement of the marriage discipline. Chesterfield, for example, was particularly strict even before the Friends’ reform movement of the 1750s, when marrying outside the meeting resulted in many cases and disownments. Soderlund, “­Women’s Authority,” 739–749; Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Prince­ ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1985), 140–145; Lyons, Sex among the Rabble, 83–85. 39. ​Burlington Monthly Meeting (­Women’s) minutes, 1681–1747, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, 1; Burlington Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1678–1737, 9M 1682. 40. ​Burlington Monthly Meeting (­Women’s) minutes, 1681–1747, 6M 1686, 12M 1686/1687, 1M 1689/1690, 7M 1690, 10M 1695, 7M 1698; Burlington Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1678–1737, 272; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (­Women’s) minutes, 1681–1742, 7M 1694; Soderlund, “­Women’s Authority,” 746–747; Emma Jones Lapsansky, “Past Plainness to Pre­sent Simplicity: A Search for Quaker Identity,” in Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption, ed. Emma Jones Lapsansky and Anne A. Verplanck (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 1–15. 41. ​Chesterfield Monthly Meeting (­Women’s) minutes [rough], 1688–1739, 8M 1695, 7M 1697, 4M 1699, 6M 1701; Chesterfield Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1684–1977, 12M



Notes to Pages 96–102

165

1692, 9M 1695, 4M 1699; Salem Monthly Meeting (­Women’s) minutes, 1682–1763, 2M/1697; Salem Men’s and Joint Meeting minutes, 1676–1827, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College; Haddonfield (Newton) Monthly Meeting (­Women’s) minutes, 1693–1737, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College, 4M 1698, 137; 12M 1699/1700, 138. 42. ​Soderlund, “­Women’s Authority,” 739–749. 43. ​William M. Offutt Jr., Of “Good Laws” and “Good Men”: Law and Society in The Delaware Valley, 1680–1710 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995). The Burlington court minutes for 1680 to 1709 (published in Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book) are quite full though vary in quality from one case to another. The Gloucester court minutes are less complete, with considerable paper damage, though supplemental documents help to fill gaps. Most Salem court rec­ords are missing before 1706. 44. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book; Burlington Court Book, 1709–1717, Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington; Glou. Co. Court minutes; Salem Co. Court minutes, 1706–1722, 1727–1742. On the impact of the requirement for witnesses in convictions in Connecticut, see Dayton, ­Women before the Bar, 225. 45. ​Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 460, 527–528; Bernard Bush, comp., Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey 1703–1745, New Jersey Archives, 3rd ser. (Trenton: New Jersey State Library, Archives and History Bureau, 1977), 2:21–22. 46. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 72–73, 117–118, 121–122, 261, 266, 271; NJA, 21: 651–652, 663, 672, 676; Frank  H. Stewart, The Organ­ization and Minutes of the Gloucester County Court 1686–7 (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1930), 25. 47. ​Reed and Miller, 69–71, 166–167, 248, 252; Cornelia Hughes Dayton found in colonial Connecticut that “poor, transient servant w ­ omen” ­were most likely to be charged with infanticide but ­were usually acquitted; Dayton, ­Women before the Bar, 21, 65, 210–213. 48. ​Ulrich, Good Wives, 59–60, 92, 98–99; Dayton, 21, 225; Klepp, Revolutionary Conceptions, 219–220. 49. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 74–76, 78; Chesterfield Monthly Meeting, 1659–1884, Births and Deaths, 10. 50. ​Reed and Miller, 76–80; Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 402, 434; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 184; Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 142; Dayton, ­Women before the Bar, 233. 51. ​Reed and Miller, 126–127, 254–255, 264, 266–267.

chapter 6  Forced Separation 1. ​H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Rec­ord of Quaker

Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), 56–57. 2. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 56–57. For insightful studies using court rec­ords to explores the lives of enslaved Blacks in Barbados and Louisiana, see Marisa J. Fuentes, Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved ­Women, Vio­lence, and the Archive (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016); and Sophie White, Voices of the Enslaved: Love, ­Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019). 3. ​R eed and Miller, xxxiii, 56–57; Burlington Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 8M 1680; Burlington Monthly Meeting, 1677–1765, Marriages, Births and Deaths, Marriages, 1, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College; William  A. Whitehead et  al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives) (hereafter NJA), 2 ser., 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: vari­ous publishers,

166

Notes to Pages 103–106

1880–1931), 1st  ser., 21:352, 370, 377–379, 447, 450; 23:180, 513–514; Henry  H. Bisbee and Rebecca Bisbee Colesar, eds., The Burlington Town Book 1694–1785 (Burlington, N.J.: Henry H. Bisbee, 1975), 3. 4. ​Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 60–61; William H. Williams, Slavery and Freedom in Delaware, 1639–1865 (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1996), 1–10; Rec­ords of the Court of New ­Castle on Delaware 1676–1681, vol. 1 (Lancaster: Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1904), 159–161; Edward Armstrong, ed., “Rec­ord of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,” Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 77–80. 5. ​N.J. Unrecorded W ­ ills, 1:297–304, 3:103–110, 3:231–238, 4:85–89; Burlington County W ­ ills, A172, 101–108C, 217–219C, 881C, 883C, 891C, 893C, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA); NJA, 23:20, 28–29, 47, 55, 70–71, 137, 159–60, 180, 188, 197, 198, 205, 228, 234, 249, 334, 336, 355–356, 408, 422, 437, 453, 459, 513–514; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 56–57, 156, 186, 224–225, 267–269. 6. ​Mary Maples Dunn, Richard S. Dunn, et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987) (hereafter PWP), 2:608–610; Graham Russell Hodges, Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey 1613–1863 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 44–45; Jean R. Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1985), 57–58, 63–65; Albert Cook Myers, ed., Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 325. 7. ​Darold Duane Wax, “The Negro Slave Trade in Colonial Pennsylvania” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1962), 20–29, 91–100; Gregory  E. O’Malley, “Beyond the M ­ iddle Passage: Slave Migration from the Ca­rib­bean to North Amer­i­ca, 1619–1807,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd  ser., 66 (2009): 157–165, 170; Burlington County ­Wills, 1211–1216C, 1433–1448C, NJSA; Craig W. Horle et al., eds., Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991, 1997), 2:993–1001; William A. Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt: The Royal African Com­pany and the Politics of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1672–1752 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 1–16; Stephanie  E. Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery: A ­Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 162–166, 193–195; Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring ­Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 110–111; Jennifer L. Morgan, Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2021); Richard  S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the En­glish West Indies, 1624–1713 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 300–325; Joseph C. Miller, “Africa, the Slave Trade, and the Diaspora,” in Upon ­These Shores: Themes in the African-­ American Experience 1600 to the Pre­sent, ed. William R. Scott and William G. Shade (New York: Routledge, 2000), 21–60. 8. ​Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 182–207; PWP, 3:66–67; 9. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 142–143, 148, 186, 223–225. 10. ​Reed and Miller, 156; N.J. Unrecorded ­Wills, 3:103–110; Burlington County Court Book, 1709–1717, Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington, N.J., 99, 104–106, 109, 125, 127; Morgan, Laboring ­Women, 71–72; Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial V ­ irginia (New York: W. W. Norton, 1975), 333–336. 11. ​Reed and Miller, 255–56; Sharon Block, Rape and Sexual Power in Early Amer­i­ca (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 177.



Notes to Pages 107–111

167

12. ​Reed and Miller, 267–269; Smallwood, Saltwater Slavery, 183–187; William  D. Piersen,

“White Cannibals, Black Martyrs: Fear, Depression, and Religious Faith as ­Causes of Suicide among New Slaves,” Journal of Negro History 62 (1977): 151–154. 13. ​Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1752; 2nd ed., Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman, 1881), 512, 519. 14. ​Bisbee and Colesar, Burlington Town Book, 4, 8. 15. ​Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1681–1746, 7M 1696, 7M 1698, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College; Gary  B. Nash, Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community 1720–1840 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988), 13–14, 285–286; Susan E. Klepp, “The Swift Pro­gress of Population”: A Documentary and Bibliographic Study of Philadelphia’s Growth, 1642–1859 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991), 6. Philadelphia Quaker George Gray, an enslaver who emigrated from Barbados in 1692, wrote that “it is a Grief unto the faithfull to See & heare how Rude blacks are and more especially on first days when they gett Liberty & go in Companyes neer the Town to Daunce & drink & have Merry Meetings.” J. William Frost, “George Fox’s Ambiguous Anti-­ Slavery Legacy,” in New Light on George Fox (1624 to 1691), ed. Michael Mullett (York, U.K.: William Sessions ­Limited, 1993), 83. 16. ​Bernard Bush, comp., Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey 1703–1745, New Jersey Archives, 3rd  ser. (Trenton: New Jersey State Library, Archives and History Bureau, 1977), 2:21–22, 30. 17. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 325–29. 18. ​Bush, Laws, 2:28–30; Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the En­glish Empire in the American South, 1670–1717 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 294–314; Christina Snyder, Slavery in Indian Country: The Changing Face of Captivity in Early Amer­i­ca (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 68. In 1714, New Jersey placed a £10 duty on each enslaved Black, Native, and Mulatto imported into the province; Bush, 2:163–164. 19. ​Bush, 2:136–140. 20. ​Minutes of Quarter Sessions Court, Salem County, Salem County Clerk’s Office, Salem, N.J., 1706–1722: 9, 12, 17, 21, 174, 194, 216–217. 21. ​Salem Court minutes, 1706–1722: 218–219. For a 1738 case in which an enslaved man was tried in a special court in Gloucester County, see Gloucester County Miscellaneous County and Court Rec­ords, Microfilm Reel no. 1–344, NJSA. The historian Paul J. Polgar found similar ruthless executions in East Jersey, Long Island, and other parts of the ­middle colonies, noting that “enslaved p­ eople ­were often called to witness the brutal executions”; Standard ­Bearers of Equality: Amer­ic­ a’s First Abolition Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019), 26–27. 22. ​Northampton Township, Burlington County, minutes, 1697–1803, photostatic copy, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Burlington County Probate Rec­ords, 1731–1750, NJSA; Everts B. Greene and V ­ irginia D. Harrington, American Population before the Federal Census of 1790 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 109–111; Jean  R. Soderlund, “African Americans and Native Americans in John Woolman’s World,” in The Tendering Presence: Essays on John Woolman, ed. Mike Heller (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 2003), 148–166. 23. ​Susan E. Klepp and Billy G. Smith, eds., The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 64, 94–96. 24. ​James T. Mitchell and Henry Flanders, comps., The Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, Volume 2: 1700 to 1712 (Harrisburg: Clarence M. Busch, 1896), 236–237, 433–436;

168

Notes to Pages 111–115

J.  William Frost, ed., The Quaker Origins of Antislavery (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1980), 131; Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery, 21, 42, 166; Soderlund, “African Americans,” 162–163. 25. ​George Fox, Gospel Family-­Order, Being a Short Discourse Concerning the Ordering of Families, Both of Whites, Blacks and Indians (1676), in Frost, Quaker Origins, 46–49. On the development of antislavery thought in the Delaware Valley in the late seventeenth and early eigh­teenth centuries, see Thomas E. Drake, Quakers and Slavery in Amer­i­ca (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950); Frost, Quaker Origins; Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery; Gary B. Nash and Jean  R. Soderlund, Freedom by Degrees: Emancipation in Pennsylvania and Its Aftermath (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Philippe Rosenberg, “Thomas Tryon and the Seventeenth-­Century Dimensions of Antislavery,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd  ser., 61 (2004): 609–642; Kristen Block, “Cultivating Inner and Outer Plantations: Property, Industry, and Slavery in Early Quaker Migration to the New World,” Early American Studies 8 (2010): 515–548; Katherine Gerbner, “Antislavery in Print: The Germantown Protest, the ‘Exhortation,’ and the Seventeenth-­Century Quaker Debate on Slavery,” Early American Studies 9 (2011): 552–575; Brycchan Carey, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhe­toric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012); Manisha Sinha, The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2016); Nicholas P. Wood and Jean R. Soderlund, “ ‘To Friends and All Whom It May Concerne’: William Southeby’s Rediscovered 1696 Antislavery Protest,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 141 (2017): 177–198; Marcus Rediker, The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist (Boston: Beacon, 2017); Polgar, Standard ­Bearers of Equality. 26. ​“Germantown Friends’ Protest Against Slavery, 1688,” in Frost, Quaker Origins, 69; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 7M 1688. 27. ​ An Exhortation & Caution to Friends Concerning buying or keeping of Negroes, in The Keithian Controversy in Early Pennsylvania, ed. J. William Frost (Norwood, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1980), 213–218; Gerbner, “Antislavery in Print,” 552–574; Drake, Quakers and Slavery in Amer­i­ca, 14–15; Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery, 18–19. 28. ​Wood and Soderlund, “To Friends,” 177–198. 29. ​Cadwalader Morgan essay (1696) in Frost, Quaker Origins, 70; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 7M 1696; Soderlund, Quakers and Slavery, 19, 34–35, 47–49; Drake, Quakers and Slavery in Amer­ic­ a, 19–20. 30. ​Frost, 74–75, 131; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 7M 1711, 7M 1715, 7M 1716, 7M 1719; Soderlund, 20–21. 31. ​Frost, 131–32; Soderlund, 23–25; Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 7M 1729, 7M 1730; Salem Men’s and Joint Meeting minutes, 1676–1827, 6M 1730; Chesterfield Monthly Meeting (Men’s) minutes, 1684–1977, 6M 1730, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College. 32. ​Soderlund, 15–17, 22, 117–18; C. Brightwen Rowntree, “Benjamin Lay (1681–1759),” Journal of the Friends’ Historical Society 33 (1936): 14–15; Rediker, Fearless Benjamin Lay, 1–3. 33. ​Phillips  P. Moulton, ed., The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971); Soderlund, 26–31, 87–111; Thomas P. Slaughter, The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008); Geoffrey Plank, John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Soderlund, “African Americans,” 148–66. 34. ​Klepp and Smith, Infortunate, 83, 165–166. 35. ​Klepp and Smith, 82–83, 163–166; Burlington County W ­ ills, 349C, 1120–1126C; West Jersey W ­ ills, Liber 6:263, NJSA; Robert L. Thompson, Burlington Biographies: A History of Burlington, New Jersey, Told through the Lives and Times of Its ­People (Galloway, N.J.: South Jersey



Notes to Pages 116–120

169

Culture and History Center, Stockton University, 2016), 71–81; NJA, 15:30, 50, 384; 30:373; Thomas L. Purvis, Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, 1703–1776 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 98, 257.

chapter 7  A Different Path 1. ​Transcription of the Minute Book Quarter Sessions Common Pleas Gloucester County New Jersey (hereafter Glou. Co. Court minutes), Book 1, 1686–1713 (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1938), 63, 67–69 (page numbers at bottom); Transcription of the First Quarter ­Century Documents of Old Gloucester County New Jersey, vol. 1, (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, n.d.), 8–10; Peter Stebbins Craig, The 1693 Census of the Swedes on the Delaware (Winter Park, Fla.: SAG, 1993), 67–68. 2. ​Craig, 1693 Census, 66–69; Peter Stebbins Craig, 1671 Census of the Delaware (Philadelphia: Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, 1999), 22; Jean R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 86–88. Like many Delaware valley Swedes and Finns in the seventeenth ­century, Peter and John Mattsson kept the patronymic surname based on their ­father’s first name, though they also used the surname of their stepfather. En­glish clerks recorded their names in vari­ous ways; see Craig, 1693 Census, 9, 66–69. 3. ​Craig, 1693 Census, 70–71; Glou. Co. Court minutes, 1:68, 81–87. 4. ​William A. Whitehead et al., eds., Documents Relating to the Colonial History of the State of New Jersey (New Jersey Archives) (hereafter NJA), 2 ser., 35 vols. (Newark, Trenton, and Paterson, N.J.: vari­ous publishers, 1880–1931), 1st ser., vols. 23, 30; West Jersey Historical Proj­ect, The NJ Colonial Conveyances, www​.­westjerseyhistory​.­org​/­docs​/­cc​/­index​.­shtml; “An Historical and Geo­graph­i­cal Account of Pensilvania and of West-­New-­Jersey, by Gabriel Thomas, 1698,” in Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey, and Delaware 1630–1707, ed. Albert Cook Myers (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 349–350; Peter O. Wacker, “Swedish Settlement in New Jersey Before 1800,” in New Sweden in Amer­i­ca, ed. Carol E. Hoffecker, Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson (Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 215–248; Peter O. Wacker, Land and ­People: A Cultural Geography of Pre­industrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975), 169–172; Terry G. Jordan and Matti Kaups, The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 53–60; John E. Pomfret, The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1956), 277–280. 5. ​Peter Stebbins Craig and Kim-­Eric Williams, eds., Colonial Rec­ords of the Swedish Churches in Pennsylvania, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 2006–2009), 2:61–71. 6. ​Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:66–71, 76, 88. 7. ​Craig and Williams, 2:10–32, 77–84. King Carl XI died during the ministers’ journey and was succeeded by his fifteen-­year-­old son, Carl XII. 8. ​Craig and Williams, 2:63, 66–67, 73, 87, 113–115. 9. ​Craig and Williams, 2:64, 67, 76, 82–83, 88. 10. ​Soderlund, Lenape Country, 81–83, 93–141; Stellan Dahlgren and Hans Norman, The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1988), 175, 177; Peter Lindeström, Geographia Americae with an Account of the Delaware Indians Based on Surveys and Notes Made in 1654–1656, trans. and ed. Amandus Johnson (Philadelphia: Swedish Colonial Society, 1925), 129.

170

Notes to Pages 120–124

11. ​Samuel Smith, The History of New-­Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877),

92–93; H. Clay Reed and George J. Miller, eds., The Burlington Court Book: A Rec­ord of Quaker Jurisprudence in West New Jersey 1680–1709 (Washington, D.C.: American Historical Association, 1944), 25–29; Craig, 1693 Census; Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 2:38, 56–61. 12. ​Craig and Williams, 2:88. 13. ​­Virginia DeJohn Anderson, Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early Amer­i­ca (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 243, 246; William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecol­ogy of New ­England (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 128–131; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 56–58; Pekka Hämäläinen, “The Politics of Grass: Eu­ro­pean Expansion, Ecological Change, and Indigenous Power in the Southwest Borderlands,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 67 (2010): 173–208. 14. ​Dahlgren and Norman, Rise and Fall, 175, 177; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 82. 15. ​Frank H. Stewart, ed., The Organ­ization and Minutes of the Gloucester County Court 1686–7 (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1930); Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book; Glou. Co. Court minutes; Petitions 1689–1726, Gloucester County Court Documents, Gloucester County Historical Society; Frank H. Stewart, ed., Gloucester County ­under the Proprietors (Woodbury, N.J.: Constitution, 1942), 19–20. 16. ​Craig, 1693 Census, 30–31, 68, 70–71, 79–80, 84–85, 121; Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vols. XX–­XXI, Delaware Papers (En­glish Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1977), 17–19, 30–32, 49–50, 71–74, 175, 271–272; Reed and Miller, 26, 218, 277–278, 294–295; NJA, 21:403, 412, 684; 23:125–26; Stewart, Gloucester County, 23, 30. For an extensive discussion of go-­betweens, see James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the Pennsylvania Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999). 17. ​West Jersey Book B, Pt. 1:3–4; West Jersey Book B:181, 202–203, 644–645, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA); Frank H. Stewart, Indians of Southern New Jersey (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1932), 68–71, 79–80, 87; NJA, 21:349, 384; Craig, 1671 Census, 12–13, 71–72; Craig, 1693 Census, 126–27; Edward Armstrong, ed., “Rec­ord of Upland Court; From the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681,” Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. 7 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1860), 138, 140–142; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 67–68; Robert  L. Thompson, Burlington Biographies: A History of Burlington, New Jersey, Told through the Lives and Times of Its ­People (Galloway, N.J.: South Jersey Culture and History Center, Stockton University, 2016), 19n29, 246; Bartlett Burleigh James and J. Franklin Jameson, eds., Journal of Jasper Danckaerts 1679–1680 (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), 98–99; N.J. ­Wills, Lib. 4:362, NJSA, abstracted in NJA, 30:171 with incorrect date; John Cripps, “A True Account of the ­Dying Words of Ockanickon” (London: Benjamin Clark, 1682), reprinted in Journal of the Friends Historical Society, supplement, 9 (London, 1912): 164–166; Peter Stebbins Craig, “Swedish Indian Traders, 1638–1737, and Their Role as Peacemakers in the Colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Mary­ land, and New Jersey,” presented at the New Sweden History Conference, November 2004, copy in author’s possession. 18. ​Craig, 1693 Census, 48–49; Deed for Petty Island from Lenapes to Elizabeth Kinsey, July 12, 1678, Document Signed, Richard Reeve Wood papers in Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College. 19. ​West Jersey Book B:325, Salem Deeds 6:194, NJSA; Stewart, Indians, 67–68, 77; Craig, 1693 Census, 72. 20. ​Craig, 60–63; NJA, 30:42, 83, 168, 246, 268, 278, 377, 452–453, 465; Wacker, “Swedish,” 231–243; Wacker, Land and P ­ eople, 40, 42, 48, 113–114, 169–171; Jordan and Kaups, American Backwoods, 3, 40–41, 60, 122, 217, 229; Thomas Cushing and Charles E. Sheppard, History of the



Notes to Pages 125–129

171

Counties of Gloucester, Salem, and Cumberland New Jersey (Philadelphia: Everts and Peck, 1883), 510, 645–646, 715, 718; Roger T. Trindell, “The Ports of Salem and Greenwich in the Eigh­teenth ­Century,” New Jersey History 86 (1968): 199–213. 21. ​ Rec­ord of the Courts of Chester County Pennsylvania 1681–1697 (Philadelphia: Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, 1910), 1:23, 25; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 150–157; William  M. Offutt Jr., “The Limits of Authority: Courts, Ethnicity, and Gender in the M ­ iddle Colonies, 1670–1710,” in The Many Legalities of Early Amer­ic­ a, ed. Christopher L. Tomlins and Bruce H. Mann (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 375–377; Extracts from the Minute Book of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions Courts, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1684–1730, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 181–182, 188–189, 217, 223–223; Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: Jo. Severns, 1852), 1:367–368, 382–383, 442; Timothy J. Hayburn, “Who Should Die? The Evolution of Capital Punishment in Pennsylvania, 1681–1794” (PhD diss., Lehigh University, 2011), 34. 22. ​Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New Jersey (Philadelphia: W. Bradford, 1752; 2nd ed., Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman, 1881), 440–503, 619, 622–623; Carlos E. Godfrey, “Pages of Some Unpublished Parts of Leaming & Spicer’s ‘Grants and Concessions, 1681–1699,’ ” Camden History 1, no.  4 (1922): 3–4; Craig, 1693 Census, 27–28; Thomas  L. Purvis, “ ‘High-­Born, Long-­Recorded Families’: Social Origins of New Jersey Assemblymen, 1703 to 1776,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd  ser., 37 (1980): 592–599, 608–609; Thomas  L. Purvis, Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, 1703–1776 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986), 255–259; Journal and Votes of the House of Representatives of the Province of Nova Cesarea, or New Jersey, Began at Perth Amboy, The 10th  Day of November, 1703 ( Jersey City: John H. Lyon, 1872), 3, 25, 41, 75–77, 157, 215; Bernard Bush, comp., Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey 1703–1745, New Jersey Archives, 3rd ser. (Trenton: New Jersey State Library, Archives and History Bureau, 1977), 2:xii, xviii–xx. 23. ​Glou. Co. Court minutes, Book 1: Parts 1 and 2; Book 2:453–541; Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 535–536, 544–545, 552–553, 566–570, 579–580; Craig, 1693 Census, 75. 24. ​Glou. Co. Court minutes, Book 1: Parts 1 and 2; Book 2:453–541; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 190–202; Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book, 203–226. 25. ​Pomfret, 125, 161, 175–176, 195; Glou. Co. Court minutes, Book 1: Part 1:191–206; Craig, 1693 Census, 65–66. 26. ​Glou. Co. Court minutes, Book 1: Part 1:205–215. 27. ​Purvis, Proprietors, 14; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 196–197. 28. ​Reed and Miller, Burlington Court Book; Craig, 1693 Census, 30–31, 51, 60–62; Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 566–570. 29. ​Minutes of Quarter Sessions Court, Salem County, Salem County Clerk’s Office, Salem, N.J., 1706–1722 and 1727–1742 volumes; Craig, 1671 Census, 60; Craig, 1693 Census, 51, 78, 141, 148–149, 156; H. Stanley Craig, comp., Salem County New Jersey Genealogical Data, vol. 2 (Merchantville, N.J.: H. Stanley Craig; repr., Gloucester County Historical Society, 1981), 223–232; Leaming and Spicer, Grants, Concessions, 535–536, 544–545, 552–553, 556–570; NJA, 21:643. 30. ​Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 1:182–186; Benedict Anderson, ­Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 5–7; Daniel Lindmark, Ecclesia Plantanda: Swedishness in Colonial Amer­i­ca (Umeå, Sweden: Kulturgräns Norr, Umeå University, 2005), 31–39. 31. ​Craig and Williams, 2:88, 147–149, 172–175; Horace Burr, trans., The Rec­ords of Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church, Wilmington, Del., from 1697 to 1773 (Wilmington: Historical Society of Delaware, 1890), 15–16, 42–50; Craig, 1693 Census, 76–82, 135–158. 32. ​Craig and Williams, 2:181–202 (quotations pp. 189, 198).

172

Notes to Pages 129–135

33. ​Craig and Williams, 2:172–75; Burr, Holy Trinity, 44–50; Craig, 1693 Census, 35, 68, 73–74,

78, 80–81, 139–142; Craig, 1671 Census, 28; NJA 21:676; Mary Maples Dunn, Richard S. Dunn, et al., eds., The Papers of William Penn, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981–1987), 2:254; West Jersey Historical Proj­ ect, The NJ Colonial Conveyances, www​ .­westjerseyhistory​.­org​/­docs​/­cc​/­index​.­shtml, 127. 34. ​Craig and Williams, 2:184–185, 190–194. 35. ​John Fea, “Ethnicity and Congregational Life in the Eighteenth-­Century Delaware Valley: The Swedish Lutherans of New Jersey,” Explorations in Early American Culture 5 (2001): 45–78; Amandus Johnson, “Introduction,” in Federal Writers’ Proj­ect of the Works Pro­gress Administration, State of New Jersey, The Rec­ords of the Swedish Lutheran Churches at Raccoon and Penns Neck 1713–1786 (Elizabeth, N.J.: Colby and McGowan, 1938), iii–­xi; Pomfret, West New Jersey, 277–284; Craig Koedel, God’s Vine in the Wilderness: Religion in South Jersey to 1800 (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1980), 4–8. 36. ​Craig and Williams, Swedish Churches, 3:67–69, 111, 141, 146. 37. ​Craig and Williams, 4:248–253. 38. ​“Reincke’s Journal of a Visit Among the Swedes of West Jersey, 1745,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 33 (1909): 99–101; Johnson, “Introduction,” xi; Fea, “Ethnicity,” 77–78; Wacker, “Swedish,” 225–231; Hans Norman, “The New Sweden Colony and the Continued Existence of Swedish and Finnish Ethnicity,” in Hoffecker et al., New Sweden, 188–214. For an insightful discussion of Dutch ethnicity during the eigh­teenth ­century, see Joyce D. Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664–1730 (Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1992). Katherine Carté Engel provides a broad view of the growing impact of Anglicanism on colonial churches in “Connecting Protestants in Britain’s Eighteenth-­Century Atlantic Empire,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd  ser., 75 (2018): 37–70. 39. ​Adolph B. Benson, ed., Peter Kalm’s Travels in North Amer­i­ca: The En­glish Version of 1770, vol. 1 (New York: Wilson-­Erickson, 1937), 265–266.

conclusion 1. ​John Romeyn Brodhead et al., eds., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, 15 vols. (Albany, N.Y.: Weed, Parsons, Printers, 1853–1887), 7:298–301; Daniel K. Richter, “His Own, Their Own: Settler Colonialism, Native P ­ eoples, and Imperial Balances of Power in Eastern North Amer­i­ca, 1660–1715,” in The World of Colonial Amer­i­ca: An Atlantic Handbook, ed. Ignacio Gallup-­Diaz (New York: Routledge, 2017), 209–233; Jean  R. Soderlund, Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 35–148; Samuel Smith, The History of New-­Jersey, 2nd ed. (Trenton, N.J.: William S. Sharp, 1877), 442; Charles T. Gehring, ed., New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vols. XX–­XXI, Delaware Papers (En­glish Period) (Baltimore: Genealogical, 1977), 11–12, 17–19; Thomas Budd, Good Order Established in Pennsilvania & New-­Jersey in Amer­i­ca (1685), 28–29, 32–33. 2. ​Amy C. Schutt, ­Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 94–123; Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 440–484; Robert S. Grumet, The Munsee Indians: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009), 262–269; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 184–195; Cohanzick Deeds to John Fenwick, MG3 #4, #5, #6, #8, New Jersey Historical Society, Newark; Salem Deeds #1: 20 and 42, West Jersey Book B: 202–3, 325, and West Jersey Book B, Pt. 1: 3–4, New Jersey State Archives, Trenton (hereafter NJSA); Frank H. Stewart, Indians of Southern New Jersey (Woodbury, N.J.: Gloucester County Historical Society, 1932), 60–71. 3. ​Smith, 442–446.



Notes to Pages 135–140

173

4. ​Deed, Meopony et al. to John Fenwick, November 17, 1675, MG3 #4, New Jersey Historical Society; John Brainerd, Journal: 1761–1762 (MS), Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Prince­ton University Libraries (Firestone Library); Amandus Johnson, The Journal and Biography of Nicholas Collin 1746–1831 (Philadelphia: New Jersey Society of Pennsylvania, 1936), 224–225, 289. 5. ​Smith, History of New-­Jersey, 440–484; Grumet, Munsee Indians, 208, 262–269, 284–285; Soderlund, Lenape Country, 188–195; Richard Sears Walling, “The Coaxen Indian Plantation and Its Quaker Protectors: Assuaging Cultural Conflict” (paper presented at the Quakers and American Indians conference, Bryn Mawr College, November 11, 2016); Edward McM. Larrabee, “Recurrent Themes and Sequences in North American Indian-­European Culture Contact,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s., 66, pt. 7 (1976): 7–11, 15–17; Tom Stores et al. to Friend Mr. Israel Pemberton, March 8, 1758, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee papers, vol. AA1, 427, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford College; Deed Book I-2, 85–92, NJSA; Stewart, Indians, 82–83; C. A. Weslager, The Delaware Indians: A History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 8–9, 274–278; Carla Messinger, “Hiding in Plain Sight,” Lenape Olam 22 (Spring / Early Summer 2001): 1, 3; James W. Brown and Rita T. Kohn, eds., Long Journey Home: Oral Histories of Con­temporary Delaware Indians (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), xxiv–­x xvii; Brice Obermeyer, “Using Language, Ethnography, Folklore and Oral Tradition for Interpreting the Cultural Affiliation of Abbott Farm,” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 68–70 (2013–2015): 143–158. 6. ​John Woolman, “Some Considerations on the Keeping of Negroes,” in The Journal and Major Essays of John Woolman, ed. Phillips P. Moulton (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 207. 7. ​Moulton, Journal and Major Essays, 128–129; Jean R. Soderlund, “African Americans and Native Americans in John Woolman’s World,” in The Tendering Presence: Essays on John Woolman, ed. Mike Heller (Wallingford, Pa.: Pendle Hill, 2003), 148–166. 8. ​Budd, Good Order Established, 32–33. 9. ​John R. Norwood, We Are Still ­Here! The Tribal Saga of New Jersey’s Nanticoke and Lenape Indians (Moorestown: Native New Jersey, 2007), 3, 13–20, 32–33; Amy Hill Hearth, “Strong Medicine” Speaks: A Native American Elder Has Her Say; An Oral History (New York: Atria Books, 2008), 6; Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation (website), “About Us,” accessed September 26, 2020, https://­nlltribe​.­com​/­about​-­us​/­.

M ANUSCRIPTS AND SUGGESTED RE ADINGS manuscripts American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, Pa.: David Brainerd’s Journal, 1745 Burlington County Historical Society, Burlington, N.J. Burlington County Court Book, 1709–17 Burlington County Indictments, 1731–68 Chesterfield Town Book Vertical File Camden County Historical Society, Camden, N.J.: Deeds and Vertical File Cape May County Historical and Genealogical Society, Cape May Court House, N.J.: Deeds and Vertical File Cumberland County Historical Society, Greenwich, N.J.: Vertical File Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pa. Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Rec­ords, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including Meeting Minutes and Birth, Death, and Marriage Rec­ords Gloucester County Historical Society, Woodbury, N.J. Gloucester County Court Rec­ords Vertical File Haverford College, Quaker and Special Collections, Haverford, Pa. Allinson ­Family Papers Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Indian Committee Rec­ords Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Rec­ords, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, including Meeting Minutes and Birth, Death, and Marriage Rec­ords Richard Reeve Wood Papers Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa. Amandus Johnson Papers Etting Collection John Woolman Papers Logan F ­ amily Papers and James Logan Letterbook Pemberton Papers Penn Papers National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh: Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge Rec­ords New Jersey Historical Society, Newark, N.J. Burlington County N.J. Manuscript Collection Jacob Spicer Papers West Jersey Manuscripts New Jersey State Archives, Trenton, N.J. Burlington, Cape May, Gloucester, Salem County ­Wills and Inventories East Jersey and West Jersey Deeds Gloucester County Miscellaneous County and Court Rec­ords New Jersey Supreme Court Rec­ords Town Books for Chesterfield, New Hanover, and Northampton Townships

175

176

Manuscripts and Suggested Readings

West Jersey Assembly, Concessions and Agreements 1676–77 West Jersey Proprietors, Council Minutes, Books 1, 2, 3, 3A, 4 Prince­ton University Libraries, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections: John Brainerd Journal, 1761–62 Rec­ords of the Society of Friends in ­Great Britain, Accessed through Ancestry​.­com Rutgers University, Special Collections and University Archives, New Brunswick, N.J.: West New Jersey Society (­England) Rec­ords Salem County Clerk’s Office, Salem, N.J.: Minutes of Quarter Sessions Court, Salem County Salem County Historical Society, Salem, N.J. John Fenwick Day Book Salem County Court Minutes (microfilm) Vertical File Stewart Collection, University Archives and Special Collections, Rowan University, Glassboro, N.J.: Deeds

suggested readings This list is intended to suggest further reading on West New Jersey and specific topics related to its historical development. Please see the endnotes of each chapter for many impor­tant published primary and secondary works. Anderson, Benedict. I­ magined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 1991. Anderson, V ­ irginia DeJohn. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early Amer­i­ca. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Angell, Stephen  W., and Pink Dandelion, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Quaker Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Biddle, C. Miller. William and Sarah Biddle 1633–1711: Planting a Seed of Democracy in Amer­i­ca. Moorestown, N.J.: C. Miller Biddle, M.D., 2012. Birkner, Michael J., Donald Linky, and Peter Mickulas, eds. The Governors of New Jersey: Biographical Essays. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2014. Block, Sharon. Rape and Sexual Power in Early Amer­i­ca. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2018. Brown, James W., and Rita T. Kohn, eds. Long Journey Home: Oral Histories of Con­temporary Delaware Indians. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Carey, Brycchan, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhe­toric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012. Cross, Dorothy. Archaeology of New Jersey. 2 vols. Trenton: Archaeological Society of New Jersey and New Jersey State Museum, 1941, 1956. Dahlgren, Stellan, and Hans Norman. The Rise and Fall of New Sweden: Governor Johan Risingh’s Journal 1654–1655 in Its Historical Context. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988. Dayton, Cornelia Hughes. ­Women before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Dowd, Gregory Evans. A Spirited Re­sis­tance: The North American Indian Strug­gle for Unity, 1745–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Dunn, Mary Maples. “Latest Light on ­Women of Light.” In Witnesses for Change: Quaker ­Women over Three Centuries, edited by Elisabeth Potts Brown and Susan Mosher Stuard, 71–85. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1989.



Manuscripts and Suggested Readings 177

Erben, Patrick  M. A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. Fea, John. “Ethnicity and Congregational Life in the Eighteenth-­Century Delaware Valley: The Swedish Lutherans of New Jersey.” Explorations in Early American Culture 5 (2001): 45–78. Frost, J. William. A Perfect Freedom: Religious Liberty in Pennsylvania. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Fuentes, Marisa J. Dispossessed Lives: Enslaved W ­ omen, Vio­lence, and the Archive. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Fur, Gunlög. Colonialism in the Margins: Cultural Encounters in New Sweden and Lapland. Leiden: Brill, 2006. —­—­—. A Nation of ­Women: Gender and Colonial Encounters among the Delaware Indians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Goode, Michael. “Dangerous Spirits: How the Indian Critique of Alcohol ­Shaped Eighteenth-­ Century Quaker Revivalism.” Early American Studies 14 (2016): 258–83. Greer, Allan. Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern North Amer­i­ca. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Grumet, Robert S. “Linking Modern-­Day Delaware Indians to the Abbott Farm National Historic Landmark with Documents.” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 68–70 (2013–2015): 83–142. —­—­—. The Munsee Indians: A History. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009. —­—­—. “Sunksquaws, Shamans, and Tradeswomen: ­Middle Atlantic Coastal Algonkian ­Women During the 17th and 18th Centuries.” In ­Women and Colonization: Anthropological Perspectives, edited by Mona Etienne and Eleanor Leacock, 43–62. New York: Praeger, 1980. Haefeli, Evan. “The Pennsylvania Difference: Religious Diversity on the Delaware before 1683.” Early American Studies 1 (2003): 28–60. Hearth, Amy Hill. “Strong Medicine” Speaks: A Native American Elder Has Her Say. New York: Atria Books, 2008. Hodges, Graham Russell. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey 1613–1863. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Hoffecker, Carol E., Richard Waldron, Lorraine E. Williams, and Barbara E. Benson, eds. New Sweden in Amer­i­ca. Newark, N.J.: University of Delaware Press, 1995. Horle, Craig W. The Quakers and the En­glish L ­ egal System 1660–1688. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Jacobs, Jaap. The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-­Century Amer­ i­ca. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009. Jennings, Francis. The Invasion of Amer­i­ca: Indians, Colonialism, and the Cant of Conquest. New York: W. W. Norton, 1975. Jordan, Terry G., and Matti Kaups. The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Klepp, Susan E., and Billy G. Smith, eds. The Infortunate: The Voyage and Adventures of William Moraley, an Indentured Servant. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Koot, Christian  J. A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake. New York: New York University Press, 2018. —­—­—. Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-­Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Kraft, Herbert  C. The Lenape-­Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 b.c.-­a.d. 2000. N.p.: Lenape Books, 2001.

178

Manuscripts and Suggested Readings

Lapsansky, Emma Jones, and Anne  A. Verplanck, eds. Quaker Aesthetics: Reflections on a Quaker Ethic in American Design and Consumption. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003. Larson, Rebecca. D ­ aughters of Light: Quaker W ­ omen Preaching and Prophesying in the Colonies and Abroad, 1700–1775. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999. Lenape Talking Dictionary. 2019. http://­www​.­talk​-­lenape​.­org​/­detail​?­id​=­2295 Lipman, Andrew. The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2015. Lurie, Maxine N. “Tax Protest Document 1676: The First in a Long History of New Jersey Protests Against Taxes.” New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4 (2018): 179–200. https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­14713​/­njs​.­v4i1​.­108. Lurie, Maxine  N., and Richard  F. Veit. Envisioning New Jersey: An Illustrated History of the Garden State. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2016. Lurie, Maxine N., and Peter O. Wacker, eds. Mapping New Jersey: An Evolving Landscape. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Lyons, Clare A. Sex among the Rabble: An Intimate History of Gender and Power in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 1730–1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Mack, Phyllis. Visionary ­Women: Ecstatic Prophecy in Seventeenth-­Century ­England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Mancall, Peter C. Deadly Medicine: Indians and Alcohol in Early Amer­i­ca. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995. Moore, Rosemary. The Light in Their Consciences: Early Quakers in Britain 1646–1666. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Murphy, Andrew R. William Penn: A Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Murphy, Andrew R., and John Smolenski, eds. The Worlds of William Penn. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2019. Nash, Gary B. Forging Freedom: The Formation of Philadelphia’s Black Community 1720–1840. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. Naum, Magdalena, and Jonas M. Nordin, eds. Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity. New York: Springer, 2013. Norwood, John R. We Are Still ­Here! The Tribal Saga of New Jersey’s Nanticoke and Lenape Indians. Moorestown: Native New Jersey, 2007. Obermeyer, Brice. “Using Language, Ethnography, Folklore and Oral Tradition for Interpreting the Cultural Affiliation of Abbott Farm.” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 68–70 (2013–2015): 143–58. Offutt, William M., Jr. Of “Good Laws” and “Good Men”: Law and Society in the Delaware Valley, 1680–1710. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. O’Malley, Gregory E. “Beyond the ­Middle Passage: Slave Migration from the Ca­rib­bean to North Amer­i­ca, 1619–1807.” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 66 (2009): 125–72. Pagoulatos, Peter. “Native American Contact Period Settlement Patterns of New Jersey.” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 62 (2007): 23–40. —­—­—. “A Reconsideration of Forager-­Collector Settlement System Models and Native American Land Use Patterns in New Jersey.” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 63 (2008): 48–60. Piker, Joshua. “Lying Together: The Imperial Implications of Cross-­Cultural Untruths.” American Historical Review 116 (2011): 964–86. Plank, Geoffrey. John Woolman’s Path to the Peaceable Kingdom: A Quaker in the British Empire. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.



Manuscripts and Suggested Readings 179

Polgar, Paul J. Standard ­Bearers of Equality: Amer­i­ca’s First Abolition Movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pomfret, John  E. The Province of West New Jersey 1609–1702: A History of the Origins of an American Colony. Prince­ton, N.J.: Prince­ton University Press, 1956. Pullin, Naomi. Female Friends and the Making of Transatlantic Quakerism, 1650–1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Purvis, Thomas L. Proprietors, Patronage, and Paper Money: Legislative Politics in New Jersey, 1703–1776. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1986. Richter, Daniel K. “His Own, Their Own: Settler Colonialism, Native ­Peoples, and Imperial Balances of Power in Eastern North Amer­i­ca, 1660–1715.” In The World of Colonial Amer­ i­ca: An Atlantic Handbook, edited by Ignacio Gallup-­Diaz, 209–33. New York: Routledge, 2017. —­—­—. Trade, Land, Power: The Strug­gle for Eastern North Amer­i­ca. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Robbins, Caroline. “Laws and Governments Proposed for West New Jersey and Pennsylvania, 1676–1683.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 105 (1981): 373–92. Romney, Susanah Shaw. New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth-­Century Amer­i­ca. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014. Salmon, Marylynn. ­Women and the Law of Property in Early Amer­i­ca. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986. Schopp, Paul  W. ( Jerseyman). “The Best Laid Schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft Agley.” History—­Now and Then (blog), October  2010. http://­jerseyman​-­historynowandthen​ .­blogspot​.­com​/­2010​/­10​/­best​-­laid​-­schemes​-­o​-­mice​-­men​-­gang​-­aft​.­html. Schutt, Amy C. ­Peoples of the River Valleys: The Odyssey of the Delaware Indians. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Shinn, Robert, Andrew Levecchia, and Sandra White Grear. “The Newton Union Burial Ground: The Site of Camden County’s Origin and the Resting Place of Its Early Pioneers.” SoJourn 3 (Winter 2018–19): 63–83. Shinn, Robert  A., and Jean  R. Soderlund. “The G ­ reat Island Lying before Shackamaxon: Petty Island, Lenape-­Colonist Relations, and Provincial Rivalries, 1678–1701.” SoJourn 4 (Summer 2019): 7–24. Slaughter, Thomas P. The Beautiful Soul of John Woolman, Apostle of Abolition. New York: Hill and Wang, 2008. Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A M ­ iddle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007. Snyder, John P. The Story of New Jersey’s Civil Bound­aries 1606–1968. Trenton, N.J.: Bureau of Geology and Topography, 1968. Soderlund, Jean R. Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Soderlund, Jean R., and Claude M. Epstein. “Lenape-­Colonist Land Conveyances in West New Jersey: Evolving Expectations in Space and Time.” New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 4, no. 2 (2018): 199–202. http://­dx​.­doi​.­org​/­10​.­14713​/­njs​.­v4i2​.­129. Stewart, R. Michael. “Rethinking the Abbott Farm: Oral Tradition, Context, and Historic Perspective.” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 49 (1994): 61–66. —­—­—. “The Status of Late Woodland Research in the Delaware Valley.” Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of New Jersey 53 (1998): 1–12. Tarter, Michele Lise, and Catie Gill, eds. New Critical Studies on Early Quaker W ­ omen, 1650–1800. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

180

Manuscripts and Suggested Readings

Thompson, Mark L. The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance, Identity, and Empire in the Seventeenth ­Century. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013. Thompson, Robert L. Burlington Biographies: A History of Burlington, New Jersey, Told through the Lives and Times of Its ­People. Galloway, N.J.: South Jersey Culture and History Center, Stockton University, 2016. Veit, Richard  F. Digging New Jersey’s Past: Historical Archaeology in the Garden State. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2002. Veit, Richard, and David Orr, eds. Historical Archaeology of the Delaware Valley, 1600–1850. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2014. Wacker, Peter O. Land and P ­ eople: A Cultural Geography of Pre­industrial New Jersey; Origins and Settlement Patterns. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1975. Weslager, C.  A. The Delaware Indians: A History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972. White, Sophie. Voices of the Enslaved: Love, ­Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

INDEX

Accomes. See Necomis (Accomes) Ackehorn, 22, 23 Adams, Elizabeth Fenwick, 36, 43 Adams, John, 36, 56 Africans. See Blacks Alloways, 36–37, 41, 43 Alrichs, Peter, 27, 34 Anderson, ­Virginia DeJohn, 121 Andros, Edmund: Lenapes and, 29, 34–35, 43, 68, 74–75, 77; Salem and, 44–46, 56–57; West New Jersey and, 44, 57, 60 Anglicans, 37–38, 50, 130, 132, 137, 172n38 antislavery sentiment, 53–54, 103–105, 108, 110–115, 136 Armewamese, 5–7, 17–19, 22, 23–25, 30, 70. See also Lenapes Aurén, Jonas, 130 Bainbridge, John, 97–98 Bainbridge, Sarah, 97–98 Baron, Michael, 32, 41, 61–62, 125 Bärtilsson, Matthias, 32, 45 Basnett, Elizabeth, 89, 93, 99, 105 Basnett, Richard, 103 Basse, Jeremiah, 44, 124, 126–127 Berkeley, John Lord, 6, 35, 45, 53, 57 Besse, Joseph, 39 Biddle, Sarah, 3, 95 Biddle, William, 7, 56, 71, 95, 103 Björk, Ericus, 84–85, 118–121, 128–130, 148n30 Blacks: crimes against, 8, 101–102, 105–107; enslaved, 4, 7–8, 53–54, 63, 76, 80–81, 101–115, 117–118, 136–138, 140; re­sis­tance of, 8, 101–102, 105–111, 115 Bowyer, Frances, 35 Bradway, Edward, 46, 56, 60 Brainerd, John, 135 Brotherton (N.J.) reservation, 135 Browne, Anne, 3 Budd, Thomas, 1, 7, 56, 60, 71, 76–77, 123; Good Order Established, 1–5, 64, 136

Burlington: Eu­ro­pean settlement, 1, 46–48, 56–57, 60–61, 64–80, 88–89, 107–108; map, 102. See also West New Jersey Burlington County, 72, 144n6; court, 60–61, 75–76, 80, 87, 90–99, 101–108, 120, 125–128, 138 Byllynge, Edward, 7, 49, 55, 60–63, 72, 90; colonization in West Jersey and, 5–6, 35, 44, 46, 53–56; West New Jersey Concessions and, 48–49, 51, 53–54, 83 Campanius, Johan, 14–15 Cantwell, Edmund, 26, 44, 45, 56, 76 Carl XI (king of Sweden), 118 Carolina, 50; enslaved Native Americans from, 103–104, 108–111 Carteret, George, 53, 54, 57 Carteret, Philip, 31, 33 Cawkeeponen ( John Pompshire), 134, 136 Champney, Edward, 36, 57 Champney, Priscilla Fenwick, 36 Charles I (king of ­England), 20, 21 Charles II (king of ­England), 37, 45 Chochanahan, 43–44 Christian missionaries, 14–15, 34, 38, 50, 54, 132, 135 Clayton, Prudence, 90 Coaxen (Weekpink), 72–73, 78, 135, 139 Cock, Gunnilla, 87, 88, 99, 123 Cock, Lars (Lasse), 66, 74, 90 Cock, Måns, 87, 123 Cock, Peter, 26 Cohanzicks, 5–7, 25, 34, 138–140; Salem colony and, 30–33, 41–44, 46–48, 65. See also Lenapes Colehickamin, 26, 69–70, 82–83 Coleman, Hendrick Andersson, 32 Collier, John, 44–45 Collin, Nicholas, 135 Collins, Francis, 56, 71 Cooper, William, 68, 70 Coxe, Daniel, 6, 63, 71–72, 76, 123, 134

181

182

Index

Craig, Peter Stebbins, 9 Craven, Anne, 40 Craven, Richard, 40 Crewcorne settlement, 74–77 Cripps, John, 1–4, 81, 123 Cripps, Mary, 3 Crossweeksung, 72, 78, 135, 139 Cuttanoque, 124 Dalbo, Charles, 122–123 Dalbo, Lars, 122–123 Dalbo, Olof, 87, 122–123, 125–127, 129 Danckaerts, Jasper, 91, 123 Davenport, Sarah, 89 Dehaes, Johannes, 76 de Laet, Johan, 15 Delaware colony, Duke of York’s (1664–73, 1674–81), 6, 44–46, 154n32; land policies, 30, 32–33; population, 31; relations with Lenapes, 25–29, 31, 34–35, 66, 74; relations with old settlers, 22, 27–28, 32–33, 66, 74, 86–87; slavery and, 103. See also Andros, Edmund; Lovelace, Francis Delawares. See Lenapes Delaware valley, my­thol­ogy of, 2 Dennis, John, 70 de Rasière, Isaack, 16 de Ring, Matthias, 26, 149n37 de Vries, David, 12, 18–19, 81 Driver, Mary, 97 Dutch, 11, 14, 17. See also Dutch West India Com­pany; New Netherland; old settlers (Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans) Dutch South River colony (1655–64, 1673–74). See Dutch West India Com­pany; New Netherland Dutch West India Com­pany, 12, 15, 17–18, 21. See also New Netherland East Jersey, 53, 54, 55, 72, 97, 103, 108 Edmundson, William, 7, 54, 103–105, 111, 112 Eldridge, John, 35, 36, 44, 46 Emley, William, 56, 60, 71, 75, 98 En­glish. See Delaware colony, Duke of York’s; Mary­land; New E ­ ngland; Pennsylvania; Quakers; Salem; ­Virginia; West New Jersey Ericksson, Peter, 124 Evelyn, Robert, 13, 20, 23, 148n22

Fabritius, Jacob, 118–119 Fairman, Elizabeth. See Kinsey, Elizabeth Fairman, Thomas, 90, 91–92, 96 Falkenburg, Hendrick Jacobs, 1, 3, 66, 68, 117, 123–124, 127 Fenwick, John: ­family of, 36–37; Lenapes and, 36–37, 41–44, 65, 81, 134–135; old settlers and, 41, 43–47, 57; Salem colony and, 5–6, 18, 30, 35–48, 54–57, 62, 65; West New Jersey and, 5, 34–35, 62. See also Salem Finns. See old settlers (Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans) forts: Casimir, 21; Elfsborg, 21, 31, 120; Nassau, 17, 18–19, 21, 23 Fox, George, 5, 7, 34, 37, 38, 63; slavery and, 54, 103–105, 111 French. See old settlers (Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans) Furly, Benjamin, 54 Gardiner, Elizabeth, 102–103, 105 Gardiner, Thomas, Jr., 115 Gardiner, Thomas, Sr., 102–103, 105 Germantown (Pa.) Quaker protest against slavery, 111–112 Gladwin, Thomas, 101–103 Gloucester: Eu­ro­pean settlement, 47, 48, 57, 61, 80, 92. See also West New Jersey Gloucester County, 72, 144n6; court, 70, 80, 86–87, 93–99, 105, 116, 122, 125–128 Godijn, Samuel, 17, 18 Greene, Katharine, 101–103, 107 Greene, Thomas, 101, 103 Gregorian calendar, 9 Grumet, Robert S., 9, 121 guilders sewant, 158n14 Guy, Richard, 39, 46, 55–56, 60, 98 Haddon, Elizabeth, 89, 92 Hamilton, Andrew, 98, 126–127 Harry (an enslaved man), 105 Hartshorne, Richard, 55 Haudenosaunee (Iroquois), 12, 17, 23, 27, 149n31 Hedge, Anne Fenwick, 36 Hedge, Samuel, 36, 57, 70, 103 Helm, Hermanus, 86 Helm, Israel, Jr., 116–117, 122 Helm, Israel, Sr., 26, 66, 68, 74, 86, 116, 122–126

Hendricksdotter, Christina, 85–86 Hendricksen, Cornelis, 17 Hendricksson, Lars, 45 Hepburn, John, 114 Herrman, Augustine, 24; map, 24–25, 31, 68 Herrman, Casparus, 56 Heuling, William, 70–71 Hill, James, 101–102 Hossitt, Gillis, 17 Huckens, Esther, 40 Hudde, Andries, 23 Hunloke, Edward, 98 Hunter, Robert, 73 Hutcheson, Elizabeth, 98–99, 106 Hutcheson, George, 55, 98–99, 103 Hutcheson, Martha, 98–99 Irooseeke ( Jahkursoe), 1, 3, 81 Iroquois. See Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Ithell, John, 70 Jackiekon, 25, 67 Jacobsson, Gertrude, 87 Jahkursoe. See Irooseeke ( Jahkursoe) James, Duke of York ( James II), 5–6, 30–35, 44–46, 48, 56, 57, 60, 62, 74. See also Delaware colony, Duke of York’s Jegou, Peter, 27, 123 Jennings, Ann, 98–99 Jennings, Samuel, 56, 60–62, 71, 84, 98 Jersey Delawares. See Lenapes Johnsson, Dirick, 125 Jöransson, Anna (Annacka), 85–86, 97 Jöransson, Eric, 32 Jöransson, Staffan, 45, 85–86 Julian calendar, 9 Kalm, Peter, 132, 148n30 Kechemeches, 18, 25. See also Lenapes Keckquenaminck, 33 Keithian protest against slavery, 112 Kinsey, Elizabeth, 68–70, 82–83, 89–91, 96, 99, 123–124 Kinsey, John, 56, 89–90 Lacroy, Michael, 32, 44 Lambert, Elizabeth, 88–89, 98, 106 Lambert, Thomas, 56, 60, 88–89, 98, 106 Lawrence, Marcus, 125

Index 183 Lawrie, Gawen, 35, 44, 48, 54–55 Lay, Benjamin, 114 Lefever, Hipolite, 36–37, 76 Lefever, Mary, 36 Lenapehoking, maps, 2, 12, 24–25, 31; scholarship on, 4. See also Lenapes; Lenape ­women; Salem; West New Jersey Lenapes, 4, 11–29, 134–140; alcohol and, 1, 7, 28, 61, 64–65, 73–78, 87, 92, 93; apparel, 28; ­children, 15, 19; Chris­tian­ity and, 14–15, 28, 34, 81; economy, 1, 12–14, 19, 23, 40, 81; Eu­ro­pean livestock and, 32, 64, 70, 75, 83, 117, 121–122, 124; gender roles, 7, 14, 16, 19, 80–82; Haudenosaunee and, 23, 30; land conveyances, 16, 20–22, 25, 31–37, 40–44, 46, 52, 64–78, 81–83, 91, 122–124, 134; language, 14–16, 25; Long Swede Rebellion and, 32; migration, 8, 22–23; mortality among, 1, 3, 22–29, 34, 64–66, 78, 81, 117, 148n31; mourning war and, 5, 21–22, 26–29, 34, 64–65, 78; Pennsylvania government and, 111; population, 3, 5, 16, 20, 22–23, 25, 29, 64, 148n30; relations with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 25–29, 31, 34–35, 66, 74; relations with Dutch West India Com­pany, 17–19; relations with New Sweden, 21–22, 120; relations with old settlers, 3–8, 11, 27, 32–35, 64–68, 74, 79, 80–81, 83, 85, 87, 116–125, 128, 132–133; relations with Quakers, 1–2, 4–7, 30, 36–37, 40–44, 64–81, 83, 87, 90–92, 105, 111, 121–122; relations with Susquehannocks, 11, 17, 18–20, 22–23; religion, 14, 25–29, 80, 150n45; slavery and, 111, 140; sociopo­liti­cal structure, 16, 19, 22, 26–27, 43, 53, 81–82; sovereignty, 3–5, 11, 18, 20, 25, 30, 34, 48, 64, 88, 140; trade, 1, 12, 14–15, 17–19, 21–24, 28, 40, 76–77, 122; West New Jersey and, 1, 2, 4, 6–7, 48–49, 61–62, 64–79, 83, 88, 97, 99–100, 121–124. See also Armewamese; Cohanzicks; Kechemeches; Lenape w ­ omen; Mantes; Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation; Rancocas; Sanhickans; Sickoneysincks Lenape w ­ omen, 7, 14, 16, 19, 28, 80–83, 100 Lidenius, Abraham, 130 Lindeström, Peter, 22–23, 25, 68, 148n30 Lock, Lars, 86, 118 Lock, Maria, 86 Long Swede (Königsmark), 32–33

184

Index

Long Swede Rebellion, 32–33, 45, 85 Lovejoy, William, 93–94 Lovelace, Francis, 26–28, 35, 43, 65, 82 Lucas, Nicholas, 35, 44, 48, 54–55 Lucas, Robert, 74–75 Lyons, Clare, 89 Machkierck Allom, 32 Maddocks, John, 39, 57 Malster, William, 35, 46, 56 Mamarakiekon, 74 Månsson, Hans, 85 Mantes, 5, 7, 17, 18–19, 23, 25, 68. See also Lenapes Mary­land, 4, 106; religion and, 50 Matinicum (Burlington Island), 17 Matollionequay, 3, 81 Mattahorn, 22 Matthiasson, Matthias, 32–33 Mattsson (Dalbo), John, 87, 116 Mattsson (Dalbo), Peter, 87, 116, 125 Mattsson, Margaret, 87, 88 Mattsson, Nils, 87 May, Cornelis, 17 Mead, William, 51 Mechmiquon (Sehoppy, King Charles), 1, 67, 72–73, 87 Mehocksett, 26, 34, 43–44, 67–68, 72, 82, 124 Menanzes, 26 Meopony, 36–37, 41, 43 Metapis, 26, 74–75 Michaëlius, Jonas, 15 Mingo (an enslaved man), 106 Minquas. See Susquehannocks Minuit, Peter, 2, 17, 21 Mohutt, 41, 43–44 Moraley, William, 110, 114–115 Moravians, 130, 132 Mullica, Eric Pålsson, 123–124, 130 Munro, Jannett, 97–98 Munsees, 7, 12, 15, 120, 121, 134–135 Myers, Mary, 101, 105 Myers, William, 101–103 Naaman, 120 Nanacussy, 26, 34, 82, 123 Nanticoke Lenni-­Lenape Tribal Nation, 8–9, 81, 139–140 Nayler, James, 38, 90–91

Necomis (Accomes), 36–37, 41, 43, 81 Necosshehesco, 41, 43, 81 Nemooponent, 3, 81 Neolin, 28 Nevill, James, 46, 56, 60 New Albion, 20, 21 New ­Castle court. See Delaware colony, Duke of York’s New ­England, 4, 11–12, 20, 65, 121; religion and, 50 New Haven Delaware colony, 21, 30–31 New Jersey: Concessions and Agreements (1665), 53–54, 57; government, 97, 108–110, 115, 125, 134–135 New Netherland, 4, 12, 14, 17, 25, 120, 121. See also Dutch West India Com­pany Newsego, 43 New Sweden (1639–55), 21; relations with Dutch, 21–22, 120; relations with En­glish, 21; relations with Lenapes, 21–22, 120 Newton colony. See Gloucester Nilsson, Anthony, 87, 125–126 Nilsson, Matthias, 32–33 Noble, Jane, 3 Norwood, John, 140 Ockanickon, 1–3, 26, 34, 64, 67, 68, 73–75, 77, 81–82, 123 Ojroqua, 26, 67–70, 82–83, 88, 90, 100 old settlers (Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans), 4, 116–133, 136–140; alcohol and, 74, 76–77, 80–81; economy, 84–85, 117–119, 124, 132–133; Pennsylvania government and, 87, 125; population, 25, 34, 79, 120; relations with Duke of York’s Delaware colony, 22, 27–28, 32–33, 66, 74, 86–87; relations with Lenapes, 3–8, 11, 27, 32–35, 64–68, 74, 79, 80–81, 83, 85, 87, 116–125, 128, 132–133; relations with Quakers, 6–7, 30, 41, 43, 48, 64, 79, 83–84, 117, 119–121, 133; Salem and, 30–32, 57; settlement, 5, 8, 30–32, 79–80, 117, 119; surnames, 169n2; trade, 85, 87, 99, 117, 122–124; West New Jersey and, 6–8, 46, 49, 54–57, 61–63, 66, 79, 83–88, 120–121, 124–128, 133. See also New Sweden; old settler ­women old settler w ­ omen, 7, 79–81, 83–88, 96–100, 117–118 Olive, Thomas, 55–56, 60, 71, 75

Oneanickon, 25–27, 34, 43, 78, 82, 149n37 Opur, 43 Osawath, 33 Outhout, Foppe Jansen, 31, 41, 44, 45–46, 56–57 Peachee, William, 101–103 Pearson, Isaac, 110, 114–115 Pedrick, Roger, 39, 40–41 Penn, William, 51, 87, 105, 119; founding myth of, 2; Lenapes and, 15–16; Pennsylvania and, 1, 4, 49–51, 54, 68, 125; West New Jersey and, 35, 44, 48, 54–55, 57 Pennsylvania, 4, 103; government, 49–51, 54–55, 87, 125, 134; Lenapes and, 111; old settlers and, 87, 125 Penstone, Anne, 89, 93–94, 96, 99, 105 Penton, William, 46, 56 Pequees, 34–35 Pesacakson, 26, 68–70, 82–83 Petersson, Lucas, 33 Petocoque, 34 Phillis (an enslaved ­woman), 106 Pledger, Elizabeth, 36 Pledger, John, 36–37, 57, 76 Plowden, Edmund, 20, 21 Pomfret, John, 4, 62–63 Pompshire, John. See Cawkeeponen ( John Pompshire) Pontiac’s War, 135–136 Printz, Johan, 14, 21–22, 30–31, 120 Quakers, 4–6, 34, 37–38, 80–81, 94–96, 136–140; alcohol and, 76–78; mortality in ­England, 37–40; persecution in E ­ ngland, 37–40, 49–51, 63, 93; relations with Lenapes, 1–2, 4–7, 30, 36–37, 40–44, 64–81, 83, 87, 90–92, 105, 111, 121–122; relations with old settlers, 6–7, 30, 41, 43, 48, 64, 79, 83–84, 117, 119–121, 133; Salem settlement, 36–38, 40, 88; slavery and, 7–8, 53–54, 81, 101–115, 138, 140; West New Jersey settlement, 48–49, 88–100. See also Pennsylvania; Quaker ­women; Salem; West New Jersey Quaker ­women, 7, 80–81, 83–84, 88–100; economic roles, 7, 89–94, 99 Rambo, John, 116, 125–126 Rambo, Peter, 26, 66

Index 185 Rancocas, 5, 7, 25. See also Lenapes Reading, John, 127 Reincke, Abraham, 132 Renowewan, 26–27, 34, 67, 82 Revell, Thomas, 60, 126 Ridder, Peter Holländer, 21, 120 Risingh, Johan, 22, 85; relations with Lenapes, 22, 28, 120, 121 Roades, John, 34 Roberts, John, 68, 70 Robeson, Andrew, 122, 126–127 Roseman, Martin, 26 Rudman, Andreas, 84–85, 118–121, 128–130, 148n30 Rudyard, Thomas, 55 Saccatorey. See Wassackarous Salem: Eu­ro­pean settlement, 4–6, 11, 18, 30–48, 80, 88; government, 36, 44–47, 56–57, 60–63. See also Fenwick, John Salem County, 144n6; court, 80, 86, 96–99, 105, 109, 125–128 Salter, Hannah (or Anna), 38, 89–92, 99 Salter, Henry, 38–39, 90–92 Salter, John, 38, 90–92 Sandel, Andreas, 128, 130–131 Sandelands, James, 34–35 Sandin, Johan, 131–132 Sanhickans, 17, 18–19. See also Lenapes Sarah (an enslaved w ­ oman), 105 Scholey, Robert, 74–75, 89 Sehoppy. See Mechmiquon (Sehoppy, King Charles) servitude, 36, 37, 49, 54, 95, 97, 103, 108, 110 Seven Years’ War, 134–135 Sheepey, Charles, 98–99, 106 Sherron, James, 109–110 Sickoneysincks, 17–19. See also Lenapes Skene, John, 63, 102–103 slavery, 53–54, 63, 101–115, 140 Slubey, William, 127, 129 Smith, Martha, 40 Smith, Mary Murfin, 66 Smith, Samuel, 25, 79–80, 120 Society of Friends. See Quakers Southeby, William, 112–113 Spicer, Esther, 70, 89, 92, 96, 99 Springer, Charles, 118 Stacy, Henry, 56

186

Index

Stacy, Mahlon, 7, 55, 56, 60, 65–66, 71, 75, 89 Stacy, Robert, 55–56, 60, 75, 92 Steelman, Ella, 85, 88, 99, 123 Steelman, John Hansson, 85, 123 Steelman, Jöns ( James) Hansson, 85, 117 Stille, Olof, 85 Stranger, Hannah. See Salter, Hannah (or Anna) Stranger, John, 38 Stuyvesant, Peter, 21, 120, 125 Susquehannocks, 26, 34, 116, 147n15; relations with Lenapes, 11, 17, 18–20, 22–23; trade, 17, 20, 23 Swanendael, 17–19, 25, 29, 134 Swanpisse, 1 Swedes. See New Sweden; old settlers (Swedes, Finns, Dutch, and other Eu­ro­pe­ans) Swedish Lutheran churches, 8, 15, 80–81, 84–86, 117–120, 123, 126, 128–133 Tallaca, 67–68, 70 Tashiowycan, 27–29 Taylor, Samuel, 122 Tayne, Isaac, alias L’Pierre, 31–32, 44 Teedyuscung, 134, 136 Tellinggreifee, 1, 3, 81 Terucho, 43–44 Thomas, Gabriel, 103 Thompson, Andrew, 57, 88 Thompson, John, 57, 60, 88 Tilley, Thomas, 34 Tolstadius, Lars, 128–130 Tom, William, 27 Tospaminck, 31–32, 44 Treadway, Henry, 97 Trent, William, 103–104 Tsenacommacah, 11 Upland court, 31, 60, 66, 74–75, 85–87, 125, 154n32 van der Donck, Adriaen, 16, 28 van Hyst, Reynier, 117, 127 ­Virginia, 4, 11, 19, 106, 121; religion and, 50 Wacker, Peter, 124 Wade, Edward, 46 Wade, Lydia, 40, 65, 91

Wade, Robert, 40–41, 65, 91 Wahunsonacock (Powhatan), 11 Warner, Edmund, 35, 44, 46, 55 Warner, William, 97, 126–127 Wassackarous, 34, 36–37, 41, 43, 68–70, 82–83 Wasse, James, 55 Weekpink. See Coaxen (Weekpink) Wennaminck, 31–33, 44 West New Jersey, 4, 25; assembly, 6, 46, 48–50, 61–63, 71–78, 83, 97, 107, 125; Eu­ro­pean settlement, 1, 2, 6, 8, 44–46, 51–52, 56–57, 60–80; laws, 61–63, 65, 74–75, 83–84, 88, 96–99, 106–110; population, 65, 80; provincial government, 48–78, 80, 83, 96–97, 103, 126–127; relations with Lenapes, 1, 2, 4, 6–7, 48–49, 61–62, 64–79, 83, 88, 97, 99–100, 121–124; relations with old settlers, 6–8, 46, 49, 54–57, 61–63, 66, 79, 83–88, 120–121, 124–128, 133; scholarship on, 4; slavery and, 7–8, 101–115. See also Quakers West New Jersey Concessions (1676–1677), 6, 7, 46, 48–63, 83–84, 88, 111, 155n19, 156n23; judicial system and, 49, 51, 53, 57–58, 61–63; Lenapes and, 48, 52–53, 61, 64; militias and, 53, 65; religious freedom and, 48–51, 57, 61–63; signers, 46, 48–49, 52, 55–57, 60–62, 65, 124–125; slavery and, 53–54, 103, 111 West New Jersey Council of Proprietors, 6–7, 47, 72–73 West New Jersey proprietors. See West New Jersey West New Jersey Society (­England), 6, 44, 72, 76, 124, 126, 134 Wetherill, John, 73 Wheeler, Gilbert, 74–76 Whitwell, Francis, 41 ­Will (an enslaved man), 105 Willis, John, Jr., 93 Willis, John, Sr., 93–94 ­Wills, Daniel, 55–56, 60, 75, 102 ­Wills, James, 101–105, 107, 111, 115, 138 ­Wills, John, 73, 115 Wissomick, 116 Wood, John, 97 Woolman, John, 114, 136 Wywannattamo, 27–28 Yong, Thomas, 12–13, 19–20

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

jean r . soderlund is a professor of history emeritus at Lehigh University in

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her books include Lenape Country: Delaware Valley Society before William Penn and Quakers and Slavery: A Divided Spirit, which received the New Jersey Historical Commission’s Alfred E. Driscoll Dissertation Prize.