These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace: The Struggle for Property and Power in Early New Jersey 9781501738814

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These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace

The Strugglefor Property and Power in

Early New Jersey

Brendan McConville

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Brendan McConville received the Driscoll Prize from the

New Jersey Historical Society. New Jersey

Cornell University Press gratefully acknowledges the subsidy from the Historical Society,

which aided

in bringing this

book

to publication.

Portions of chapter 6 were originally published in Pennsylvania History.

Copyright

© 1999 by Cornell University

McConville, Brendan,

b.

1962

These daring disturbers of the public peace the struggle :

cm.

p.

Includes bibliographical references

ISBN

for

New Jersey / Brendan McConville.

property and power in early

0-8014-3389-4 (cloth

(p. :

)

alk.

and index.

paper)

New Jersey — History — Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775. 2. New Jersey — Social — 18th century. 3. Land tenure — New Jersey — History — 18th century. 4. Right of property — New Jersey — History — 18th century. 5. Social conflict — New Jersey — History — 18th century. 6. Violence — New Jersey — History — 18th century. I. Title. 1.

conditions

F137.M35 974.9*02

—

1999

dc2i

99-12574

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be

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Contents

List of Illustrations

vii

Acknowledgments A Note on Terms

ix

xi

Abbreviations Introduction:

xiii

These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace

i

Part One: Origins i.

n

Violent Origins The Problems of the Law

12

In Search of Freeholds, In Search of Estates

An Engine 2.

of Discontent

The Enlightenment s

20

27

First Offensive:

The Eighteenth-Century Land Claims

Proprietors and the Intellectual Origins of Their

The New Knowledge 28 The Enlightenment's First The Failed Aristocrat 41 The Burgess Shales 45 3.

Offensive

Communities and Cultures: Ethnodeference

Ways

4.

50

64

Rise of the Anglican

Church

A Change in Sentiments Anxiety Ennobled

67 68

73

79

The Message Applied

87

Snakes and Ladders: The Competition for Growth 90 New World of Wood 94

Population

A

47

Faith of the People

The

5.

A Portrait

58

Mixed Multitudes

The

31

47

New Jersey's New England In Dutch

Fetters of Iron

28

98

Snakes and Ladders

103

v

New Jerseys

Resources

90

Contents

vi

Part Two: Conflict 6.

A Cage without Bars: Anglicization and the

Breakdown of Order,

1730 -1745

The Cage: Royal Institutions and Patronage and the Rise of Faction Anglicization Revisited

The

People

7.

The

111

Come Out of Doors

120

Decisions

124

129

People against the Government

The The The

8.

Rise of the Committees

Coalition

144

People against the Government

156

A Colony Asunder 163 The Problem with Property Just Contract and

Natural

164

The

Law

Labor

Social Contract

167

171

Deference and Defiance: Reality and Counterreality

Ethnodeference Restored

Amos

164

170

Agrarian Unrest in Late Colonial America

174

A Tale of Two Men

180

Gender and Property

The End of the

177

178

Roberts and the Plebeianization of the Clubmen's

Bitter Tears:

10.

137

138

Royal Authority and Proprietary Property

9.

107

116

Gender, Ethnicity, and Popular Power

Momentous

107

Provincial Society

Movement

187

196

200

Riots

The Problems of Social Healing Contested Elections Trial

by Jury

in a

Troubled County

The Minister's Wife 209 From Kinship to Contract Popular Royalism

202

202

206

214

217

Part Three: To the Revolution 11.

Refinement and Resentment: The Transformations of the 1760s

A Gentleman's World Rituals of Power

The 12.

223

223

228

People Besieged

232

"These Audacious Insults to Government":

From

Rioters to Revolutionaries

A Whig Riot, A Land Riot The

Radicalization of Abraham Clark

Postscript:

The

238

239

Squatters' Republic

245

250

Notes

257

Essay on Manuscript Sources

307

Index

311

Illustrations

MAPS 1.

Northern

New Jersey, the

contested tracts, 1745

6

70

4.

European settlements The Anglican Church Presbyterians and Congregationalists

5.

Revival meetings

82

6.

Whitefield in

7.

Mines, forges, and contested lands

8.

The

9.

Northern

2.

3.

10.

Initial

The

New Jersey

75

84

New Jersey, 1745 New Jersey, contested tracts, 1745

counties of Northern

rise

16

of the committees, 1734-1748

101

108 143 153

FIGURES Annual incidence of violence,

122

1735 -1745 Violent incidents by county, 1735-1745 Committee people

139

4.

Rioter ethnicity

148

5.

Geographic origins

150

6.

Crowd

162

1.

2.

3.

7.

8.

9.

size at jailbreaks, 1745-1747

Assembly turnover, 1740 -1772 Houses for sale by county House size

123

204 224 225

PICTURES James Alexander

33

The Tempe Wick House Dutch- American Farm House

63

Jonathan Dickinson

77

57

vii

viii

Jonathan Belcher Esther Edwards Burr

Ford mansion

Abraham Clark

Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Many

friends

and

institutions

tion of this book.

the sity,

the

The

New Jersey Room

have been helpful in the long germina-

staffs

of the

New Jersey

of the Alexander Library

Historical Society, at

Rutgers Univer-

New York Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the

Special

Collections and Archives of Princeton University, the Historical Society of

Pennsylvania, the Library

Company of Philadelphia,

the Presbyterian Histori-

cal Society, the Library

of Congress, Cornell University

of Pennsylvania

the Morris

library,

brary, the Rockefeller Library

versity library, have

tional

all

Endowment

University,

and the

Library, the

the University

Morristown Free Li-

of Brown University and the Binghamton Uni-

rendered helpful service at one time or another. The Na-

for

the

Humanities, Brown University, Binghamton

New Jersey

search and writing of this Historical

County

library,

Commission have funded the rebook. In particular, Mary Murrin of the New Jersey Historical

Commission has time and again

assisted

me in securing funding.

A Reed College thesis was the seed of this book. There I had the great good fortune to fall under the care of three historians of unusual integrity and ability: Richard Jones, Raymond Kierstead, and John Tomsich. I also thank Jack Scrivens, another Reed teacher. Bob Geiger, Robert and Anne Doug and Cate Helton, Jean Laurent Sam Korsak, and Anne Lawrence Philips have

Johnston,

my all too

Rosenthal and Paula Scott,

good nature Oregon fifteen has tolerated them longer

tolerated with

frequent historical digressions since our meeting in

Keegan of Randolph, New Jersey, than that with the same good nature. Gordon Wood guided this study from its inception. His

years ago. Brian

scholarly standards for himself

Tim

and those around him

Harris and Phil Benedict, both of

IX

Brown

is

ability to set

high

indeed remarkable.

University, have encouraged

x

me

since I

began graduate school. The

and personal example, of

his close reading

his

late

good-humored

my work

den death robbed the prolific authors

low

Acknowledgments

shaped

my

William McLoughlin's scholarly

friendship, his vast knowledge, early graduate education.

of American religious history of one of

field

and Brown University of one of its

ablest instructors.

its

most

My fel-

me

Brad Thompson has repeatedly reminded

early Americanist

and

His sud-

of the

importance of the founders and been a model friend. Jay Samons has shared

me

wisdom of Arkansas, John Calvin, and ancient Athens for more now while making sure that I did not lose sight of the supreme importance of the timing of the next caddis hatch on the West Branch. I was twice a guest at the Philadelphia Center for Early American Studies

with

the

than ten years

at the University

Richard

of Pennsylvania during the writing of

book. There,

this

Dunn and Rick Beeman have at different times read my manuscript me with invaluable guidance concerning its completion, as did

and provided

Humphrey of Northern Illiown research to evaluate Center Simon Newman, Judy

Susan Klepp of Rider University and Thomas nois University, both of whom took time

from

their

—

my work.

Scholars I have met through the Van Buskirk, Valentine Byvanck, Dallett Hemphill, and ers

— have provided encouragement And two

ing of this project.

Karin

Wulf and

at

At Binghamton

number of oth-

one stage or another during the writ-

close friends that I gained through the Center,

Alison Games, have shared with

assistant professorhood

a

me

the ups and

downs of

and bookwriting.

University,

Donald Quataert, Richard

Mel Dubofsky, Lance Sussman, Jean and

Trexler,

and Jeffery Ravel have been friendly and

helpful colleagues to an inexperienced professor. Graduate students

Ann

Dickar, George

Mary

Swain, Natasha Brown, Suzanna Holm, Douglas

Feeney, Stephanie Oxendale, Robin Meyerhoff, Lee Hanson, Sarah Boyle,

Anisssa Harper, and several others have portunity to write. their editorial I

I

would further

my

with the op-

Jill

Faulkner for

to fall in with

two guys named Al

as press read-

manuscript. Allan Kulikoff was strong in his encouragement of

this project despite

farmers.

me

and other assistance in the completion of this project.

had the great good luck

ers for

helped provide

thank Carol and

all

like to

having a different take on agrarian unrest and yeoman

And I would

especially like to

thank Alfred Young,

who

has repeat-

edly read the manuscript and been exceedingly generous in taking time from his

own work to improve

Finally, I

would

this

like to

book.

thank

my

parents for their love and support these

many years.

Brendan McConville Binghamton,

New York

4

A Note on Terms

problems of terminology study involved Three groups, and geography The Board of Proprietors of the Eastern Diin this

vision of

New

institutions,

Jersey was a major party to the land disputes, and

largely for reasons of style I have referred to that organization as the "Board"

and the "East Jersey Proprietors."

I

have in spots discussed the Western Soci-

ety of Proprietors, referring to that institution as the "Western Society" or

the "Western Proprietors." etary

title

(and to

did not

all

sit

on

Some among

those claiming lands under

Western Society)

those claiming lands via a propri-

either proprietary board,

and

have referred to them

I

from either the Board or the

title

as "proprietors," the "proprietary interests,"

etary party," again largely for reasons of style. try," "great gentry,"

and

I

and the "propri-

have also used the terms "gen-

"patricians" to describe the elite of the colony, of

which the proprietors were

a part. Again, this

was done

largely for reasons of

style.

Those claiming land

via nonproprietary title

groups, towns, and villages. their

The

came from many ethnic

origins of their claims

involvement in the conflicts waxed and waned.

specific

with the general has led

them.

have referred to them

I

me

were

The need

diverse,

and

to balance the

to deploy a variety of terms to describe

at various

times as "the disaffected," "rioters,"

"land claimers," "clubmen," "yeomen freeholders," "plebeians," and "the coalition";

by

their geographic origins ("Newarker," "Peapackers"

gins of their Finally, a

title ("squatter,"

problem of geography and

politics

pute somewhat problematic. In the 1670s, discrete colonies of East

);

and by the

ori-

"ElizabethTown claimers," "Indian Claimer").

and West Jersey, with

the Atlantic coast in the southeast to the

XI

made

labeling the areas in dis-

New Jersey was

hills

divided into the

a line of division

running from

of the northwest.

The

eastern

xii

portion was dominated by

A Note on Terms

New

Englanders and Dutch while the western

portion was primarily settled by Quakers.

government

The

royalization of the colonies'

in 1701-2 led to the political reunion

each retained

its

own

capital

and

its

own

of the two sections, but

proprietors (the aforementioned

Eastern Board and Western Society). Overwhelmingly, eighteenth-century resistance to the land claims of the proprietary interests Jersey,

was centered

in East

but the people from the West Jersey towns of Maidenhead, Hopewell,

Hunterdon County, joined in direct actions against the proprietary interests. These towns, like the East Jersey communities to which they were culturally akin, were in what we today would call and the Great Tract,

northern

all

in

New Jersey. I have used that term occasionally when I felt it was ap-

propriate to generalize, as well as the

more

specific

East and West Jersey.

Abbreviations

AP

Alexander Papers,

New York Historical

CSFP

Calendar of the Stevens' Family Papers

EJMM

East Jersey Miscellaneous Manuscripts,

Society

New Jersey Historical

Society

FJPP

Ferdinand John Paris Papers, (includes

New Jersey Historical

Society

some portions of Robert Hunter Morris's papers)

RUL and MCHA)

HFP HSP

Holmes Family Papers (some

JAH JAP

Journal ofAmerican History

JLP JPP

James Logan Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania

MBPEDNJ

Minutes of the Board ofProprietors of the Eastern Division of New Jersey. George J. Miller, ed., vols. I— III (1949-1960).

in

Historical Society of Pennsylvania

James Alexander Papers, Princeton University James Parker Papers, Rutgers University Special Collections

Maxine Lurie and Joanne Walroth,

eds., vol.

IV (Newark,

1985)

MCHA

Monmouth County Historical Association

Newark Town Book

NJA

The Records of the Town ofNewark,

William A. Whitehead Jersey, 1st series,

tionary Jersey

NJH NJHS NJSA

NYHS PNJHS

RHMP RHMC

et

al.,

New Jersey (Newark, 1864) of the State ofNew

eds., Archives

Documents Relating to

the Colonial,

and Post-Revolutionary History of the

(Newark, Paterson, Trenton,

Revolu-

New

State of

N.J., 1880-1949). 43 vols.

New Jersey History New Jersey Historical Society New Jersey State Archives New York Historical Society Proceedings of the New Jersey Historical Society Robert Hunter Morris Papers, New Jersey Historical

Society

Robert Hunter Morris Collection, Rutgers University. Special Collections

xiii

xiv

Abbreviations

RUL SCHQ

Rutgers University Library

SC/PU

Special Collections, Princeton University

SP

Stevens Papers

SPG

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel [in Foreign Parts]

WMQ

William and Mary Quarterly

Somerset County Historical Quarterly

These Daring Disturbers

of the Public Peace

INTRODUCTION

These Daring Disturbers of the Public Peace

Newark,

1802, the people of

Inaddress lands.

New Jersey,

called a special

meeting to

the problem of private encroachments on the town's

The

common

meeting's recorder, however, transcribed not a debate on

nineteenth-century land disputes, but rather an emotional account of the town's bitter colonial-era conflicts with the Board of Proprietors of East

New Jersey. chased

all

"That the

first

Inhabitants of the Town," wrote the scribe, "pur-

the lands of the Indian Natives, and held and possessed the same

for a considerable time

customs of the

New

without any other

title."

The

Individual Inhabitant such part as reasonably

fell

agreements made with the whole." Then areas were posses such as parsonage' ket Place' larly

and

— and

a

settlers,

set aside for "public

— 'Burying Ground' — 'Training

Watering

place,'"

and

in fact

the Town." Before long,

all

place'

and claimed the town's

mand," the recorder continued, "was however

—

'a

pur-

Mar-

the lands "not particu-

some Individual were reserved however, the colony's leading men,

Proprietors," challenged the settlers

to each

to his Lott according to

specifically given to

the inhabitants."

following the

England that had spawned them, "divided off

resisted

to the use of

"the Eastern

lands. "This de-

with great Spirit by

1

wonder that this Newarker should so vividly recall the disputes of an earlier, and more turbulent, era. From the 1660s until the Revolution, the yeomen farmers of Newark and many other New Jersey towns "resisted It is little

with great Spirit" the maneuvers of the colony's proprietors in a prolonged struggle for property

and power. Successive generations of gentlemen propri-

etors sought to build a hierarchical society

dominated by great landed

estates.

property rights in the province

In pursuit of this goal they insisted that all were derived from the English crown through them. This claim was repeat1

2

Introduction

edly challenged by groups of yeomen freeholders,

by

virtue of nonproprietary titles

and refused

who

held their homesteads

to surrender their land to the

gentry.

The

resulting conflict led to decades of dirTuse violence as the contending

parties battled for

ownership of well over 600,000

acres.

punctuated by a dramatic upheaval in the 1740s and 1750s,

yeomen

a

The unrest was when threatened

in different parts of this Colony. .aisociated. .-.entered into a .

Combination" to break the proprietors' hold on the countryside. For eight years, jails,

members of this "growing 6c dangerous

attacked

officials

who

. . .

supported the proprietors* claims, and terrorized

2 the great gentry's clients in the country side.

1750s,

violence ebbed in the late

The

This book

is

tions,

political

yeomen

to

South Carolina's planter

class.

the story of the troubled existence of Jerseymen living in the

British empire.

century society

families or

first

persistent disorder

from gaining the kind of unchallenged authority

Jersey's gentry

enjoved by Virginia's

first

The

only to reemerge on the eve of the Revolution.

New

kept

Confederacy" assaulted royal

—

My

goal

in spiritual

discourse,

is

show how deep changes

to

life,

economic

in eighteenth-

government

relations,

— encouraged

and ethnic identity

institu-

the colony's

respond to the disputes over properly- with crowd violence.

The

sustained popular unrest ultimately undermined the conventions that maintained the provincial social order and led to a final collapse of the gentry's

hold over the land tenure system by 1800.

New Jersey's

make

chronic instability seems to

ilar

nas,

problems also destabilized

New York,

putes are thus important because they

the eighteenth century.

a

make

New

By understanding I have come to

see colonial

in a

way

concepts

critical to the

we should

dis-

revise

I

in

convulsions as a

America,

that builds

diverges from other \iews of the period. Specifically,

suggests that

endemic

historically visible the pressures

early New Jersey's

and preachers, gentlemen and goodwives,

America: property,

Jersey's

much of British North America

product of broader changes,

New Jersey

poor model from which

parts of Pennsylvania, the Caroli-

Vermont, and Maine before century's end.

within provincial society that transformed

it

However, these or very sim-

to generalize about provincial society as a whole.

its

farmers

on and yet

also

believe that the case of

our understanding of

six

general

history and historiography of eighteenm-century

liberty;

enlightenment, deference, Anglicization, and lo-

calism.

Agrarian unrest in British North America grew from fundamental disagreements over the origins and nature ofproperty. rising in

New Jersey was

tryside caused

the

first

in a series

The

rnid-eighteentxi-century up-

of \iolent upheavals in the coun-

by disagreements over the origins and nature of property.

Introduction

Simply put, the gentry and their

from

institutional authority

was the ultimate

clients conceptualized property as flowing

and maintained that the empires

of property

arbiter

j

increasingly to assert that property

rights.

By

system

was the product of labor and possession,

and they understood ownership established in that fashion natural law.

legal

After 1740, the yeomanry came

by

as protected

disagreement over property had also destabilized

1760, this

yeomen claimed ownership of hundreds of thou-

other British colonies as

sands of acres in the American interior by virtue of their labor, often drawing

on John Locke's Second

Treatise to justify their position. 3

Agrarian rioting

preserved the integrity of these noninstitutional perceptions of property. the imperial

crisis

who

progressed to revolution, those

As

rebelled reached an

unspoken, often tension-filled, agreement on the nature of the property they

were fighting to defend, only to

fall

into disagreement once again after 1783. 4

The yeomanry's defense of their property rights grew from their particular unliberties. The rise of a distinctive popular political con-

derstandings of their

sciousness did not begin with the imperial

While

crisis.

recent studies of

agrarian unrest in the immediate post- Revolutionary period argue that the

Revolution shaped

how unruly yeomen

be the case for

New Jersey's

many

yeomen

the

other

understood their

agrarian militants, and

in British

liberties, this

cannot

cannot be the case for

it

North America. Rather,

traditions of

defiance shaped deep in the colonial period, together with a growing familiarity

with the writings of radical Anglo-American

formed popular definitions of

liberty,

which legitimated physical challenges

5 to authority long before the Revolution.

tion in the

political theorists, in-

These

Whig movement, but they did

encouraged participa-

beliefs

not arise from that movement.

Enlightened learning informed the gentry's aggressive property claims. eighteenth- century gentry's legal revival of the massive property grants

by the House of Stuart neoclassical political

Rome

in the 1660s

and

grew

social theory.

6

in part

from

their understanding

The model

of

provided by ancient

inspired Enlightened provincial gentlemen to seek landed estates in

order to preserve their status and political autonomy, even as

some of the same men libertarian yeomen society. lead

The

The made

disputes over property

to challenge imperial authority

and the

it

would

later

and champion

a

social unrest that they encouraged reveal the

understanding of deference. Historians have long applied the concept of deference to early American society without refinement for time

society's subjective

or place.

The

transference of this

colonies clearly altered

its

European

social

convention to the middle

working; in those colonies, ethnicity and religion

influenced deference's functioning. In

aged property-related violence

as

New Jersey,

this ethnodeference

yeomen accustomed

encour-

to deferring only to

4

Introduction

those within their ethnic and religious groups refused to acknowledge the authority of a culturally alien gentry. Specifically, Calvinist farmers of

New En-

gland and Dutch descent would not defer to East Jerseys largely Scottish gentry,

who

European turally

conceptualized deference in the universal terms articulated by

Deference needs to be understood as conditional, cul-

aristocrats.

bound, and changing over time in the eighteenth century. 7

Anglicixat'wn

was a

contestedprocess that

was stillfarfrom complete in ijj6. In

recent decades, conflicting views about the broad character of change in

eighteenth-century America have shaped scholarly discussion of the period.

Some

scholars argue that in the eighteenth century attitudes

within provincial society were Anglicized, that

is,

and

institutions

remade along the

lines

of

cosmopolitan England. Others contend that the folkways planted in America

by seventeenth-century immigrants remained strong into the nineteenth century.

The

case of

New Jersey

of the eighteenth century the provinces in-

poles. Certainly, over the course stitutional structures

and

suggests a path between these interpretive

cultural practices

became more

overtly

modeled on

those of England, but resistance to this broad pattern of change encouraged the creation of

new

new types of social

new

religious languages,

and

relationships. Collective violence over property rights

was

institutions,

political

and

part of this resistance. 8

The character of localism changed In New Jersey, localism remained strong throughout the colonial period. People acted in public primarily to defend their

homes, neighbors, and

specific interests.

calism and the relationships pressures of agrarian conflict.

it

Howev er,

the language of lo-

described changed dramatically under the

The

unrest in the 1740s helped erode the tribal,

inward-looking, ethnically based localism of the early eighteenth century as different

communities and groups joined together

to

defend local rights from

the great gentry. Gradually new, unrversalist idioms supplemented the older

languages of group and community and helped redefine the relationship be-

tween the individual and the complete in

1776.

collective,

although this process was far from

Like property and deference, localism should be under-

stood as a dynamic concept that changed over time. ots

The sum

total

of the

ri-

and the changes of which they were an expression was an unstable

province where social relationships were severely strained and the traditional discourses that mediated

This study ters deal

is

them were found

to be mcreasingry inadequate.

generally chronological in organization.

with origins: Chapter

1

The

first five

chap-

examines the beginnings of the property dis-

putes in the seventeenth century. Chapter 2 outlines the effect of the

En-

lightenment on the ambitions of the eighteenth-century gentry. Chapter 3

Introduction

examines

how

5

the traditional social character and worldviews of the

New

England, Dutch, and ethnically diverse communities of yeomen led them to resist

new

New Jersey.

the gentry's claims to

Chapter 4

traces

how

the creation of

religious institutions in the eighteenth century contributed to the soci-

polarization

political

ety's

and how evangelical preachers

Whitefield provided the yeomanry with a pute the gentry's property claims.

The

final

like

George

new language with which to dischapter of Part One examines the

intense competition for control of natural resources that exacerbated the dis-

putes over property between 1700 and the 1740s.

Two

Part

examines the great upheaval that tore

1740s and 1750s in order to illustrate

apart in the

how collective violence changed social how the Anglicization of the govern-

Chapter 6 demonstrates

relationships.

ment

New Jersey

led to a collapse in popular confidence in royal institutions. Chapter 7 of new extralegal institutions to challenge the

traces the yeomanry's creation

gentry's property claims

and the widespread crowd violence that followed the

formation of these institutions. Chapter over the origins of property and explains in the first British empire.

on

Chapter 9 argues that the appearance of new po-

actors

lence.

Chapter 10 examines

after years

how Jerseymen

of violence, only to discover that

The two

chapters of Part Three suggest

in the late 1760s led

disagreement eroded order

of society encouraged the end of widespread vio-

litical

all levels

examines the intellectual conflict

8

how that

yeomen

tried to restore social

it

was beyond

how the

renewal of agrarian unrest

to appropriate the symbolic

ventions of the imperial protest

movement

normalcy

their grasp.

and rhetorical con-

to restate their grievances against

the proprietors. These chapters interpret the

meaning of the

gentry's acceler-

ating efforts to refine their material world; the instability of the

economy

funded that refinement; the yeomanry's economic dislocation in

and the meaning of the renewal of agrarian rioting

that

this period;

in a society in revolution-

ary ferment.

Faced with the problem of studying an extralegal movement through largely (though not completely) hostile sources, I

would be unable

to

archival sources. ities

— and

beliefs

to

These

modern

I

construct an extensive quantified base to examine

changes in social structure because extensive tax ship rolls did not exist.

soon discovered that

As

a result,

I

eyes, contradictions

and church member-

to

examine a wide variety of

me

to recapture the complex-

was forced

qualitative data allowed

rolls

— of the

actions, perceptions,

and

of eighteenth-century Jerseymen, both yeoman and patrician. This

study draws on the surviving town records, private and

official

correspon-

dence, government and surviving court records, pamphlets, affidavits, diaries,

6

Map

i.

Northern

New Jersey,

the area around the

Introduction

the contested tracts, 1745.

The Monmouth

town of Woodbridge were contested

but not in the eighteenth.

Patent and

in the seventeenth century

Introduction

journals, graveyard

lists, wills,

a

y

few account books,

travel accounts,

mons, and the surviving church records to reconstruct

life

some

ser-

in the troubled

province.

Above all things, this book is an account of how the people of one colony became locked in a desperate struggle for property and power. Early New Jersey s history is worthy of study quite apart from anything it might add to contemporary historical discussion. It s a good story.

CHAPTER ONE

Violent Origins

The

seventeenth century ended late for the East Jersey Proprietors and

Monmouth County magisMoses Butterworth, who "had confessed yt he did sail wth Capt William Kid in his last voyage when he came from ye. East Indies." For years, Monmouth's leading men had engaged in smuggling with it

ended badly In the summer of 1701, a

trate arrested pirate

buccaneers like Butterworth, and East Jersey's proprietary government des-

Governor Andrew Hamilton,

perately wished to stop this illegal trade.

young

adviser

Lewis Morris, and several

assistants raced to

Monmouth

his

to try

Butterworth and assert their authority over a population that had been in rebellion for three years.

As they opened

the proceedings, the local militia

broke into the court and "forceably rescued the prisoner," capturing the governor and his entourage in the process.

The

militia leaders threatened to exe-

two men wounded during the

cute Hamilton, Morris, and the others if scuffle died.

men

The

recovered.

hostages sweated

it

out for three days before the injured

Hamilton and Morris then

fled the county, cursing the rebel-

liousness of Jerseymen as the proprietary

them.

government collapsed around

1

So concluded

New

Jersey's short (1664-1701)

and troubled seventeenth

century. In those thirty-seven chaotic years, the property-related disputes

that plagued eighteenth-century

Puritan

yeomen who began

New Jersey first manifested themselves. The

settling the colony in 1664 refused to recognize

proprietary charters issued by

King Charles

II as

rulers

and those they purported to

ers (in

rule.

fundamental law in prop-

between the colony's proprietor

erty matters. This led to decades of tension

Two

rebellions

1667-75 and 1698-1701) kept the proprietary

their authority,

and by 1701 there were 11

six

by the Puritan farm-

elite

from normalizing

types of enduring property dis-

12

Origins

While these conflicts were enormously complex, a simple but profound difference in worldview lay beneath them: the proprietors wished to

putes.

create a hierarchical society

dominated by

large estates, with the land-tenure

system firmly under their control; the yeomen wished to

live

in

governing communities with a broad distribution of freehold property

self-

among

white men. The property conflicts and the differences in social vision that en-

couraged them persisted after 1701 and created an area of disputed ownership

of well over 600,000 acres stretching across North

Jersey. That area became yeomen and gentlemen battled for dominance of the order. The dramatic, almost comic incident that freed pirate

the stage where province's social

Moses Butterworth and brought

New Jersey was

in

the final collapse of proprietary government

not the end but rather just a watershed

protracted struggle for property and power.

The

legacies

moment

in a

more

of the seventeenth-

century political and legal disputes were to permeate the province for decades

come.

to

The Problems of the Law and the Origins of New Jerseys Property Disputes In the seventeenth-century Anglo-American world, key legal concepts had

no

meaning and the boundaries of

fixed

undefined.

A concept as

important

as

institutional

property was governed by a jumble of

contradictory laws, institutions, and customs that had been

incoherent by the profound turmoil of the English Civil torate (1642-60). this confusion,

The

infant English colonies in

its

made even more

War and

North America

and each of them struggled to escape

never truly did, as

authority were

its grip.

the Protec-

all

inherited

New

Jersey

endemic property disputes amply demonstrate. Differ-

ences in culture and worldview between the

yeoman and

several groups

of

gentlemen proprietors prevented any one notion of legality in property from gaining hegemony.

The

resulting ownership disputes endured until the eigh-

teenth century's end.

The motion

restoration of

King Charles

II to

the English throne in 1660 set in

a series of real estate transactions that

property

title conflicts.

mired

In 1664, the English captured

New Jersey in endemic New Amsterdam from

Dutch and Charles granted his brother James, Duke of York, a massive portion of North America, including the area to the west and south of the the

conquered port. James in turn granted

all

proprietary rights to the lands that

became New Jersey to two loyal Stuart courtiers, Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley. They were empowered to create a government, establish

Violent Origins

settlements, distribute

from

all settlers.

The

new

property in the

all

quitrent

was

a kind

ij

colony,

and

collect quitrents

of due given by dependent people to

an acknowledged overlord in lieu of the feudal practice of providing manual labor or

armed

service.

2

Settlers in

New

Berkeley "for every acre, English measure

England, yearly rent." 3 significant source

more

It

.

Jersey were to pay Carteret and .

.

one half-penny lawful money of

was hoped that the

of revenue for the two

rents

aristocrats.

In

fact,

The

proprietors, as they

came

to be called,

a

they generated

conflict than currency, for the settlers persistently refused to

pay them.

promptly dispatched Carteret's

new

possession, un-

New York's

military gover-

French-speaking cousin Philip Carteret to govern their aware that the duke of York had already ordered nor,

would become

Colonel Richard Nicolls, to populate the area

In

as quickly as possible.

mid-to-late 1664, Nicolls, acting without knowledge of James's subsequent gift to the proprietors,

made generous

grants between the

Hudson and

the

Delaware Rivers to two groups of Puritans seeking new lands. The larger of these

two grants became known

the Navesink or

as the

ElizabethTown

This simple case of overlapping authority created during property

title

dispute.

Both groups of Puritan

render their patents from Nicolls

when Governor

and declared "that the Grants of Colonel Nicholls [the proprietors' charters],

for control

and therefore both

first

smaller,

in

New Jersey's

most en-

settlers refused to sur-

Carteret arrived in 1665 is

Posterior to our Patent

law and equity the right

is

4

of hundreds of thousands of acres. 5

Congregationalist farmers from eastern the

and the

The conflicts caused by Nicolls's grants endured for over a cenwould eventually involve thousands of people in decades of struggle

soley in us."

tury and

Tract,

Monmouth Patent.

Long

Island's Puritan villages

were

group to accept a patent from Nicolls, and they established Eliza-

Map 1). These farmers had long lived in settlements with traautonomy from distant, ungodly authorities. The communities from which they had migrated were politically independent towns centered around Congregational churches. The Long Island Puritans had first been nominally ruled by the New Haven Colony, and then by the Dutch in New Amsterdam, but in fact the weight of this governance was negligible and the people of the individual communities ruled themselves through town meetings. Indeed, in 1663 these Long Island towns had declared their independence from the New Netherlands and all other external authorities. Each farmer had his own land; as in New England, there was no overlord and the Calvinist yeomen paid no quitrents. These sorts of quasi-feudal obligations were an offense against the Puritan idea of covenant that bound congrega6 tions and towns together in a special pact with God. bethTown

ditions of

(see

Origins

14

The ElizabethTown Associates, as the settlers' company came to be known, moved quickly to reestablish in their new settlement what they had known in their former homes. The Cranes, the Ogdens, the Hatfields, and a number of others, around sixty-five yeomen and their families in all, laid out a loosely nucleated village of the type

Long

Map

common

in

New England

and eastern

home lot They governed themthrough New England -style town meetings and refused to allow GovCarteret or his servants to participate in local politics when they ar-

Island (see

i);

each of the white freeholders was given a

loosely arranged around their Congregational church. 7 selves

ernor

rived in 1665

The

and took up residence near the community. 8

desire to preserve their

autonomy and

their status as freeholders en-

couraged the Associates to reinterpret Nicolls's original grant and to cling tenaciously to the reconceptualized patent.

They ignored

the portions of the

grant that contradicted their beliefs and insisted on understanding expression of New England's legal and political norms. tained that Nicolls's grant gave

them

title

The

pay quitrents

sals.

over

after seven years

and

as

an

Associates main-

to their township free of any pro-

prietary obligations, despite the fact that the patent actually called to

it

to be the

Duke of York's

on them

obedient vas-

When Nicolls publicly proclaimed the legitimacy of Carteret's authority New Jersey in 1665 and seconded the governor's demand that the Asso-

ciates accept a

new

charter from the proprietors, the settlers ignored him.

Moreover, the Associates began to

insist that the

patent established their

claim to a vast tract stretching west from the town across North Jersey. Be-

ginning around 1700, surveyors gradually pushed ElizabethTown's boundaries toward the Delaware River until, by the 1740s, the Associates claimed

ownership of over 400,000 acres by virtue of the grant. They repeatedly sold acreage within the tract to other groups and individuals, thus expanding the dispute by the eighteenth century's middle decades.

The

original settlers' de-

scendants would continue to resist proprietary efforts to get them to surren-

der their claim well into the 1780s. In the seventeenth century this resistance

was

largely extralegal, whereas in the eighteenth the Associates relied pri-

marily on legal delaying tactics to thwart their

gendemen

antagonists.

9

The second group that accepted a grant from Nicolls consisted of New England Baptists and Quakers who took up lands on what became the Monmouth

Patent.

thority

and clung stubbornly

These theological

radicals

had an intense

to the grant because they

fear

saw

of external auit

as a

bulwark

against outside interference in their communities. In the years before they

came

to

New Jersey, these farmers had been repeatedly persecuted for reasons

of faith by the Congregationalists in Massachusetts Bay. Believing that King Charles II would allow the Bay colony to absorb their

little

settlements in

Violent Origins

Rhode

New Hampshire, and thus expose them to renewed haNew England Dissenters formed a company to search for

Island and

rassment, these

new

lands. In 1665, they received permission

the

Monmouth

yeomen and bury,

/j

from Richard Nicolls

Patent, south and east of ElizabethTown.

a triangular tract

of approximately 180,000

acres that stretched twenty-five miles into the interior at

Middletown

leaders' desire to control

munity (not uncommon

in early

not only who could

New

120

of Middletown, Shrews-

their families established the villages

and Portland Point within

to settle

Around

one point. The

settle in their

England), but also

who

could

comleave,

localist, even Utopian, character of these settlements. ApparMiddletown leaders believed they had created a perfectly balanced, self-sufficient community and desired to close themselves off from the rest of

underscores the endy, the

society.

10

The Monmouth

Patent

settlers' cultural

imperatives encouraged

them

to

interpret Nicolls's patent as establishing their communities' political auton-

omy and

assuring their legal status as freeholders clear of any quitrent or

other quasi-feudal obligations.

from

Nicolls,

and

tralegal action to

Another cans

became an

New

England.

Lenape

still

when issue

problem with property

titles

emerged

in the colony's

the legality of direct purchase of landsfrom Native Ameri-

between the proprietor government and

The Duke of York

occupied the lands of

proprietors. If he

too refused to surrender their grant

defend their possessions against the proprietors.

persistent

formative years

They

in the seventeenth century they repeatedly turned to ex-

probably did not

New Jersey when

had known, he probably did not

self as the ultimate proprietor

Europeans recognized the

settlers

that the

from

Lenni

he granted them to the

care,

because he saw him-

of those lands by right of conquest. But other

natives' property rights

to extensive tracts of land partially or solely

The New Englanders who

know

settled

on

and they based

their claims

direct native purchases.

Newark on

the Passaic River in 1666

were just such people. These farmers, the Harrisons, the Burwells, the Roberts, the Cranes, the Tichenors, and others, valued their relationship

with

God

their

homes

II

above

all

things.

The

yeomen and their families had fled New Haven Colony after Charles autonomy and be joined to the Pres-

eighty

in the ultra-Congregationalist

decreed that province would lose

its

byterian Connecticut Colony; the migrants believed that mixing with un-

godly Presbyterians could lead to damnation. rected

The new community

resur-

New Haven's Old Testament-based theological and political beliefs. 11

Only "such planters as are members of some or other of the Congregational Churches" would be admitted to the town or "be chosen to Magistracy." The church deacons acted as the town council. The white freeholders reestab-

16

Map

2.

Initial

European settlements.

Origins

Violent Origins

lished the

open

field

England) because

it

ij

system of land distribution (already in decline in

New

encouraged community cohesion. In short, the

new

community was corporate and

And among

Christian.

these freeholders brought from the extinguished

the other customs

New Haven

Colony was the practice of purchasing land directly from the Native Americans without the approval of English authorities and the holding of their property free of quitrents or other quasi-feudal obligations.

Governor Carteret had been rash

would be willing

in

assuming that these radical Puritans

two Stuart

subjects to

12

courtiers.

power over property

He

unwittingly under-

by instructing the Newark

mined the

proprietors'

settlers to

purchase their 20,000-acre tract from the Lenni Lenape in order

to prevent

any native-European

with Carteret's order, and 1670, they just as readily tlers insisted

solely

when

The Newarkers

readily complied

they came into conflict with the governor in

abandoned

their proprietary property titles.

The

set-

from the purchases made from the Lenni Lenape, and that they had

and

ship's

13

that their legal rights to the 20,000-acre township were derived

the right to make additional The townspeople engaged in 1701,

conflicts.

rights

1744,

acquisitions without the proprietors' consent.

further unauthorized native purchases in 1678,

adding some 30,000 acres to Newark and extending the town-

boundaries some fifteen miles west into the North Jersey

county-sized

Newark Tract became

interior.

The

the nerve center of violent resistance to

the eighteenth-century proprietors' property claims

when

the descendants of

the original settlers refused to surrender the lands purchased from the Native

Americans. 14 Most of the other groups in conflict with the proprietors would at

one time or another invoke native purchases to legitimate their ownership

of contested

Governor

tracts.

15

Carteret's efforts to nullify Nicolls's patents, control native pur-

chases, collect quitrents,

sparked

New Jersey's

first

and

assert his

authority over local institutions

antiproprietor rebellion (1667-75). Early in 1667,

the governor sought actively to revoke Nicolls's grants quitrents. Predictably, the

New

Englanders

at

and

to

ElizabethTown and in

collect

Mon-

mouth refused to surrender what they had recreated in their own minds as the more liberal Nicolls's charters. The yeomen of these two towns were few in number; in 1670 there were probably no more than four hundred able-

men in the East Jersey settlements. 16 Still, the French-speaking govwho had arrived in 1665 armed only with the approval of two distant

bodied ernor,

Stuart courtiers,

The

was defenseless before them.

defining characteristic of the subsequent unrest was not social violence

but rather the creation of new institutional structures supplanting those established

by the

proprietors, a practice

echoed during the rioting in the 1740s and

18

Beginning

1750s.

Origins

invoked

in 1667, the Puritan colonists

political rights al-

legedly granted by Nicolls to form two separate extralegal unicameral assemblies.

The Monmouth

which they

formed

settlers

a governing

referred to as a "General Court," a

body

at

Portland Point,

New England-derived term for

a colonial assembly. For five years they governed themselves through this

body, which effectively created a colony within a colony. In 1672, Elizabeth-

Town yeomen,

joined by the people of Newark, some Dutch settlers from what became Bergen County, and more immigrants from New England who settled the

towns of Woodbridge and Piscataway inside the boundaries of the

ElizabethTown Tract

(see

Map

formed

1),

their

own assembly

in defiance

of

the proprietor government, an action the governor saw as lending itself "to

Muteny and

Rebellion."

17

The

settlers

forced Carteret to flee to England, and

subsequentiy the East Jersey townspeople committed treason against the English

that

crown

in the

war brought

The

Second Anglo-Dutch War. Only the English victory

New Jersey back under proprietary control.

rebellion encouraged a dramatic

nic composition

and

New Jersey's

change

in

18

in the proprietary elite's eth-

institutional structure. In 1674, a

group of

Quakers headed by John Fenwick, Edward Byllynge, and William Penn purchased half the colony from the bankrupt Lord Berkeley for £1000

These new

investors

possession of

all

territory

west of a vague

line

running diagonally from the

They

incorporated

Quaker-dominated colony of West

New Jersey. 19

colony's northwest to the Jersey shore in the southeast. their lands into the distinct, Sir

by

George

Carteret's death

New York's

sterling.

formed the Western Society of Proprietors and took

and the kidnapping of Governor Philip Carteret

Governor Andros during confused

tween the two colonies led to East

New Jersey's

jurisdictional fighting be-

sale

and brought

still

more

proprietors into the society. In 1681-82 Carteret's heirs sold their share of the

troublesome colony for £3400 sterling to a group of investors led by William Penn. While twenty of the twenty-four new proprietors were Quakers, the powerful pull of the Friends' settlements in West Jersey and Pennsylvania en-

couraged most of them to quickly end their role in East Jersey, and they sold their interest to Scottish investors.

The

inability to fix the

eastern colonies

spawned

20

boundary between the newly created western and a fourth sort of property dispute that became a

causal factor in the eighteenth-century unrest. This political

lem known

as the

tens of thousands of acres stretching in a belt to the colony's

and

legal

prob-

Dividing Line controversy put in question the ownership of

most northwesterly

The Dividing Line

from southeastern

New Jersey

point.

controversy graphically illustrates the problems associ-

ated with physically imposing European legal perceptions on the

still

un-

Violent Origins

/q

tamed countryside of seventeenth-century America. Mapping and surveying ordered the countryside conceptually in European terms, but environmental and human forces constandy altered the physical landscape; the link between the physical and conceptual remained incomplete. Such problems were

hardly confined to

New Jersey. The

Virginia, for instance,

boundary between North Carolina and

was unsettled throughout much of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries and the resulting dispute was the subject of one of

America's earliest histories, William Byrd's Histories of the Dividing Line. 21

These problems were simultaneously political (and thus power ceptual, and physical, which explains their durability. run in 1676

First

Egg Harbor on northwestern a line

on

a

Maps

(see

1

and

2),

driven), con-

the Dividing Line ran from Little

the Jersey shore to a point on the upper Delaware River in

New Jersey. Unfortunately, in

map and

the seventeenth century, drawing

boundary generally recognized by

actually establishing a

the colony's turbulent residents proved to be quite different things. In this

troubled colony (colonies!), where the legitimacy of government was repeat-

edly questioned, maintaining legal boundaries comprised of rock piles, chalk

marks on

trees,

and descriptions of physical

characteristics recorded in a sur-

The

eastern and western proprietors

veyor's diary proved nearly impossible.

fought over the Line's location sporadically for a century without resolution.

No

one could agree exactly where the Line

ties

of opportunistic surveyors to establish

to their advantage or that of those

and the

lay,

it

efforts

of various par-

in 1676, 1687, 1688, 1743,

who had

hired

and 1769

them only confused the

matter further as several lines were run. 22 In the eighteenth century, unscrupulous proprietors in both eastern and

western

New Jersey

ping claims to

was

a

created

numerous property disputes by

tracts straddling the still unsettled

band of anxiety stretching

with other legally insecure

tracts

selling overlap-

Dividing Line.

The

result

across the colony's length that intersected

of land.

The

area near the Line

saw

sus-

tained violence in the eighteenth century's middle decades, particularly the parts of Middlesex, Somerset,

and Hunterdon counties known respectively

the Harrison, Peapack, and Great tracts.

Despite

and

its instability,

social boundary.

North Jersey

as

23

the Dividing Line proved to be an enduring cultural

While

disputes over property and

power occurred

in the eighteenth century, the area north

and

across

east of the

Line

more intense level of social conflict. Key cultural between the largely Quaker western proprietors and the Scottish

clearly experienced a far

differences

proprietors in the east helps explain this divergence. beliefs

encouraged them to avoid

social conflict, a

property tenure system of the western division.

The Quakers'

religious

tendency reflected in the

The western

proprietors' land

2o

policies, particularly their

Origins

adoption of the headright system, their lax en-

forcement of quitrent obligations, and their adoption of inclusive membership standards for the Western Society

Society's nine

property-related problems

New Jersey in

subdued and localized in western

Western

made

more

the eighteenth century.

The

board members were elected by shareholders holding

as little as one-thirty-second

of one of the original one hundred shares. 24 In

sharp contrast, the Scotsmen

who

the early 1680s retained

They

all

purchased East Jersey proprietary shares in

rights

and claims

to the eastern colony's lands.

refused to recognize the legality of Nicolls's grants or the native pur-

chases, insisted

on

their right to collect quitrents,

proprietor-derived property

titles

and maintained that only

were valid in East

Jersey.

Their

aristocratic

ambitions foretold a century of conflict in the eastern division.

In Search of Freeholds, In Search of Estates

"The Eastern

Division," wrote Colonel Robert

Quary

in 1704,

"had been a

They have, [ Quary continued, "always by the Advantage of a Scotch Governor carryed it with a high hand agt the rest of the Inhabitants The hardships they have received from this small number of Scotch, have so prejudiced the whole long time in the hands of a very few Scotch

Country

it is

Quary captured an

sentences,

New

them, that

agt.

proprietors]."

impossible to reconcile." 25 In a few insightful essential characteristic

of public

life

in colonial

who arrived in new property disputes and again destacolony. Tensions between the Scottish immigrants, who sought to

Jersey.

The

aristocratically-minded Scottish investors

East Jersey in the 1680s helped create bilized the

build an estate-dominated society, and Puritan yeomen, determined to de-

fend their freeholds and the autonomy of their communities, built for over a

decade until they were dramatically released in the rebellion that ended proprietary

government

in

New Jersey by

1701. It

was on

damaged founda-

this

tion that the eighteenth-century proprietors sought to assert their social pre-

eminence and

The

their claims to

New Jersey's

contested lands.

Scottish proprietors' ambitions and attitudes were shaped in an ex-

traordinarily hierarchical society. In parts of eastern Scodand, the top 2 per-

cent of the population controlled

all

property.

The

lairds (lords)

used year-to-

year leases to manipulate the legions of tenants, subtenants, and servants living

on

their estates. Indeed, leases lasting longer than

uncommon

throughout Scodand, and the

their tenants, just as they

had

lairds

twenty years were

demanded

yearly labor from

in feudal times. In short, the Scottish lairds

the greatest authority over their tenants of any British aristocrats.

26

had

Between

Violent Origins

and

1685

New Jersey's

of

1702, about two-thirds

21

proprietors were Scottish;

forty-five out of these fifty-nine Scottish proprietors came from their homeland's eastern region.

They can be

tions of Scottish nobility

collectively characterized as the lesser rela-

and wealthy merchants who aimed to achieve

in

27

America what primogeniture had denied them north of Hadrian's Wall. These ambitious newcomers consciously sought to recreate northeastern

The

Scodand's social structure in their American colony. that "by sending over People

make

number of Scottish-style Perth Amboy on New Jersey's

viable a

capital at

to be waited

on by

proprietors

hoped

and Servts" from Scodand they would be able to coast.

new demand

west and north of their

estates 28

One

early migrant's

footman in velvet" during East Jersey "Parliament"

"a

meetings aptly captures the Scottish proprietors' social vision even

as it re-

29 veals their naivete about the colony's social character.

In 1685, the aristocratic aspirations of the Scottish proprietors gained insti-

when

tutional expression

the resident shareholders constituted themselves

into the

Board of Proprietors of East

prietors"

and the "Board" beyond

New Jersey

stronghold of those

etors' legal

those

who

who dreamed Its

claims to

references to the "pro-

this point are references to

Eastern Board unless otherwise noted).

dominated colony.

(all

The Board became

of transforming

members of the the institutional

New Jersey into

an estate-

primary mission became the assertion of the propri-

all

East

New Jersey lands.

Board

seats

were

restricted to

controlled at least one-quarter of one of the original twenty-four

became one-eighth of a share, most shareholders, let alone common yeomen. These

proprietary shares. In 1725, the requirement still

impossibly high for

exclusionary standards helped to polarize East Jersey's society between the Scottish patricians, freeholds.

who dreamt

The Board members' leases

of

estates,

and the yeomen, who dreamt of

30

persistent attachment to Scottish-style short-term

and more generally

homeland

their

attachment to the land-tenure system of their

explains in part the colony's chronic social instability as

compared

Throughout the colonial period, the Board continually tried leases on the countryside's residents. The Board recorded 568 leases between 1740 and 1763, all of which were Scottish-style 31 leases of three years or less. In contrast, the long-term leases granted by neighbors.

to

its

to

impose these short

New York's

Anglo-Dutch

elite

helped keep that province's estate-dominated

land system relatively stable until migrating

Rensselear family granted

New

Englanders challenged

New

York's

Van

perpetual leases to their tenants as late as 1762.

The

landlord supremacy east of the

Hudson

in the mid-i75os.

Livingston family found such leases economically burdensome, but granted their tenants leases for

one

lifetime,

double lifetimes (during the

life

of the

— 22

husband and

and three

wife),

Origins

lifetimes.

Such

leases allowed the

New

York

much more

easily

than

gentry to maintain the fictions of paternal patriarchy the East Jersey proprietors. five to

seven years

Some

Pennsylvania leases were also short term

— but tenancy was not expected

to

be a permanent condi-

tion in that province. Rather, people rented commercial farms to participate in the grain trade or leased smallholds (between

two and twenty

acres)

an established middling farmer in order to gain income and- political

from

rights.

32

Whether New York- style leases would have been acceptable to New Jerseys yeomen is doubtful in any event. But such leases were more likely to win tenants

and keep

their loyalty than the exploitative type that the East Jersey

Board routinely

issued.

The

gentry's unwillingness to

abandon the Scottish

land-tenure models undermined their power throughout the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries.

The

Scottish domination of the

others holding proprietary shares in

When

property-title dispute.

investors

who had

Board was incomplete, and

the influence of

East Jersey created a fifth type of persistent

some of the Quaker and non- Quaker English

purchased from the Carterets in 1682 decided to retain

their East Jersey proprietary interests after the majority

had sold off

to the

Scotsmen, they created an ethnic division among the proprietors that would grow ever more bitter over time. These so-called English or nonresident (London) proprietors held their own meetings independent of the Board's semiannual gatherings in Perth Amboy, and often made decisions contradictory to those reached by the Scotsmen in East Jersey. 33

These

factional disputes ensured that even the act of "purchase"

Board would not necessarily peatedly, settlers sale nullified

establish secure

ownership in East

from the

Jersey.

Re-

bought land from one proprietary faction only to find the

by another, which would then

resell

the same lands. This fifth

type of property dispute eventually added another 200,000 acres to the mass

of lands of uncertain ownership. In the eighteenth century, unscrupulous agents of both factions, particularly Peter

Sonmans (English

faction)

and

Dr. Jacob Arents (Scottish faction), sold property rights without assuring the validity

among

of the

titles

they issued. Title problems caused by factional fighting

the proprietors plagued the 50,000-acre

the 150,000-acre

New

Brittian Purchase in

well as smaller areas across North Jersey (see

Ramapo Tract

in

Bergen and

Essex and Morris counties,

Maps 1 and Map

2).

as

34

A similar situation developed in West Jersey in the late 1690s when Presyeomen from Long Island purchased the 31,000 acres became Hopewell Township and the 15,000 acres that became Maiden-

byterian and Baptist that

head Township. This third major stream of Puritans to enter quired their land from the

West

New Jersey ac-

Jersey Society only to see that sale chal-

Violent Origins

2j

lenged by the trouble-prone family of West Jersey proprietor Dr. Daniel

Coxe. Legal

title

for the 31,000 acres in

and around what became Hopewell

Township apparently passed from Coxe to the West Jersey Society in 1694, but he subsequently voided the sale. Undaunted or unaware, in 1702 the West Jersey Society's

Long

American agents completed

Islanders. In that year,

England and sued the

West

Coxes

their land transactions

son, also

named

with the

Daniel, arrived from

to recover not only the 17,000 acres

still

in the

hands of

Jersey Society but also the 12,000 acres already in possession of

Hopewell's yeomen as well as an additional 2,000 acres nearby sold by his

own

father!

The Maidenhead yeomen found

themselves stuck in the same

le-

Coxe and his heirs also Maidenhead bought by the town's

gal entanglement as the people of Hopewell. Daniel

sued to regain possession of 3000 acres at

yeomen from the West Jersey Society at the opening of the eighteenth century. The Coxe family's demands steadily mounted until by 1737 they claimed the entire township. The descendants of the original settlers became the bitterest

enemies of the proprietary interests in the mid-eighteenth century. 35

The

Eastern Board's internal divisions and the proprietary government's

general weakness in the 1690s encouraged the activities of a propertyholder, the squatter,

who

created early

New

new kind of

Jersey's sixth type

of

Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth some Europeans took up property in the wilderness without any

property-related legal problem. centuries,

authority's approval. political

Their actions represented a nascent revolution in the

economy of colonial

society, since these squatters

claimed ownership

of their homesteads by virtue of their labor on the land and not from any

government. This theory of ownership spread, and in the eighteenth century

numerous groups contested the claim that property

rights originated in gov-

ernment. Squatters played a considerable role in the eighteenth-century collective violence, particularly

on the 30,000-acre Peapack Tract

County and the 100,000-acre Great Tract

in

in

Somerset

Hunterdon County, where by

the 1730s dozens of families had "build Huts and Clear 'd the ground without

pretending any

title

It is fitting that

in themselves."

New Jersey's

36

chaotic seventeenth century ended as

it

had

begun, with a popular rebellion driven by conflicts over property and power that

weakened the proprietary control of the land-tenure system. Yeomen

determined to break the proprietors' hold on the colony's system of property

and commercial regulation rose in armed rebellion when facfighting among the proprietors weakened the government. Between

acquisition tional

mobs composed of angry townspeople attacked courts, jails, and officials at least fifteen times in East and West Jersey, causing the proprietary governments of both colonies to collapse. The townspeoples' riotous 1698 and 1701,

Origins

24

actions preserved the integrity of nonproprietary property titles establish a tradition of violent antiproprietor action that

to eighteenth-century

The

and helped

was handed down

yeomen. 37

among

continuing factional disputes

the East Jersey proprietors

sparked the rebellion. In 1698, the English proprietors used a legal technical-

remove East Jersey's Scottish governor and

ity to

ter

named Jeremiah Basse

to

tleman related by marriage to the Scottish authority. In

May

1698,

an Anabaptist minis-

install

head the colony. Lewis Morris, interest, quickly

Morris caused a near

meeting presided over by Basse. Arrested,

riot

challenged Basses

when he and

fined,

a leading gen-

disrupted a court

released,

Morris soon

joined with Scottish proprietor George Willocks in renewed agitation

May

against the Basse government. In

found themselves

ElizabethTown

jailed at

men

1699, the

Bay

ment sat in session December 1699, the

at

agitators

government and armed with

hostile to proprietary

"Clubbs Staves 6c other weapons." 38 Several days sailed into Raritan

two gentlemen

Woodbridge, only to be released by a crowd of

"firing

Morris and Willocks

later,

guns" from the deck of a sloop as the govern-

Perth Amboy.

The

and

in

Andrew Hamilton

to

Basse administration

proprietors restored the Scotsman

fell,

the governorship. 39

Hamilton immediately named Morris lor.

new government as a councilmade to the ElizabethTown men

to his

Morris, forgetting the promises he'd

who'd liberated him, joined Hamilton's administration with the threat that he "had taken an

office

6c he would go through with

blood." 40 Little did he suspect that

it

might be

his

it

tho the Streets run with

own. The infighting among

the proprietors encouraged a popular rebellion that ended with Hamilton,

Morris, and other

The

officials

held hostage by the Middle town militia.

proprietors' inability to normalize the colony's system of land tenure

continued to encourage agitation against the government. ElizabethTown's Puritans clung to their patent from "Coll., Nicolls,

and the people of Newark continued to solely "by their Indian purchase."

quitrents

and refused to pay back

41

insist that

who was

first

Govern,"

they could hold property

Both towns were

taxes.

ye

years in arrears

on

their

42

Exacerbating the tensions over property were demographic pressures,

which encouraged the townspeople etors.

dian

The yeomen had large

number of

offspring for the thirty

rioted in the period

crowd action

to defy the legal claims of the propri-

families for

is five;

whom they had to provide. The meElizabethTown

the crude average

is five

men known

to have

and one-half children per

participant. Inheritance patterns tended to favor

exclude none, thus creating an imperative to control as

much

one heir but

land as possible.

Since the land near the two towns had already been taken up, the towns-

Violent Origins

25

people had begun to look to the west. Repeated efforts to issues legally

had

ciates in the courts.

in motivating

ment, although the In theory, the

property

43

In Middlesex and

mount

settle the

failed despite several victories for the ElizabethTown Asso-

Monmouth yeomen

counties the question of a port was para-

to direct action against the proprietor govern-

Monmouth

Duke of York's

Patent's ownership

was

still

an issue

as well.

original (1664) charter to the proprietors as-

sured

New Jersey's

ment

successfully prevented any port

residents a port to trade from, but the

Middlesex and Monmouth's leading

New York govern-

from being developed. Thus denied,

men

aggressively pursued illegal

com-

merce, including trading with the pirate squadrons then roaming the Atlantic world.

The

worsened

relationship with the residents of the

These

its

issues

proprietor government's efforts to suppress this trade only

— property

and commerce

two counties. 44

— prompted

locally

crowds to attack county courts in an eventually successful

organized

effort to bring

down proprietary government and have New Jersey's institutions royalized. The proprietors used these rude courts as the primary tools to project their will on the colony, and when mob actions brought legal proceedings to a halt, the governments of both divisions began to collapse. In March 1700, Essex County crowds, overwhelmingly drawn from ElizabethTown, began

contest-

ing the powers of proprietor-appointed judges. In that month, Elizabeth-

Town yeomen

disrupted the court of sessions "in an Indolent and contemp-

tuous manner Railed and disowned the authority and power of the Court

and of the Justices

their sitting."

A rioter invited the presiding judge William

Sanford to "kiss his Arse." Attempts to reconvene the court the next day failed, for the

meeting was "attended with almost a Generall noise and hol-

lowing with unseemly actions and Insolent Gestures, to

Looke

like a Rebellion

Which seemed

Rather

than otherwise." In September 1700, Essex yeomen

disrupted a court meeting at Newark, ripped Judge Sanford from the bench,

stomped

his "hatt

pieces" his sword,

& wigg," and freed

ting a bastard child. 45

the county Essex.

jail.

Two

the symbols of his social authority, "broak in a

man from ElizabethTown arrested for begetlater, a man arrested for riot was freed from

days

These incidents

effectively

ended proprietary government

in

46

Even

as these

yeomen crushed

the proprietor government in their county,

other farmers bent on the same mission attacked

Monmouth

counties.

officials in

Middlesex and

The Middlesex towns of Woodbridge and

Piscataway

were the scenes of antiproprietor violence. Both had been 1660s by New England Congregationalists who had purchased a piece of the settled in the late

ElizabethTown Tract from the Associates, thus becoming enmeshed

in the

Origins

2(5

disputes over Nicolls's grants. to be receptive to illegal

Woodbridge was

commerce.

Hostility between the townspeople and the proprietors

and

1670,

as the proprietors' authority

towns began to attack government riving

known

also a trading center

had existed

since

weakened, the yeomanry of the two

officials.

On June

from Madagascar "landed some goods"

at

24, 1699,

smugglers ar-

Woodbridge. After

a con-

siderable struggle a

customs agent seized the contraband, but the next

evening "the house 6c

Chamber where

I lay

was broke open by about Twenty

persons disguised armed with Clubs, Pallizadoes 6c other prodigious bigness."

The

ing, threatened his life,

nously, the official

Weapons of

a

prodigiously armed crowd gave the official a beat-

and returned the seized goods

added that

to their owners.

Omi-

or the greatest part of the people do not

"all

think themselves Obliged to obey our government." 47

A series

of

assaults against the

county courts followed. In March 1700, a

Piscataway crowd disrupted a court meeting, while at Middletown in

Mon-

mouth, three violent incidents involving yeomen occurred between 1700 and 1701. These episodes reached a dramatic finish in the latter year when Governor Hamilton and Lewis Morris made the mistake of presiding over pirate Moses Butterworth's trial and were captured by angry Middletown yeomen. By then, West Jersey yeomen from what became Hunterdon County had risen against that colony's

government

The

in a similar fashion.

eastern and

western proprietors surrendered their rights to govern to the English crown

even ically

as

they retained their respective property claims.

united (although each section retained

ment was

The

royalized, sharing a governor

its

own

The Jerseys were

capital),

with neighboring

polit-

and the govern-

New York. 48

proprietors' problems multiplied in the years immediately after 1701 as

factional fighting

among them

tage of the Board's weakness. In 1705,

nor of New York and "their Papers

officials to

take advan-

Lord Cornbury, appointed

royal gover-

allowed hostile royal

New Jersey in

1702, stripped the Scottish proprietors

and Registers, being the Evidences they had to prove

their

of

Ti-

Lands and Rents," and passed authority over Board matters to Peter Sonmans, the English (nonresident) proprietors' agent. Yeomen and tles to their

royal officials defeated an attempt

by the resident Board members

control of the government by electoral manipulation. tions then

fell

49

The

to gain

proprietary fac-

into a series of political struggles that lasted for almost

two

decades, the character of which are so complex that they defy quick generalization.

50

These

internal struggles inhibited the proprietors

from consolidat-

ing their position atop the social order and thus facilitated the renewal of the

property conflicts in the eighteenth century.

Violent Origins

The

Puritan

27

accept the proprietors' charter as funda-

settlers' refusal to

mental law and their repeated rebellions against proprietary government

lowed a broad spectrum of property disputes to Quitrents, Nicollss grants, Indian purchases, the

prietary

titles,

and squatting: from

an area of well over 600,000

this

acres,

arise

New

in

al-

Jersey.

Dividing Line, competing pro-

cauldron of legal uncertainty emerged

perhaps approaching 700,000 acres, or-

ganized in nine major tracts and a number of minor ones, where property rights

were contested. Collective violence, lawsuits,

political conflict,

economic competition between commonfolk and gentlefolk were

and

a regular

51 part of life in these areas throughout the eighteenth century.

An

Engine of Discontent

In colony after colony, the primordial chaos of the seventeenth century

surrendered to order after 1700 as coherent

elites

backed by royal authority

established themselves at the top of the social structure of British

America. However, the took hold in

North

social settlements achieved elsewhere never really

New Jersey. The rebellion in 1701 was unique among the

ous seventeenth-century American uprisings in that

it

numer-

did not see one

elite

group replace another. The Scottish proprietors retained their property and played a significant role in the royal government after 1701. Nonetheless, they

emerged from the disorders of the seventeenth century their humiliating defeat.

oters

who had

The

still

stinging from

property disputes remained unresolved; the

ri-

crushed the proprietary governments remained unpunished.

In the eighteenth century, the struggle for dominance of the province's social order would continue. This explains

why New Jersey

society

in comparison to that of Massachusetts, Virginia, or

New

was

so unstable

York before the

mid-i75os. 52

Considering the cultural gulf between the rulers and the ruled, the colony's violent history,

and the gentry's disastrous defeat

the eighteenth-century proprietors tested tracts.

and

The

institutional

efforts

would

in 1701,

it is

surprising that

try to assert their right to the con-

of these gentlemen came in response to intellectual

changes that encouraged them to imagine the

countryside remade in their image.

New Jersey

CHAPTER TWO

The Enlightenment's First Offensive: The Eighteenth- Century Proprietors and the Intellectual Origins of Their

The

Land Claims

worldview of the East Jersey proprietors was shaped by two seem-

ingly contradictory streams of thought that converged

on the eigh-

teenth century's intellectual floodplain and eventually burst

On

its

levees.

the one hand, these proprietors were immersed in the intellectual

move-

ment we call the Enlightenment. On the other, these same men were ever more fascinated with the British aristocracy's lifestyle and desperately sought to emulate it. Landed wealth was essential to both aristocrats and enlight-

men because

ened

it

was the

basis of social

and

political identity,

and

this

en-

couraged the mostly Scottish proprietors to revive their legal claims to the

hundreds of thousands of contested acres spread across North Jersey in the eighteenth century. For

fifty years, across

two generations, they struggled

to

bring the countryside under their control and create a hierarchical, estate-

dominated society offensive

at the

yeomanry's expense.

was about property

that historical

Enlightenment's

rights rather than the rights of

first

man. Indeed,

in

moment, they were one and the same.

The New Knowledge,

the Fear of Arbitrary Power,

and the Desire

The

The

intellectual trends that

for

Landed

encouraged

Estates

New Jersey's gentry to renew their

claims to the disputed acreage had their origins in Europe's search for peace

by the specter of a continent laid waste by religious some seventeenth-century thinkers turned to the writings of ancient Greece and Rome to find ways society might be rebuilt. These intellectuals

and

order. Horrified

wars,

explored the possibilities of republican government, suggested that

28

human

The

institutions

Enlightenment's First Offensive

were malleable rather than permanently

human

relationship of natural to

20

fixed, tangled

with the

law, refined their artistic sensibilities, ques-

tioned the existence of the Christian Trinity (spawning the religious move-

ment known

and began

as deism),

scientific inquiry into the physical

and

bi-

ological world.

The Enlightenment,

as this diffuse intellectual

known, offered new models of social and

movement came

political organization to a

to be

decaying

Christian Europe. Different schools of enlightened thought emerged in that

moment of broad

"Common sophes,

Among

inquiry.

the important schools were the Scottish

Sense" philosophers, the Continental (primarily French) philo-

and the English "Country"

theorists.

intellectuals because in that society,

1

Ancient

Rome

autonomous men,

fascinated these

living off

landed

wealth, had governed themselves in a republic for hundreds of years before

corruption caused

The

them

to fall

under the yoke of tyranny. 2

with avoiding tyranny held a special meaning for

ancients' obsession

enlightened European gentlemen because they too faced the growth of arbi-

The

trary power.

chaos of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had

spawned not only an well.

interest in ancient societies but absolutist

These monarchies were

rulers

monarchies

vertically integrated fiscal-military states

as

whose

used standing armies and aggressive tax farmers to overwhelm local

political

and

legal privileges within their realms.

Hungry for power and

glory,

these absolute monarchs launched a series of aggressive wars that threatened to destroy arbitrary

European

power and

society.

Enlightened thinkers argued that the growth of

especially the extinguishing of local political rights fore-

told a period of tyranny in

which independent- minded gentlemen would be

forced into slavish dependence on despots. 3

English fascination with classical learning began during the bloody tur-

moil of the English Civil

War and

reached a zenith early in the eighteenth

century as the opposition, or Country ideologists, applied the political lessons of ancient

and polemicists

Rome

— Addison and —

Sydney Bolingbroke

Country

to political developments in Britain.

military state

fascinated

by

many

theorists

Trenchard and Gordon, Locke and became well known in the colonies. 4 The

Steele,

eventually

theorists voiced

These

complaints about Britain's emerging

and the oligarchy that controlled political corruption

it,

fiscal-

but they were particularly

and luxury consumption. These opposition

denouncing the graft and bribery associated with the power in Britain after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89.

writers built careers

growth of

state

According to the Country writers, the corrupting influence of moneylenders and merchants fueled the changes that were threatening liberty and property.

Only landed gentlemen

secure in their estates could resist the expansion of

jo

Only such

arbitrary power.

Origins

men

disinterested

(disinterested because their

wealth came from their property, not from fees from a government posting or entangling commercial commitments) were seek to govern for their

own

fit

pendence, virtue, and honor. The intellectuals

came

including the East Jersey proprietors,

and readily absorbed

writers

to rule because they did not

gain. Rather, they acted to protect society's inde-

among

the

American

colonists,

to deeply admire these opposition

their message.

Traumatic transformations in the American colonies in the seventeenth century's final decades eties

prompted some provincial gentlemen

men

through an ancient prism. These

enment when

grasped the hope of the Enlight-

provincial rebellions, religious changes, the

and the spread of commerce combined to throw

culture,

to see their soci-

growth of print

their

world into pro-

found disorder. 5 The Enlightenment provided some provincial leaders with a

framework

to understand these changes

and offered new models

for social

organization.

The American Enlightenment was

a diffuse intellectual

movement

that

spread through the colonies in a haphazard manner. Ministers and educators

embraced some aspects of this thinking and rejected tenets to

others, reinterpreting

its

meet the needs of the moment. The growth of port towns and the

appearance of newspapers early in the eighteenth century encouraged the dissemination of Country thought, as did the presence of universities in

Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, Virginia, and

New

later

Jersey and

New

York. In the coffee houses and the taverns, at meetings of the colonial gov-

ernment and fashionable tual architecture

edge

it

The

inspired.

parties, the

of antiquity

American gentry discussed the

as well as the

intellec-

contemporary schools of knowl-

6

proprietors were such

men and became

leading proponents of the

En-

lightenment's republican political and economic theories. Their embrace of the Enlightenment

is

clearly

connected to the eventual emergence of a more

egalitarian, republican society at the century's end.

teenth century,

it

However, early

was unclear where the new knowledge would

in the eigh-

lead. In fact,

it

encouraged the proprietors down a very different path toward a republic of large estates

worked by tenants and bonded

The mid-i730s the Zenger Crisis

enment

in

confrontation within

marked

America.

The

a clear crisis

laborers.

New

York's factious elite

moment of arrival

began

as a

Governor William Cosby of New York on the

New York

collected considerable fees,

as well as

which the new

as

squabble over salary between East

Jersey proprietors Lewis Morris and James Alexander

held government posts in

known

for the political Enlight-

other.

on the one hand and

Morris and Alexander

New Jersey,

governor, Cosby,

and Morris had felt

were rightly

The Enlightenment s

his

First Offensive

ji

own. Cosby removed the two proprietors from their government posi-

tions and in response, they founded Americas first opposition newspaper, the New-York Weekly Journal. While printed by a Swiss immigrant named John Peter Zenger, Alexander and Morris controlled the Weekly Journals intellectual content.

Alexander used the paper to disseminate Country-influenced writings designed to undermine Cosby.

He drew on

and Trenchard and Gordon,

as well as ancient writers, to repeatedly portray

Cosby

as a venal fee taker.

nor to the tyrannical

Bolingbroke, Addison and Steele,

In one memorable piece he compared the gover-

Roman

emperors Augustus and Caligula. Cosby or-

dered Zenger arrested on charges of seditious acquittal,

and were forced temporarily selves.

Despite Zenger's eventual

to rely

on

New York offices

their landed wealth to support

them-

7

The

writings produced during this controversy provided an intellectual

framework through which Americans began

own

libel.

Alexander and Morris were not restored to their

societies that

had occurred

to

examine the changes in

their

in the aftermath of the disorders of the sev-

enteenth century. 8 That two proprietors disseminated Country thought

warning of the dangers of unchecked power may seem paradoxical, given their

own subsequent assault on we need to consider their

property rights in East Jersey. In

though, light

of their intellectual interests

fact,

behavior during the property disputes in as well as their aristocratic yearnings

and

Scottish heritage.

The

eighteenth-century proprietors never said that the Enlightenment, or

for that

claims.

on

sist

clearly

matter aristocratic ambitions, encouraged their aggressive land

They

did not give voice to their motivations directly other than to in-

their rightful

property,

and they were immersed

landed wealth

do

ownership of the contested lands. But their leaders

had experiences that sharpened

their public

as a political

and

their awareness

of the value of landed

in an intellectual milieu that celebrated

social virtue.

and private actions make

Only

in light of that

The Enlightenment s

First Offensive

In the second decade after the disastrous rebellion of 1701, a tion of proprietors led

worldview

sense.

new

genera-

by the cosmopolitan Scottish lawyer James Alexander

gradually raised the Board from the grave

dug

at the seventeenth century's

Some of the middle colonies' most important figures stood among the sixty-nine men who joined Alexander in resurrecting the Board's claims:

end.

j2

Lewis Morris,

Origins

Robert Hunter Morris, William Alexander (Lord

his son

son of James Alexander), John Johnston, and eventually members of

Stirling,

the Livingston, Penn, and Delancy families. Since

Scotland,

many of them had

not surprising that they sought to impose the highly exploita-

it is

landholding pattern on the countryside.

tive Scottish- style

They hoped by

an estate-dominated world where enlightened, aristo-

doing

this to create

cratic

gentlemen would

live in security

and comfort, an oligarchic society

9

Only the resistance of the yeomen prevented them from achieving this end. very different from our own.

The

ties to

colony's freeholding

and neoclassical influences on the worldviews of

Scottish, aristocratic,

Board members can be seen

Lord Campbell was

raised

in the life of James Alexander. This nephew of on the Scottish lowlands' great tenant-filled es-

of a family with extensive

tates as part

of the most important

lairds in

mind, and with the help of the

ties to

Duke of Argyle, he was

University. In 1715, he traveled to the Inns of

would provide him with

training that

Court

in

admitted to Glasgow

London

of the

first

to the nobility

law,

he

in Britain.

His patrons arranged

live as a gentle-

as their Receiver

New York

for

him

to emigrate to

Board of Proprietors so that he might gain

what he would never achieve

young lawyer

10

he remained in Scotland. Although related by blood

in service of the

New World rived in

if

life.

and well-regarded by powerful men, Alexander apparently had

no land

inherited

America

rank

for the legal

a livelihood for the rest of his

Alexander realized early on that he would not be able to

man

Some

the Scottish aristocracy.

Scotland noticed young Alexander's agile

in the Old.

The Board

in the

hired the

General of Quitrents. Appropriately, he ar-

carrying a copy of William Shepard's study of property

The Touchstone of Common Assurances. He soon found good use for it as uphold his nearly impossible responsibilities in unruly East Jersey.

tried to

Although

frustrated in his early efforts to collect the Board's quitrents,

Alexander quickly determined that a tamed East Jersey, abutting port of

New

pointment

as Receiver

Proprietors alerted ulating in

The

as

it

York, could provide the gentry with fantastic wealth.

him

did the

An

ap-

General of Quitrents by the West Jersey Society of to that area's

West Jersey lands

economic

in the 1720s.

establishment of firm kinship

ties

potential,

and he began spec-

11

with

New York's ruling gentry helps

explain Alexander's subsequent rise in provincial society. In 1721, he cemented his link to

New York's

Anglo-Dutch

elite

with a fortuitous marriage to the

widow Mary Sprat Provoost, a successful merchant in her own right and a member of the powerful Depeyster family. His ability as a lawyer, his wife's ability as a

merchant, and her family connections allowed them to advance

financially

and secured for him a position in the squabbling, interrelated

The Enlightenment s

First Offensive

jj

James Alexander. This Scottish-born attorney was the Board of Proprietor's effective leader between 1725 and 1756. His aggressive efforts to gain control of tens of thousands of acres, inspired by both enlightened learning and aristocratic aspirations, helped to spark decades of collective violence. Photo courtesy of Morristown / Morris

Township

Library.

.

Origins

34

dominated

clique that

New

politics in

Jersey and

Alexanders fortune had risen to around £150,000 that time, but apparently not

was the

It

enough

for

him

New

York. 12

sterling, a

By

By 1722, he had

passed the

Alexan-

New Jersey and

New York bars, become chief legal representative for the Board as well as and

ceiver General of Quitrents,

built

to

Re-

an extensive private law practice. 14

Appointed attorney general of New Jersey a year

was soon obvious

for

to retire on. 13

law, rather than landed property, that initially provided

der with his considerable income.

1740,

huge amount

the quality of his

later,

mind

many. At his funeral a eulogizer declared "he was bred to

the law, and tho' no speaker, at the head of his profession for sagacity and penetration; and in application to business, no 1740, learned

He

men acknowledged

needed

who would

bench and bar along the

to

(I

because he began to train a profes-

office as a

New Jersey, Stirling.

think)

more

rituals

late 1730s,

law school, including among his stu-

17

Elisha Parker, another of his students, recalled "going

till

six o'clock;

till

dinner time. .go[ing] back and .

then read[ing] with him in his room

supper-time." 18 Alexander's efforts eventually

and

By

16

eventually remake the middle colonies'

Mr. Alexander's; writ[ing] from eight

writ[ing]

as the colonies' finest.

Ogden of Newark, William Livingston, the Revolutionary-era and his own ill-starred son William Alexander, the

dents David

Lord

could surpass him." 15

of the English legal system. In the

lines

Alexander began using his

future

law library

this vast collection in part

sional cadre of lawyers

governor of

his

man

like those

made

till

provincial legal practices

of Britain.

Alexander's wealth and connections ensured that he would be perceived as a gentleman,

and

like all

such

men

he vigorously participated in social

He

danced the fashionable whirls

ties

designed to assert his

cial

events that established a man's status in

status.

New York

cockfights and took part in

gaged in the

city's intellectual

and informal

activities that asserted one's place as a

ple's

home became

society. all

activi-

at the so-

He

ably en-

of the formal

gentlemen. 19

The

cou-

a social center, elaborately decorated with portraits of

himself, his wife, her "late son David," carpets, "16 crimson dansk chairs

.

.

marble table ... square tea table ... mahogany dining-table," and a host of other fine European furnishings. 20

As

a reader of what he called "the

Maga-

zines from London," Alexander kept abreast of the aristocratic fashions in style at the

provincial.

cosmopolitan core even

as

he realized he would

live his life as a

21

The Enlightenment profoundly shaped ment and worldview.

Alexander's intellectual develop-

Interest in agricultural innovation

was strong

in Scot-

land during Alexander's youth, and from this platform he launched himself into the study of astronomy, botany, law, mathematics,

and

religion.

22

In

1737,

The

Enlightenment's First Offensive

New York lawyer William

he and

J5

Smith founded a Latin school

for children

of the gentry. Although he attended Anglican religious services, Alexander

was

a "profesed Deist"

throughout his entire adult

and apparently advo-

life

cated the Enlightenments religion to others. 23 His leading role in York's nascent

New

Whig club led to accusations that he was encouraging a "reHe corresponded with Benjamin Franklin and played a

publican cabal." 24

founding the American Philosophical Society. 25 Like Franklin,

in

role

Alexander's enlightened learning only increased his pretensions of gentility. 26

Alexander's immersion in neoclassical political thought became apparent

during the Zenger Crisis. Alexander situated the Crisis in the categories of classical political theory,

deploring the fate of a

serting in his history the praises of Brutus."

and Gordon, Alexander denounced speak of governors besides

...

27

polities

Roman

Drawing

freely

where "no

praising them."

28

"put to death for in-

from Trenchard

liberty

allowed to

is

For his support of Lewis

Morris, Alexander found himself stripped of his political offices and denied

Only his landed properties remained secure and him with an income. Ironically, it was precisely Alexander's status wide learning that caused him anxiety about the future and encour-

the right to practice law.

provided

and

his

aged his

efforts to acquire

landed wealth in

New Jersey.

Alexander had aggressively sought property since his provinces, and in the aftermath of the

Zenger

in

arrival

the

Crisis his drive to build a

landed empire clearly accelerated. Other factors influenced his actions, but the chronology of his efforts suggest that his attempts to acquire

were encouraged by Jersey lands,

amounted at

his political experiences.

by the end of

his life Alexander's holdings in

to tens of thousands of acres.

Basking Ridge in Somerset County,

acres nearby, north acres

don.

of the Passaic River.

By

from the West Jersey Society on the

30

1735,

In

New

New

Jersey

he had gained a large estate

New Jersey, 29

more land

Although he inherited no

1727,

and an additional

2,655

he purchased nearly 8000

Society's

Great Tract in Hunter-

Alexander's efforts to expand his landed holdings intensified in the

late 1730s

and the early

1740s. Either for personal gain or as attorney for the

Board, Alexander laid legal siege to hundreds of thousands of

acres.

In 1744,

he personally purchased an additional 10,000 acres on the 100,000-acre Great Tract, and in the same year he, in partnership with proprietor Robert

Hunter Morris and Newark lawyer David Ogden, claimed, deed, over 13,000 contested acres in conflict followed as

cate the

Newark

leases for

Newark Township's

interior.

Decades of

he sought to force a freeholding population to either va-

lands, repurchase them, or accept short-term, Scottish-style

homesteads they had developed with their own

plan for the

via a proprietary

Newark

interior

is

labor. Alexander's

representative of those of

New

Jersey's

j6

Origins

eighteenth-century gentry in that he sought both to

homesteads to tenants. That he chose

this course

sell

lands and to lease

does not

mean

was

that he

an aggressive speculator or a feudal lord bent on collecting quitrents; rather, he sought to maximize both his social and financial positions in pursuit of gentility.

Gaps

31

der's nearly

impenetrable handwriting, and his custom of -not distinguishing

own business interests and those of the Board make it impossible determine just how much land he owned or claimed. It may have been

between to

daunting paleographic problems caused by Alexan-

in the sources,

his

New Jersey alone, as well as holding an interest in the New York. Alexanders New Jersey lands (apart from his

over 60,000 acres in

Oblong Patent

in

would have been worth over £30,000 pounds sterling if he could have secured firm ownership. 32 But he could not. Alexander never

proprietary shares)

retired to live strictly

dream beyond

from landed income, and he eventually realized

his grasp.

He

also never

become a true gentleman, and that dream until it consumed him.

erty to live

The

volatile

it is

mind

was

a

stopped trying to gain enough prophis tragic-comic

son William would

Lewis Morris aided Alexander in the quest to

Board's claims, and

it

in his life that

we

restore the

see the contradictions of the

His Welsh father, Richard, served in army during the English Civil War and he eventually immigrated to the West Indies to help run a sugar plantation established by his Quaker brother, Lewis Morris Sr. In 1670, Richard moved to New eighteenth-century

Parliament's

York

at their fullest.

New Model

to acquire land,

and he died there within a year of Lewis's birth in

In 1673, Lewis Morris his brother's estate

and

Sr.

arrived

on the Hudson

legal guardianship

to

1671.

assume ownership of

of his orphaned namesake. Efforts

Quaker failed, but the elder Morris did see that his nephew received an education from tutors. The older man also arranged his marriage to Isabella Graham, the daughter of a Scotsman prominent in New York politics. 33 The younger man thus became linked to the wave of Scottish to bring the

boy up

as a

immigrants (including the Scottish proprietors)

who began

arriving in the

middle colonies in the 1680s. The marriage proved to be loving litically

advantageous.

as well as

po-

34

A substantial inheritance insured young Morris's status as a leading gentleman. At

his uncle's death in 1691,

(worth £6,000) in

Monmouth

Lewis received the 6200-acre Tinton manor County,

New

Jersey.

Further maneuvering

brought him into complete control of a landed empire worth £10,000, which included property in

New

York's

New

35 York, an ironworks, a sawmill, and a gristmill.

Governor Fletcher proclaimed Morris's lands

in that province

Morrisania manor and gave him the right to hold quasi-feudal manorial

The

Enlightenment's First Offensive

jy

36

Most of Morris's wealth came from these estates, and his landed empire encouraged him to consider himself superior to those around him. Morris's inherited fortune allowed him to live a country gentleman's life courts.

and immerse himself

in

Enlightenment teachings.

He

learned Hebrew,

Greek, and Latin as well as several other languages and developed a special interest in republican political theory because

it

taught that only disinterested

gentlemen, supported by landed incomes, could rule a society virtuously. 37 Conveniently, Morris was one of the few such disinterested gentlemen in the

middle colonies in the early eighteenth century. 38 decline of the

Country

Roman

his son that "I 40 1733.

republic

political tracts

want

from

my

He became

and frequently pulled Tacitus

his

3000-vplume

library.

39

fixated

on the

as well as radical

Indeed, he wrote to

Tacitus much," during a trip away from

home

in

In 1734, he called the martyred radical republican Algernon Sidney's

Discourses Concerning

Government "one of the best Books of that kind... in

the English Tongue," and a year

later,

while in

London on

business related to

41 the Zenger Crisis, he "read the Persian letters" by Montesquieu.

Morris's immersion in the Enlightenment did nothing to temper his aristocratic pretensions, however.

broke's Craftsman essays

Even

as

he absorbed the lessons of Boling-

and discussed Harrington's Oceana, Morris

lived as

the lord of Tinton and Morrisiana, paying his symbolic feudal due of six shilling yearly quitrent to the East Jersey

tion Day.

42

Board of Proprietors on Annuncia-

Morris, like Alexander, straddled the unsteady intellectual ram-

part between the

modern and premodern worlds.

Country ideology informed

his perception

of the Zenger Crisis and his

subsequent political activity as well. Morris truly thought himself a disinterested patriot victimized

by the plot of

a corrupt court faction centered

around a corpulent feetaker (Governor Cosby), aided in his acy by debased elements of Britain's ruling

Morris and Alexander of their

elite.

offices; like all

sinister conspir-

Cosby not only

would-be despots he

stripped tried to

extinguish his subjects' property rights by denying the two proprietors (and

other investors) their rights to the

Oblong Patent along

the

New

York-

Connecticut border. 43 While in London trying to convince the authorities to

moment of candor declared of the visibly cor44 government "O Venalis Roma" O corrupt Rome! He believed

remove Cosby, Morris

rupt royal

in a

—

that merchants

and monied

interests,

Country ideology's bogeymen, were

"The Factors cheat the merchants," Morris rhymed during his stay in the empire's capital, "They each other / And if we dare believe what many say / Both Senates and their choosers vote for pay / And both alike their Liberty betray." 45 When that same imperial governresponsible for this corruption.

ment

finally

appointed Morris

New Jersey's

first

independent royal governor

Origins

j8

London, he saw nothing contradicacceptance of the appointment and his vigorous application of

in 1737 in order to silence his patrons in

tory in his

the governors prerogatives. Clearly, only truly disinterested and virtuous

landholders like himself were

fit

to rule.

46

Classical republicanism reinforced Morris's desire to build a

mighty landed

His dependence on and celebration of landed incomes helps explains

estate.

the ferocity with

which he

asserted the

new

with which he amassed

Boards claims andl:he aggressiveness

acreage. Morris

was never content with

his in-

herited wealth and continued to expand his landed interests throughout his life.

Many

of these claims grew from his involvement with the West Jersey

Society of Proprietors. In 1703, Morris began a thirty- three-year tenure as the Society's agent.

him

a steady

47

While he proved

income

northwest portion of

to be a terrible agent, the position gave

as well as the

New Jersey,

opportunity to invest in lands in the

including large parts of the 100,000-acre

Great Tract in Hunterdon County, the whole of which he valued

He

in 1732.

also

Evanse patent

owned

at least

same

in the

colony,

and other lands

These expanded holdings were necessary

commitments

increased.

at

£20,000

New York, land on the 48 in southern New Jersey.

700 acres in upstate

as his family

grew and

his political

49

Others with proprietary

interests exhibited the

same combination of en-

lightened learning and aristocratic ambitions. Dr. John Johnston of Perth

Amboy and New York City played a key role in reviving the Board's

claims to

North Jersey. Like many others among the early proprietors, Johnston was a well-educated younger son of a prominent Scottish family who came to America seeking opportunity. Arriving

in

New Jersey in

1701,

Johnston

easily

survived the proprietors' lean years by participating in the growing trade be-

tween Perth

Amboy and

the

West

Indies. Repeatedly elected to the assembly

Amboy, Johnston bebody with some distinc-

to represent the proprietor-controlled capital of Perth

came Speaker tion.

50

from

in 1721

Like so

many

and he apparently served that

eighteenth-century politicians, his political power grew

his material status

Johnston's interest in

teenth century.

He

and more

specifically his

New Jersey

bought

a fraction

landed wealth.

property dated back to the early eigh-

of a proprietary share in East

sey and inherited another through marriage,

which brought him

New Jer-

a seat

on the

Board. Between 1690 and 1701, Johnston purchased approximately 3,500 acres

Peapack from the East Jersey proprietors. Subsequently, he and members of his family expanded their claims at Peapack to include most of the at

30,000-acre

tract.

51

In the 1720s, he

split

with the other proprietors in an

win 36,000 acres on the contested New Brittian Purchase, land also claimed by the ElizabethTown Associates. His death in 1732 halted these effort to

The Enlightenment s

efforts,

jo

First Offensive

but his sons eventually returned from their education in Europe and

52 In the early 1740s, they filed suits of ejectagain laid claims to the lands.

ment

in order to force

Peapack farmers to accept Scottish-style

leases,

chase the land, or vacate the area, and the result was violent resistance.

Peapack lands would have rented

at fairly

53

pur-

The

high prices or sold for between £30

and £50 pounds per 100 acres, making the tract's value between £9000 and £15,000, quite apart from the value of the timber or minerals that might be found

there.

54

Like Alexander and Morris, Johnston was an enlightened

willing to risk social violence to secure an aristocratic living

land

man

from rents and

sales.

English-born attorney Samuel Nevill was one of the most aggressive proprietors.

London Morning ened gentlemen,

it

tellectual currents

assumed an easy

Laws

(a

and Speaker of the

lines)

One

of two provincial magazines for enlightfamiliarity

while encouraging

Nevill eventually

thor of Nevill s

interests.

New Jersey

Post, in

zines chief writer and editor. 55

lifestyle.

man of the EnThe one-time editor of the he became the New American Maga-

Like his contemporaries on the Board, Nevill was a

lightenment with broad intellectual

became

a

with the Enlightenment's in-

readers to pursue an aristocratic

its

New Jersey

Supreme Court Justice, au-

major revision of the colony's laws along English

New Jersey assembly. 56

Nevill inherited his proprietary interest in East Jersey in 1735 from his sister,

the wife of Peter Sonmans, the English proprietors' unscrupulous agent

who

When the Widow Amboy and took posses-

actively sold land early in the eighteenth century.

Sonmans

moved from London

died, Nevill

sion of Sonman's estates and claims to

to Perth

Board

57

shares. Despite his English ori-

he soon joined with the Board's Scottish faction in their quest to re-

gins,

make

New Jersey

the

countryside.

A contested

2500-acre tract in Essex and

Somerset counties west of ElizabethTown served

as the core

of his property

holdings. Nevill also claimed thousands of contested acres in Middlesex and

Somerset counties and took the lead among Board members in laying claim to the

Ramapo

Tract. Ironically

enough

it

had been sold by

brother-in-law to Dutch-speaking investors led by a conier.

58

Nevill's efforts to secure control

his deceased

man named

Peter Fau-

of these various lands encouraged

decades of violence.

There can be live as

to

temper

1752

little

doubt that Nevill sought these properties in order to

an enlightened landed gentleman. Enlightened learning did nothing Nevill's ambitions; indeed,

he put his Perth

Amboy farm up

it

was probably the source of them. In

for sale, "being

determined to leave off

the farming business and to live retired," in other words to live a

life

templation and disinterested service. But like James Alexander, he

of conrealized

Origins

40

was a dream beyond

that this

come from

rents

Sixty- nine

he could secure a greater in-

his reach unless

and land speculation. 59

men joined

the Board's efforts to establish control of New Jer-

Each had

sey s contested lands.

a seat

on the East Jersey Board

in the eigh-

teenth century, and they took the same risks as Alexander and Morris in

The

search of landed wealth.

who

thrrty-three proprietors

Board over ten years formed the nucleus of

served on the

this elite. Collectively,

claimed the 400,000-acre EHzabethTown Tract, the 50,000-acre Tract,

other unpatented lands in East

all

which amounted

quitrents,

alone.

60

The

to £15,000

collective value

New

pounds

of these massive

Jersey,

and the

in the case of tracts

is

they

Ramapo arrears

of

EHzabethTown

difficult to establish;

the 17,000-acre "Clinker Lots" on the ElizabethTown Tract were alone worth

over £50,000 in the 1740s. 61

and

to control the lives

The

of those

proprietors intended to exploit these lands

who

lived

on them.

Bitter internal disputes

often divided the Board members, but in spite of them, they pressed their collective efforts against their

yeomen opponents. 62 Only

in this

way could

they gain firm control of the land-tenure system and build a society of estates.

The

fierce resistance

of yeomen with a very different social vision and

the fact that the Board turned no profit until the 1760s failed to inhibit

them. 63

Although the majority of property-related problems tury revolved around eastern Board members,

Daniel Coxe

yeomen

Jr.

and

in the 1730s

in the eighteenth cen-

West Jersey

Society proprietor

his heirs also played a critical role in

and

1740s.

The Coxe

provoking the

family's land claims derived

the massive (in excess of 100,000 acres) holdings of Dr. Daniel Coxe

one-time absentee governor of proprietary West Jersey.

demanded ready cash

situation

which

his

in the 1690s,

64

he began a

son almost immediately repudiated.

The

When series

from

Sr.,

the

his financial

of land

sales

30,000-acre Hopewell

Tract and the 12,000-acre Maidenhead Tract, both in southern Hunterdon

County, were part of this land.

The Coxe

family also claimed some interest in

Hunterdon County and running the division line between East

the Society's Great Tract in the northern portion of

fought bitterly to "defeat the Act for

and West

Jersey," as they

Line to claim lands rison Tract in

The

at

sought to exploit the confusion over the Dividing

Peapack and

to gain control

of 7,540 acres on the Har-

Middlesex County. 65

massive ambitions of this second generation of proprietors were even-

tually passed

many of the

on

to a third generation. Alexander, Morris, Johnston,

onto the Board, a generational try's social

and

other proprietors were followed by their sons and other relations

perceptions.

shift that

marked

a subtle

change in the gen-

The Enlightenment's

The

First Offensive

41

Failed Aristocrat

In 1756, death removed James Alexander's long shadow from the Board,

and a new generation of East Jersey proprietors began asserting themselves in the continuing efforts to control the vast contested tracts. Like their predecessors, they

went through

a process of redefinition that

derstood the quest for landed wealth.

England influenced

politan

The

social

shaped

group more strongly than

this

Scottish-born parents and grandparents.

Many

how they un-

model provided by cosmoit

had

in the third generation

their

had

been educated in England and traveled in Europe, and most of them read the

numerous London gentlemen's magazines. 66 Like

their parents, they

em-

braced the Enlightenment, unaware that the ideas they held dear would

ulti-

mately dissolve the foundations of the aristocratic world they admired.

The

third generation of Board

aristocrats.

that the

As

members considered themselves

early as the mid-i740s, a traveling Scottish doctor

New York elite

established

complained

of which the Board members were a part "held their

heads higher than the rest of mankind and imagined few or none their equals."

67

The

etors' core

fifteen families

vania and

twenty- five families that constituted the East Jersey propri-

kinship group at midcentury expanded to include an additional

by

New

1776.

68

Repeated intermarriage with the

the Livingstons, Delanceys and Penns

New

York

families, including the

Heathcotes, were related to these identity

became

elites

of Pennsyl-

York brought prominent gentlemen from these colonies

— onto

Van Cortlands, the Board members by

so important that in 1769

ommended Michael Kearny for

the Board. 69 Other leading

a seat

Schuylers, and the

marriage. 70 Family

Governor William Franklin

on the council

rec-

(the upper house of the

assembly) not because of anything Kearney had accomplished himself but

some of the principal Families in the Colony." By then, the proprietors had become part of the middle colonies' intermarried quasi-aristocracy, and the Board itself was one of a number of

rather because he

was

"related to

71

institutions that

maintained their

status.

James Alexander's son William, the ied this group's ambitions

self-styled

Lord

Stirling, best

and shortcomings. Placed within

embod-

his social context,

the republican lord of the American Revolution looks less like a foolish

more tragic figure. He lived out the aristocratic dreams of his generation ardently and in the process nearly destroyed himself. Young Alexander spent his childhood preparing for a prominent place in anomaly and

cuts a

colonial society.

He

ents' supervision,

received an extensive classical education under his par-

and

enment's political and

he became fascinated with the Enlightworks. As a teenager, he studied the law with

like his father, scientific

42

and worked in

his father

his

Origins

mothers commercial

age,

William Alexander enjoyed a high

gentleman's

His

social status

London

to

business partners and to act as the Board's agent,

seduced by the

his

own

came

to

ling to

lifestyle

early

and looked forward

to a

way few

nobility,

him

He

to emulate Britain's aristocracy

began a quest to gain the vacant Scottish

which he believed he was the

Scottish jury to recognize

Alexander lived

other colonial gentlemen ever did. 73

hope that he would be able not only

He

money owed

young Alexander was soon

of Wight, visiting the great homes of the

it.

to collect

of his noble acquaintances. Hunting foxes, vacationing

Anglicization in a

but to join

legal heir.

as the "nearest

title

Earl of Stir-

Alexander eventually got a

male-heir to the

last

Earl of

but England's House of Lords predictably rejected his claim. 74

Stirling,"

a

death in 1756 set William on the path toward pseudo-nobility

father's

Isle

From an

life.

and ultimately personal implosion. Sent

on the

up

enterprises, building

considerable fortune trading in sugar, lumber, and slaves. 72

nonetheless styled himself "Lord Stirling" and prepared to live a genteel

He

life.

75

Lord Stirling reluctandy returned to America in 1761 and immediately began to ennoble himself in his home environment. 76 His parents' success in

him

business allowed

destructive degree.

to pursue his aristocratic impulses to an ultimately self-

Using the fortune

him

left to

at the

time of his

father's

death, estimated at over £100,000, the pseudo-lord constructed a vast estate at

Basking Ridge in Somerset County, complete with manor, vineyards, gar-

dens, and a well-stocked deer park. Perceiving

beneath a landed cantile

aristocrat,

both

colonies' councils; such service ers.

78

He

intended to

live

at his

to be

mother's mer77

He did New Jersey and New York as a member of both

house or continue his

participate in politics in

commerce and the law

Alexander refused to labor

late father's lucrative legal practice.

was expected from landed,

the aristocratic

life

disinterested lead-

about which his father dreamed

but wisely realized was a chimera. Alexander's efforts to live off landed income were representative of a major trend

New

among York

comes; in

the gentry of the middle colonies.

relatives

1771,

He knew

that

some of

by marriage were maintaining themselves off such

the lord of Livingston

Manor

received £148 in cash for rents

and another £600 to £800 worth of produce with which he supported Alexander also knew that leading Pennsylvania families

his

like the

Al-

Shippens, and Willings had given up their commercial interests to

live

family. iens,

79

his

in-

exclusively

from the income generated by

their extensive holdings.

80

Only

the spectacular quality of Lord Stirling's pretensions and his equally spectacular collapse

make him

historically unique.

The Enlightenment's Although he inherited

a seat

First Offensive

4j

on the Board of Proprietors and most of his

owned two shares in a 1762 purchase of lands on the Great acquired more property through his marriage into the important Liv-

father's lands,

Tract,

ingston family, and purchased significant (and hotly contested) portions of the

New Brittain Tract, Alexander could

not support his lavish

landed incomes alone. His estate soon

mines

failed, his tenants refused to

fell

pay their

and he began

rents,

Somerset County sheriff threatened to

heavily. In 1769, the

lifestyle

from

into financial disarray. 81 Iron

sell

to drink

off Alexan-

ders "goods, chattels, house and lands" to satisfy his creditors, thus making public the would-be aristocrat's humiliating financial problems. 82

By

1772 a

bankrupt Lord Stirling found himself in deep legal trouble and desperately pry money from a contemptuous Board for "sundry services done by them in England." 83 Only the Revolution offered a kind of salvation, a chance for him to somehow retain his place as a leader. However, there was more to his adherence to the Whig cause than his own finances. Alexander's loyalty to the American cause in the Revolution should be seen as much a product of his intellectual development as it was of his financial situation. The republican lord, as he came to be known, had a long familtried to

him

for

iarity

with the Enlightenment's

break of the Stamp Act Crisis.

and

scientific

He

political

thought by the out-

helped establish the

New

York Library

Society and King's College. 84 Alexander was so taken with astronomy that he

presented a paper on the "Transit of Venus" to the American Philosophical Society.

85

As

had joined

a teenager he

New York's Whig

he became an ardent reader of the histories of ancient

club; in later years

Rome and

the numer-

ous republican tracts that celebrated landed disinterested gentlemen, including Montesquieu's Spirit of the

understood his

own

framework provided by and overindulgence.

Laws and

Cato's Letters***

He may well

classical texts that

warned against overconsumption

87

Other Board members of William Alexander's generation shared ambitions even

if

have

spectacular financial failures through the intellectual

in his

they did not carry them to the same material extreme.

Robert Hunter Morris played a key role in the renewal of the Board's claims

from the 1740s to the

1760s.

the family's business

affairs,

spect.

in

Like his

father,

At an

early age his father

and he proved

Lewis involved him

in

to be his father's son in every re-

he was an enlightened intellectual and a

deist.

88

While

London with

letters,"

his father during the Zenger Crisis, he "read in the Persian and denounced those "who Blindly follow the Directions of the

Cleargy without considering whether those Directions are agreeable to the

Laws of nature,

reason, or

common justice." 89 And

like his father,

he was a

44

Origins

proud and touchy man. Benjamin Franklin once said (disapprovingly) of Lewis Morris that he taught his children "to dispute with one another for his diversion,"

and there

with others

till

is

no doubt Robert Hunter Morris continued

to dispute

the end of his days. 90

Young Morris took offense at every perfrom social inferiors; he alone among the propri-

ceived slight, particularly

recommended and 1750s. 91 At his

etary elite

the use of British troops against the rioters in the

1740s

death, a contemporary observer described

having "strong natural powers" but also described him

mostly

inflexible."

92

him

as "opinionated,

as

and

Morris's upbringing helps explain his bitter determina-

tion to secure his land claims.

Morris ruthlessly pursued ownership of a number of contested efforts to Anglicize

New Jerseys landscape for his own benefit. Morris inher-

ited his father's estate

— and most of

atTinton

of cash.

a serious shortage

93

his debts

These debts threatened

and helped shape Morris's

bitions

—

end

to

him with political am-

leaving his

attitudes in the property controversies.

was partners with James Alexander and David Ogden troversial purchase

tracts in his

He

in the explosively con-

of over 13,000 acres in the Newark interior and laid claim

Middlesex occupied by a small group of Native Americans. Morowned a share in a mine near the contested Peapack Tract in SomerCounty and purchased lands on the hotly contested Great Tract in Hun-

to lands in ris also

set

terdon.

94

He

needed to secure these lands

if

he wanted to continue to be a

leading gentleman.

John Johnston's son Andrew played an important role on the Board after He served as president of the Board between 1747 and 1764, and

midcentury. his

European-educated younger brothers Lewis and John became

Board members upon returning home. 95 They hoped tion of

all

proprietary rights in

New Jersey,

active

for the successful asser-

but their

title

to the

Peapack

Tract particularly encouraged their strenuous efforts on the part of the Board.

They

also

owned

over a third of the shares in a £20,000 (proclamation) land

purchase on Hunterdon County's Great Tract in 1752.

made by

a joint stock

William Alexander did what other Board members only hoped it

company

96

destroyed

him

financially.

His extreme

efforts represented the

many

the third generation of proprietors and indeed of

They hoped

for estates supported

dominance over an Anglicized

colonial

to do,

gendemen.

by landed income that would express

social order.

Only

and

dreams of

their

in such a social landscape

could they have the political autonomy celebrated by enlightened thinkers as well as the aristocratic lifestyle they dreamed lived this

dream

for a short while suggests

of.

how

That William Alexander

close a final realization of

their design seemed. But the gentry never reached their lofty goal.

A defiant

The yeomen population lightenment s

first

Enlightenment's First Offensive

jealously defending

offensive

45

own autonomy

its

En-

resisted the

and helped destroy the world of gentlemen.

The

Burgess Shales

In a recent study of the Burgess Shales, a geological formation in western

Canada, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould highlighted the fantastic variety of life forms that inhabited the tropical seas 500 million years ago. Evolution,

Gould

believes,

might have headed down many paths, and we

accident than the logical result of what has

come

are

more of an

before us. Historical pale-

ontologists examining the eighteenth century's intellectual edifices are con-

fronted with the same sort of mystery:

and what in.

is

what we think should be

there

is

not,

we

live

and Country ideology

are

there does not look like the forerunner of the society that

Ethnic customs, theology,

fossilized in the

classical learning,

seemingly jumbled writings that compose the Burgess Shales

of the eighteenth-century provincial mind. Despite thirty years of intensive effort, scholars are just

beginning to understand

fully these intellectual

con-

structs.

The

early Enlightenment's

meaning was unfixed and could have encour-

aged a very different kind of republic than the one born in

1776.

Knowledge

of the ancient world, fear of arbitrary power, aristocratic ambition, and a Scottish social

model decidedly

different

from that of the colony's freehold-

ing communities kept the image of a Europeanized proprietors' eyes.

men

chise

texts

of ancient Greece and

Rome

before the

encouraged these

in their efforts to reconstruct their society along hierarchical, estate-

dominated

own

The

New Jersey

—

in short, decidedly

freedom.

They dreamed of

— lines

unmodern-

in order to assure their

a truly classical society, limited in

and freedoms, ruled by great men and

radically different

its

fran-

from the pop-

emerged at the eighteenth century's end. Neomore than neofeudalism or budding liberalism lay at the root of

ulist Jeffersonian republic that

classicism

the gentry's participation in

New Jersey's

property conflicts, and perhaps en-

who engaged

couraged the gentlemen of other colonies

At

in similar conflicts.

the eighteenth century's beginning, the proprietors' dreams of control-

ling East Jersey

seemed extinguished, but the

arrival

of James Alexander re-

vived them. All he needed was the opportunity the proprietors provided.

Tired of the "encroachments ... too notorious to have escaped ... notice,"

which had occurred

after the disaster

of

1701, the

lawyer with the legal powers to stop the lands.

97

"We

believe,"

yeomen

Board armed the young invasion of proprietary

wrote the proprietors in 1716 to the Scotman

who

46

would become

their

Origins

champion, "that the strange distractions

under Basses administration [meaning the rebellion of of the proprietor government have brought that nothing

is

.

1701],

many of the

.

.

that prevailed

and the yeares

people into a belief

our due because they have been disused to pay (quitrents)."

"But," they continued, "we desire you to Spare none of them, but Consult

with the best in the country upon proper methods to compell them." 98 Spare

none he

did.

CHAPTER THREE

Communities and Cultures:

A Portrait

North century

Jersey's

yeomen were

the major impediment to the eighteenth-

grand designs to remake the countryside. These

proprietors'

Puritan, Dutch, and multiethnic populations of farmers lived in hierarchical, tradition-bound villages

edged the authority of a few

locally

where the majority willingly acknowlprominent men. 1 Despite these

local tra-

ditions of deference, the seventeenth-century settlers rose twice in rebellion

against their colony's leaders,

would engage

in decades

This chapter explains

manry shaped thority.

the

and

in the eighteenth century their descendants

of property-related rioting

how

the

community and

at the gentry's expense.

cultural life

their seemingly paradoxical acceptance

The yeomanry's

same values that

political activities. It

willing involvement in collective violence

and

not possible to understand their riotous actions out-

side the context of their everyday lives

mundane

and

traditional values.

Thus, among

social interactions carried a latent

meaning because they expressed commonly them together against a hostile gentry. In early New Jersey, local community were the ultimate mediators of power relationships.

held beliefs that

litical

Ethnodeference:

Puritan,

grew from

tightly ordered their day-to-day social, religious, is

the yeomen, even the most

North

of the yeo-

and defiance of au-

po-

bound

culture

and

A Concept in Search of a Region

yeomen communities can loosely be categorized as Dutch, or multiethnic. The diversity of the 10,000 or so souls Jersey's

in the colony early in the eighteenth century

generalizations about their collective beliefs.

47

2

would seem

either living

to preclude

It is apparent,

any

though, that

Origins

48

these distinct cultural groups adhered to a loose but general social convention that preserved order in their communities

violent resistance to

some

and

at the

social superiors. I use the

describe this governing ethos, one shared,

same time legitimated

term "ethnodeference" to

I believe,

by most people

middle colonies. Simply put, many communities would defer

who

obey only leaders

shared the majorities' religious or ethnic identity.

placing deference in context,

we can understand how

people could defy authority so

readily.

Deference was the cial structure to

social

neatly

on

called

others,

all

summed up

elite's

3

By

minded

mutual commit-

rule in the belief that

One prominent

seventeenth-century Jersev-

the imperatives this convention imparted

his fellow colonists to "live in

when he

Peace Love and Amity each with

persons conscientiously observing the respective Duties in their

several stations 8c Relations."

4

All people in the colony would have acknowl-

edged that some were meant to

had

traditionally

or

convention that encouraged those lower in a so-

adhere to an

ments bound them together.

man

in the

to, elect,

rule

and others

to be ruled.

lived as abstract principles dictated, then provincial

And

if

people

New Jersey

would

have been comfortably under the gentry's control. But, of course,

by

ings don't live

abstractions.

those social superiors

who

North Jersey yeomen tended

human

be-

to defer only to

shared their moral values, religious beliefs, and

ethnic identities. Deference was given to prominent people within specific

groups or communities, but withheld from outsiders. In the middle colonies, localism wore a cultural face.

This modification of deference occurred because the middle colonies' political

and

tended

social

state,

the

environment was so different from that of Britain. The ex-

Church of England's

elaborate rituals and ceremonies, the

intermarried aristocracy, the physically tamed landscape to which social

meaning had been

assigned, a mature society's linguistic structures,

ply the sense of timelessness erential social order

teenth century.

were

tiny

state

and

that maintained Britain's def-

absent in the middle colonies early in the eigh-

New Jersey, New York,

ethnically, religiously,

The extended

— those elements

all

and sim-

and Pennsylvania's populations were

racially polyglot to a degree

unheard of in Europe.

was almost nonexistent; the provinces' governments were

and weak. Power remained

fixed in the public

and private

institutions of

the local communities, and these usually served specific religious or ethnic

groups.

An

individual's social status

within these groups. 5 ally

bound and

was

fixed within these structures

locally understood.

In this social environment, cross-cultural authority was lish.

and

The middle colonies' diversity made deference cultur-

The power of gentlemen

(like

the Scottish proprietors)

difficult to estab-

who

did not pro-

Communities and Cultures

fess a

community's values or participate in group cultural

suspect and easily desanctified.

rituals

was always

A gentleman might have money and political

without shared cultural experiences, his status was never

place, but

This helps explain

cure.

49

and

deferential

how New Jerseys yeomanry could

rebellious.

fully se-

simultaneously be

Their persistent defiance of the great gentry

caused no immediate breach in the farmers' worldview, since in their eyes the proprietors

had no

legitimacy.

The

province's cultural heterodoxy prevented

the gentry from securing a place atop the social order.

Ethnodeference clearly influenced community

politics.

In January 1670,

Puritan Newarkers, having already limited the franchise to Congregational

church members, recorded "the renewall of our Solemn Agreement to submit to

.

.

.

Authority

the colony.

6

among our

Selves," during the first antiproprietor rebellion in

Dutch-dominated Bergen County elected only Dutch Reformed between 1738 and 1776 despite the presence of

representatives to the assembly a

number of English gentlemen

other

New Jersey

in the county.

constituencies,

and we can

The same

pattern emerged in

also get a sense

of ethnodefer-

ence at work in the institutional politics of other middle colonies. For example, in

Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Quakers routinely elected candidates

from the Society of Friends while ignoring gentlemen candidates from the 7 county's Anglican and Presbyterian minorities.

Ethnodeference, or the lack of a universally shared perception of deference, encouraged the middle colonies' extralegal agrarian insurgencies. violent clashes in

New Jersey were

The

only one example of how different under-

standings of customary social conventions encouraged violent disputes in

tradition-bound societies.

New York's manorial system became unstable after New Englanders, who were very much people

1755 in part because migrating

of the eighteenth century, refused to defer to the colony's Anglo-Dutch

During bloody unrest on the Pennsylvania

known

Scotch-Irish vigilantes province's Anglican

as the

and Quaker

elites;

elite.

frontier in the mid-i76os, the

Paxton Boys refused to defer to the the Paxton settlers

demanded

actual

representation for their ethnic group in the provincial legislature because they felt

that the gentlemen

Pennsylvania

Germans

for their ethnic group.

from other groups would not protect periodically

The

made

the

same

sort

their interests.

of political demands

lack of shared cultural terrain in the countryside

inhibited the region's gentry from peacefully controlling challenges to their authority.

8

Ethnodeference as

is,

of course, the creation of a twentieth-century mind and

such imperfectly describes individual and group relationships in the mid-

dle colonies.

However,

it is

a useful tool for conceptualizing

in an ethnically diverse region. Ethnic

group dynamics

customs and patterns of belief modi-

Origins

50

And

of deference in the middle colonies.

fled the functioning

ethnodeferential society

in time, the

would become an ethnodemocracy.

Deference was not the only Anglo-American social convention altered by encounter with culturally distinctive communities. Locally specific cus-

its

toms and litical

traditions

shaped the yeomen's understanding of all

and po-

social

norms. These farmers' collective unwillingness to accept the colonial

gentry's definitions of these ideals underlay

much of the

social unrest in the

middle colonies and perhaps across British North America.

North JerNorth Jersey's three primary

Certainly, received traditions informed the fierce resistance of sey's

yeomen

to the great gentry's social design.

cultural zones

ples

whose

—

Puritan, Dutch, and multiethnic

— had been

specific histories, institutions, customs,

defer to familiar leaders

who

and

by peo-

settled

them

beliefs led

to

shared their specific values and encouraged

them to defy those from outside their group. The New Englanders who had begun settling in New Jersey in the 1660s had demonstrated their unwillingness to submit to the proprietors' authority

when

they twice followed their

local leaders into rebellions in the seventeenth century. Early in the eigh-

community

teenth century, the their defiance

relationships

remained very firmly in

and

beliefs that

encouraged

place.

New Jersey s New England the eighteenth century, East Jersey was a cul-

It is fair to say that early in

tural province

of

New

England, for people of Puritan descent were the

colony's largest ethnocultural group.

They may have comprised

percent of the population in 1700. 9 Theologically diverse, the

as

much

strict

as

70

Congre-

gationalists

of Essex County, the radical Baptists and Quakers living in

Monmouth

County, and the Presbyterians in Middlesex and Hunterdon

counties shared enough values, institutions, and beliefs to create a distinctive

Puritan cultural zone. Received traditions, carried

England and then that

to

New Jersey,

had encouraged them were the largest

tury rioting,

identifiable

sible to

10

Men

them

New

group involved in the mid-eighteenth-cen-

to

their

day-to-day social

engage in collective violence. 11

It is

understand these peoples' extraordinary behavior apart from

tionship to their everyday

to

from Puritan- settled communi-

and the same values that shaped

interactions encouraged

from England

to twice rise in rebellion against the colony's pro-

prietary elite in the years before 1701. ties

first

provided these Puritans with a worldview

lives.

The

imposits rela-

Puritan communities' physical and social

Communities and Cultures

structures as well as their specific institutions identities that

The

made

these

5/

and

rituals

maintained the

yeomen formidable opponents of the

gentry.

Puritan yeomen's continued physical proximity to one another early in

the eighteenth century encouraged adherence to the traditional values that

bound them

together. Their

had had

structures as they

towns and

at the

ElizabethTown and Newark were

1660s.

homelots of four and

enough

to the center

six acres

villages retained the

same physical

time of their original settlements in the still

loosely nucleated villages with

respectively.

Most people

still

lived near

of town to worship in their respective non-separating

Congregational churches. 12

The same was

Mon-

communities in

true of the

mouth that were settled from New England, and in the West Jersey towns of Maidenhead and Hopewell, although in these communities the population was somewhat more dispersed; people were beginning to take up lands away from the towns'

centers.

13

Their continued proximity to one another encour-

aged adherence to the expressed community values that unified them,

only

if

because people could readily observe one another, and such scrutiny tended to

dampen deviance from

social

norms.

Patriarchy was the governing principle of family and institutional relationships in Puritan East Jersey. Fathers expected to rule their families (in a

benevolent way), and in exchange, they were expected to provide for their dependents. 14 This idealized patriarchal model was extended to structures, Jersey's

from town meetings

empire

itself.

15

Even

(later

a

Jonathan Belcher,

Princeton University) that he intended "to adopt

crowd leader

as "all his children

8c one family." 16

powerful binding force in provincial In the eighteenth-century's fairly

list

as a

all

relationships

was

a

society.

first years,

New Jersey's New

England towns

even distribution of wealth within a social order that used formal

few from the many.

A subscrip-

from the 1690s that recorded the funds paid to ElizabethTown's

Congregationalist minister for a tions of address

worked

rate social orders. ful

it

The tendency of individuals throughout

rhetorical structures to sharply delineate the

tion

New

in the 1740s could describe his rioting followers

the social structure to invoke "family" as the model for

had a

the society's

governor in the 1740s and 1750s, would write of the fledgling College

of New Jersey child."

to the

all

new church

indicates

how linguistic

to preserve hierarchy in Puritan

conven-

New Jersey's

corpo-

A sharp rhetorical distinction was drawn between a hand-

of "Misters" and "Deacons" and everyone

else in the

community. At the

same time, the material gap between the wealthiest and the most humble was apparendy not great. Four men contributed over three pounds to the fund; three of these were honored with the salutation "Mister," while "Deacon"

52

Origins

Jonathan Ogden completed the top of the

social pyramid. Three men contwo pounds, but only one, "Mister" John Woodruff, received a before his name. Twenty-two men contributed over one pound;

tributed over salutation

three bore the salutation "Mister," one "Deacon," and the rest were simply listed

by name,

were ninety-three other freeholders,

as

than one pound each. This

list

who

contributed less

suggests that a tightly knit (and probably in-

termarried) group of "Misters" and "Deacons" jealously guarded their place in a society that

was corporate, rather than

a position of social

The

honor that was reaffirmed

him

deference paid to

and grew

as

much from

from

as it did

as a

community

A Deacon Ogden held

in each rhetorical interaction.

patriarch

was

locally generated,

his role in a critical cultural institution (the church)

his mildly elevated material standing. 17

A similar social structure in

bound.

class,

existed at the Puritan-settled

town of Hopewell

Hunterdon. The community's 1722 tax assessment suggests that wealth was

fairly

evenly distributed

owned more than 300 thirty-eight held

than 100

acres.

18

among

the 138 ratable white men. Eleven people

acres, thirty-one

between 100 and 200

While

this list

owned between 200 and 300 acres, acres, and twenty-four owned less

does not record rhetorical marks of honor, no

doubt a small group of "misters" and "deacons" dominated community

Hopewell just In 1679, the

as they did at

Newark

life at

ElizabethTown.

recorder listed the criteria used for seating the

Con-

gregational church meeting, and in so doing revealed the factors that deter-

mined

social status in these Puritan

communities. Wealth was only one part

of this complex equation. "Town Meeting, February seating Persons in the

Meeting House,

it

18th, 1679

— Concerning

was agreed that Persons should be

placed according to Office, Age, Estate, Infirmity, and Desent or Parentage;

by Estate

is

meant

that Estate as Persons purchased

gether with the present Estate spiritual standing

— comparing

was the unspoken

factors other than estate helps explain

were loosely rather than structure; status

was

strictly

final

all

and took up Land

these together."

by, to-

Of course,

component. The influence of the

why the

towns' "misters" and "deacons"

concentrated at the pinnacle of the social

a product of blood

and

cultural ties as well as wealth.

19

A woman's status approximated that of her husband or nearest male relative, but

women

church birth

—

did not participate in institutional politics and their role in

affairs all

was

limited. Office, property, age, spiritual standing, sex,

these established one's social identity in

and

New Jersey's New En-

gland.

Town

meetings

like those

dominated the yeomanry's

common

in the Puritan colonies to the north

political life.

The

preservation of these

New

England-derived institutional structures well into the eighteenth century

Communities and Cultures

53

New Jer-

helped maintain the Puritans' political beliefs in ethnically polyglot sey.

The

among

selectmen, elected from

the most prominent townspeople,

controlled the meetings and were considered the

town

fathers.

The

selectmen

distributed the positions that provided the towns' governmental services, set-

between individuals and the community, and governed aspects

tled disputes

of economic

men

life.

20

During the eighteenth-century

unrest, the towns' select-

committees became an institutional model for the committees that co-

ordinated resistance to the proprietors' property claims in North Jersey's Puritan-settled areas.

As

New

in

21

England, the militia training days held four times a year ex-

bound the yeomen

pressed the leading men's authority and

together.

22

Train-

ing day drew militiamen and civilians alike to a great, and usually raucous,

meeting of local Puritan

society.

Newark's Esther Burr reported in the mid-

eighteenth century, "Tis general Training at Elizabeth

gone but

I."

The

elected as in

yeomen

officers (after 1701,

New

England), always local gentry, issued orders that the

it

also

them of their shared

these martial exercises, slaves celebrated

on the

bound the

foot soldiers to one another, remind-

responsibilities

women and

and

identities.

knew

and

visitors,

and

between order and

lurked in their society. During an-

Morning

indifferently to day, what with [be]ing disturbed for what with Drums, [G]uns, Trumpets, and [FJiddles, tis

In sharp contrast to

children, the elderly

other training period Esther Burr wrote, "This

—

23

sidelines, suggesting the tension

licentiousness that every Puritan

ach

everybody

foot soldiers followed to the best of their ability. This no doubt rein-

forced hierarchy, but

ing

Town and

appointed by the assembly rather than

Training day h[e]re." 24 Militia day

rituals

I feel

but very

several Nights past,

and

have a very bad Head-

I

and symbols would be

re-

peatedly appropriated by the disaffected during the midcentury disturbances as a

means of organizing crowd

In

1716,

actions against the gentry.

an Anglican minister described North Jersey's residents

England Independents [Congregationalists], who in their erroneous way." 26

While

New Jersey's

specter

comments. In the eighteenth century's still

are

now old and

Puritans were

nationally diverse than this writer suggests, there to his

first

a

little

meaning

in

New Jersey's New lives,

England.

and on April

truth

decades, John Calvin's

hovered everywhere in East Jersey. Religious practices and

center of the Puritans'

"New

as

confirmed

more denomi-

was more than

brought from the Puritan colonies intertwined with the life

25

The Sunday meeting was 3, 1736/37,

beliefs

civic rituals to give

Monmouth

at the

County's

Jonathan Holmes spoke for many people in North Jersey when he declared 27 Entire towns became that it "beeing Sabbath [he] was at meeting aforesd." holy ground on the Sabbath. All manual work ceased. Warners passed

Origins

54

The status. As

through the communities calling people to the meeting. according to their social and spiritual

seated

men

preached,

the

ministers

patrolled the congregations' periphery, watchful for any sign

of disorder (or sleeping)

Whatever

residents were

among

the socially marginal and the young. 28

and Presbyteri-

their differences, the Congregationalists, Baptists,

nod in agreement as their ministers again told them that damnation awaited most people, that God showed too much mercy in allowing them to continue in the sweetness of life, and that only a few would be saved on Judgment Day. 29 By the service's end, community order spiritual, moral, social, and physical had been rejuvenated. Most of the seventeenthand eighteenth-century rioters from the Puritan towns were members of ans could only

—

—

Calvinist churches. 30 Rituals tied to the

human

life

cycle acted as social sinew binding towns-

moments of triumph

people together in

as well as tragedy.

Raucous marriage

celebrations allowed for a collective release of emotions that temporarily

overcame the sense of rounding nuptials in

restraint inherent in Puritanism.

Monmouth County in

of pre-Reformation Europe. "In the

Holmes,

1736 retained

after part

The all

of the day," wrote Jonathan

went unto John Boords ... it being wedding times

"I

festivities sur-

of the bawdiness

there."

A frolic

followed the ceremony, at which "the young folks was a Showing tricks" in a colonial version of a French charivari. 31

the

amused Holmes, "Luckely

with a house

and Se

far

the brid

if

from

safe.

.

.

rushed

.

The

was righdy put

the locked passage prevented

thing

Slipt into bed,

and fastened the doore." But

guests "said that they to

them from

fulfilling this

"seeking the brides stocking ...

a person

I

found in

found under the bed." Holmes threw the stocking

made the

a lafter

first

... I

saluted the bride

mission until

jumpd

"

some-

The crowd

& an other

"hit the brides nose,

celebrations,

new ties extending

in."

my hand

and bid the couple not

commandment." In marriage

gether and families forged

would open the door

bed and would throw the stocken," but

drew the window Shett opne 6c

in,

Bride," wrote

with guests determined to have some playful torment, the

filled

new couple was

"The Groom and the

I

which

to forget fulfilling

communities drew to-

32 an the intimacy of the whole,

intimacy that played a central role in motivating large numbers to engage in collective violence in the eighteenth century.

Death prompted still other life-cycle related rituals that reinforced collective values and community ties. "The Lord was pleased," wrote Newark's Jemima Condit in her diary "to Remove by Death my cousin." While she mourned, she knew that the "lord grant that this stroke of thy providence May be for my Good. O that it might awaken me." 33 For Condit, death reinforced

life's

lessons, just as

God intended.

#

Communities and Cultures

Death

also

marked the passage of authority and property from one generamanner that reinforced the dominate paradigm of patri-

tion to the next in a

Custom encouraged

archy.

even

fathers to leave their eldest sons a double share

as parents struggled to leave

head's Joshua

Anderson

left his

some legacy to all their children. Maidentwo eldest sons "land in [the neighboring

swamp

in

Maryland," with further instructions to use some of the proceeds from

its

town] of Hopewell." His other eight children

sale to settle a debt.

34

Most East

birth order even if the property

mentioned

first

cedar

split "the

Jersey wills mention the male children's

was distributed

equally.

The

was

eldest son

because he had a special public status and played a more ac-

community role. 35

tive

Informal social interactions helped structure the Puritan communities by

encouraging displays of physical prowess or wealth by local leaders. In eighteenth-century their status

New

Jersey, as in Virginia, leading

men

demonstrated

by wagering on cockfights and similar games of chance.

Mon-

mouth's Jonathan Holmes spent a rainy evening at cockfights where he "lost a penney."

show

to

that

"it

But Holmes,

careful to observe the

was

that even in losing he

being

wager

as large a

a leading

as any."

36

Other

wagers of others and anxious

man

in his

sorts

of contests played similar

community, added

On January 27, 1736/37, Holmes recorded that Wm. Logens 8c tarryed a While, Timothy Loyd

"Brother and

social roles.

went

to

.

.

.

and

P.

I

Bowne

mark with a single ball about 50 or 60 yards Bowne shot the ball mark and won a bottle of rum." 37 Holmes knew his participation in these activities was closely watched and helped establish his place shot at a .

.

.

.

.

cloose to the

.

in local society. 38

The most important community all:

visiting family

tavern.

and

On January 28, 1736/37,

Bowne's 6c went unto 6c drank cider."

Two

interactions

friends, helping a

J.

later,

structure at

Jonathan Holmes "went to Peter

a typical day,

Reids with John Stanley

days

had no formal

neighbor in need, stopping at a local

Holmes went

uncles and diged up thirty appletrees for

J.

Bowne

"in the

6c

Andrew McCoy

middle of the day.

Holmes." Friends digging

— these experiences gave the word "community"

.

.

by

trees

meaning

that

twentieth-century observers have difficulty grasping, for they suggest a

mu-

side

tual

by

side

dependence

far

deeper than

we

People faced the challenges of everyday another in

While

moments of crisis.

experience in contemporary society. life

together just as they clung to one

39

institutional politics, religious rituals,

whelmingly masculine easy familiarity

among

and tavern culture were over-

in their character, informal

existed throughout Puritan

a

women's

social

networks

New Jersey. They expressed and encouraged an Women met to talk, to care for children, to

families.

Origins

54

church deacons; to provide for their multitude of children;

militia officers, or

or in the case of those

of gentility

itself,

Origins

who were

already leading

men,

to gain a salutation before their

to aspire to

some

sign

names. That the ambitions

commoner alike helped destroy their world may be true, but it was not intended. To label one capitalist and the other noncapitalist, to of both gentry and

label

one good and the other bad,

is

to distort the character of

change in the

period.

This

is

not to say that there were no winners or losers, no recognizable

trends in this competition.

As

difficult as it

may be

ratized world to believe, in the eighteenth century

quarters that

for us living in a it

seemed

likely

democin some

Americas economic development might be accomplished not

by scrambling entrepreneurs, but rather directed by shrewd and

intellectually

enlightened gentlemen ruling over a quasi- aristocratic society. These

men

pressed hard to control economic development in the countryside and stamp

out the ambitions of the yeomen. But despite the advantages that placed

them at the head of provincial society, the American quasi-aristocracy was doomed. New Jerseys timbercutters, farmers, and prospectors, scrambling

men with their own ambitions, denied the gentry control of the countryside. The material equation that underlay decades of collective violence was as simple as the child's game Snakes and Ladders. The people of eighteenthcentury

New

back down to

Jersey sought wealth and advancement, climbing, slithering failure,

became entangled

only to try again and again.

As

these material ambitions

in the legal disputes, ethnic divisions,

as

it

became obvious

ent rules

all

along.

that the contending parties

and

religious

game began

up-

weaken had been playing by differ-

heavals, the ability of royal institutions to control the

to

4

CHAPTER

SIX

A Cage without Bars: Breakdown of Order,

Anglicization and the

the eighteenth-century's

In

level

of political

ernment

in 1701.

stability

The

three decades,

first

unknown

New

Jersey achieved a

before the collapse of proprietary gov-

colony's royal

government peacefully contained the

passions unleashed by demographic changes, religious schisms, and economic

competition. However, the specter of interest burst through provincial society's paternalistic fictions litical life.

the

The

yeomen

living

property disputes again became part of po-

dominated

on contested lands

ever settle the disputes etors.

when

great gentry

to lose faith that the

loss

their property.

prompting

government might

on terms other than those favorable

Farmers threatened with the

crowd actions to protect

royal political institutions,

to the propri-

of their homes gradually turned to

The

ernment unwittingly created a cage without

royalization of bars, a society

lacked the power to control the emotions of its members. 1

New Jersey's gov-

whose

By

institutions

1745,

order had

broken down across North Jersey.

The Cage: Royal Institutions and

Provincial Society

In most British colonies, the royalization of government stabilized provincial society after the seventeenth-century rebellions. In

New Jersey,

however, the coupling of the social structure with royal authority failed to

normalize the gentry's authority. Popular confidence in a government dominated by the culturally alien (Scottish, Anglican) proprietors was low and eventually corroded under the weight of change. that the

The yeomanry lost

government would ever decide against the great gentry

erty dispute.

all

faith

in a prop-

On the other hand, the government's lack of coercive power as707

io8

sured that

it

would never be

Conflict

able to enforce

its

decisions to the gentry's sat-

isfaction.

The

provincial government's structure reflected the logic of a

political science. "Hierarchy," "patriarchy,"

premodern

and "family" neatly sum up the

governing principles of that political theory; the "few," and "many," the social elements that the political institutions represented.

its

view of

A Cage without Bars

109 §

The

royal governor

he was considered the

was the chief executive, and polity's "father."

in that patriarchal

Appointed by the king,

world

royal gover-

nors served at the King's Pleasure, which was in fact the pleasure of a fantastically

corrupt patronage network headed by royal ministers.

examined

all

royal authority.

men

for

He

called

bureaucracy's

and dissolved the assembly, recommended gentle-

when needed. The acted as the chief judge in the chancery court. As the imperial direct representative, and often the only government member

government

governor also

The governor

laws and had the right to nullify the ones that conflicted with

positions,

and mobilized the

militia

with firm contacts in London, the governor provided the living link between center and periphery in the

Changes

first

in the structure

of

1730s ensured that the office

peace

when

British empire. 2

New Jersey's

a governor,

ondary concern. In

made

in the late

would be incapable of preserving the public

tensions over property rose.

New York shared

governorship

and

From

1702 to 1738,

New Jersey was

1738, proprietor

New Jersey

and

usually considered his sec-

Lewis Morris became

New Jersey's

first

independent royal governor. Morris's appointment to the governor's chair generated high anxiety for those living on legally contested property, and he

indeed aided the proprietors in the property disputes until his death in 1746. Later governors proved more ambiguous about their relationships with the proprietors, but before the late 1740s the

yeomen were unwilling

to appeal to

the colony's chief executive for redress of property-related grievances. 3

The Crown,

acting with the governor's recommendation, also appointed

The New Jersey Council had twelve members, generally although not always drawn from among the high gentry in equal numbers from the colony's western and eastern divisions. The council could amend and even initiate legislation, as well as advise the goverthe councillors of the assembly's upper house.

nor,

but

tronage.

its

chief source of political influence was

The

royalization of 1702

had turned the

its

power

offices

to dispense pa-

of quarter sessions

judge, justice of the peace, militia officer, sheriff, and county clerk into ap-

pointed positions controlled by the council acting with the governor. 4 In the eighteenth century Eastern Board members dominated the council. After

1714,

never fewer than three East Jersey proprietors served together on

the council. In the period of intense unrest between 1745 and 1755 that

ber never dropped below six and climbed as high as eight.

yeomen claimed

at

The

num-

disaffected

one point that the government would not end the

bitter

property disputes in their favor because of "the great Power, the Proprietors in his Majesty's Council, had, over

both the Govr. and the Assembly." 5 The

was evident

in the April 1746 council bill that de-

proprietors' influence

manded

the death penalty without benefit of clergy for those involved in

property-related rioting.

Even though the

bill

was

later shelved,

it

expressed

no

Conflict

the proprietors' domination of the council,

which became

their

primary

stronghold in the government. 6

The assembly's lower house comprised the government's third arm. Two men represented each county, and two more came from each of the twin capitals

of Perth

Amboy and Burlington.

For most of the eighteenth century, ap-

proximately twenty-two representatives sat in any session. Each at least

iooo

White male

acres.

propertyholders owning- at least 100 acres

The assembly

initiated legislation,

significantly, controlled the salaries

of the governor, the

voted by voice for their representatives.

heard petitions, and

supreme court judges, and the attorney general.

7

The overwhelming majority of assemblymen came from leading families. Most thought of themselves as gentlemen, were generally not

man owned

as

wealthy

as the leading proprietors

occasionally gained assembly seats).

A third

their counties'

although they

(some proprietors

of early eighteenth-century

as-

semblymen owned 2,000 acres or more. The median value of the estates of all assemblymen who died after 1737 was over £1200 proclamation money, a very considerable

sum

at that time.

8

Despite sharing high social status with the governor and councillors, the

assemblymen refused to join with the government's other arms to

settle

the

Some assemblymen sympathized philosophical, or cultural reasons. In March

property disputes to the gentry's advantage.

with the disaffected for

legal,

some assemblymen

1742,

ments, that the Indian

might tend feared,

"in private conversation

titles

were the

best,

.

.

.

did express their senti-

which opinion

to the ruin of the Proprietary titles."

if

propagated,

These same men, the Board

"might possibly induce a repeal of the Act concerning Indian pur-

chases" and thus break the proprietors' legal grip

mid-i740s, Essex assemblymen John

ported the

Newark Indian

Low

on the countryside. In the

and Joseph

Camp

openly sup-

purchasers because they or their relatives

property via nonproprietary tide.

owned

Other assemblymen were linked to the

disaffected propertyholders by ties of religion or ethnicity. But most assemblymen feared popular disorder and wanted to see the colony tranquil. They

did not act to settle property disputes to the gentry's advantage because they realized that their authority proprietors' claims.

came from the very people who opposed the

9

The assemblymen's dependence on

the popular will for their positions

them from the

and the governor on a host of politi-

truly divided

cal questions, including the

saw

their authority

litical

councillors

property disputes.

New Jersey's

coming from below; and encouraged by

language that denounced appointed

officials as

representatives

a spreading po-

dependent

feetakers,

By

the 1750s,

they perceived that source of authority as politically supreme. representatives denied that the royally appointed council

was the assembly's

A Cage without Bars

///

1Mb

equal, "but,

how

rich

.

.

.

the

Gentlemen would

not think them the equal in substance to

colony

who we

represent,

and when they prescribed

ties it

upper house.

bill calling for

re-

the death penalty for riot-

mobbing

in 1748, the penal-

demanded by

short of the draconian measures

the

11

Questions over jurisdictional boundaries encouraged

The

the government's arms.

mained unclear it

can-

the rest of the Inhabitants of this

finally did pass a bill against

fell far

we

by immediate Election." 10 The assemblymen

fused to pass the council-sponsored ing,

all

willingly be thought,

as

between

exact delineation of governmental powers re-

each branch sought to expand

could. In the 1740s,

fierce battles

government

too frequent struggles over paper

institutions

its

sphere of power as far as

were locked in one of their

money because

all

the lower house sought an

emission of £40,000 and the governor refused. Such acrid disputes kept the

government from defusing the

issues that

prompted the property

conflicts.

12

In the unlikely event that the government had united to halt the unrest,

what could call

it

have done?

The

only recourse in the face of armed

mobs was

to

out the militia; and as they learned in East Jersey, the militia was the

mob.

On

the other hand, the institutional weakness of colonial governments

may indeed have been level

their saving grace. Generally unable to escalate the

of violence in social

conflicts,

they either had to accommodate their

populace, ride out waves of collective violence, or use cultural manipulation to survive.

The

great gentry realized long before violence broke out that to gain the

level

of social control they desired they needed to establish

local

men who

assistance

ties

with leading

them in their quest for property and power. The dispensed by members of the proprietary elite to the Anglican could

assist

churches was only one part of a velop clients in the northern

much

broader effort to use patronage to de-

New Jersey countryside.

Patronage and the Rise of Faction Throughout the eighteenth

century, the Eastern Board, acting through the

Appoint-

council, tried to use patronage to gain influence in the countryside.

ments, particularly judicial appointments, proved to be their most potent

weapon

in securing friends in

North

Jersey's

towns and

villages.

The

gentry's clients used these appointed positions as bases to seek even

great

more

ex-

power for themselves in their home counties. were the institutional lifeblood of the first British empire. All individual advancement, public and private, depended on the good will of social superiors who furthered clients' careers. Patronage might be extended tensive political

Patronage

ties

ii2

Conflict

young man from

to kin, or to a promising

a socially inferior family, or to the

of a social equal. Patrons and clients conceptualized their relation-

relative

ships in terms of friendship, with the inferior friend careful to

ence to his superior.

When

from London to

friendly letter

why Ogden had

inquired

David Ogden of Newark

"the favor of

a

he

not written to him since his departure. Ogden, sen-

Your

letter"

and thanked Morris profusely for

and "the benefits of your friendship."

Esteem your friendship you since you from

left

my

"I assure

as a great part

America, did not

you,"

my

of

arise

Ogden

happiness;

his "generosity"

continued, "that

my

from a want of

assist,

and

I

not writing to

inclination, but

not being willing to be Troublesome to you." 13

such deferential clients that patrons sought to entire

in 1749,

the relationship at stake, immediately wrote ba'ck acknowledging

sitive to

rather

defer-

Hunter Morris wrote

proprietor Robert his client

show

It

in a certain

was

just

way

the

empire depended on and operated through such relationships.

Control over patronage appointments allowed the great gentry to establish local political alliances

with some East Jersey families anxious to gain much-

coveted judiciary positions.

lowed

families

The

posts

went

to

prominent men,

quite

literally, sit

al-

in

erational solicitation of the proprietors' patronage.

allegiance to the proprietors in the 1730s

ments

who were

judgment over some of their neighbors. These passed the positions from father to son through successful multigen-

to,

as a justice

Jr.

1775.

home county of

maintained the family's relationship to the Board

and was appointed Morris County 15

Daniel Coopers steady

and 1740s brought him appoint-

of the peace and then a judgeship in his

Morris. His son Daniel

peace in

14

sheriff in 1767

and a county justice of the

In December 1695, the proprietor government appointed

Samuel Foreman Jonathan Forman

of Monmouth won appointment as

sheriff

County. In 1744, his son or grandson a county justice of the peace and in

1746 secured a judgeship in a higher court.

At

Forman Forman be-

the same time, John

acted as the Board's primary agent in East Jersey. In 1774, Peter

county justice of the peace. 16 In

1742, David Ogden of Newark, him"recommended Jonathan Hampton of ElizabethTown" to the Eastern Board for the position of "Deputy Surveyor for Essex County" because "his father had been deemed a friend to the Proprietors in-

came

a

self a proprietor client,

terest."

17

The

great gentry's ability to place long-time clients in the judiciary

gave them a loyal

if

limited base of support in the countryside.

The Revolu-

tionary generation's outburst against hereditary privilege was related to the

extension of these sorts of patronage networks into the American countryside in the decades before 1776.

The

proprietors' extension of patronage to the

Monmouth County

provides a vivid example of

Throckmorton family of

how

proprietor influence

A Cage without Bars and county

destabilized township

iij

politics in the eighteenth century.

From

the 1660s onward the Holmes, Lawrence, and Hartshorne families domi-

nated Monmouth's political

life.

While

occasionally dealt with the Board, they were

ing degrees to proprietary interests.

As

members of these known to be hostile

individual all

early as 1699, proprietor

families in vary-

Lewis Morris

sought unsuccessfully to remove "Obadiah Holmes Sheriff of the County of

Monmouth" from County

office.

18

The Throckmortons, one of

families that resented the

power of the three

several

families,

Monmouth

saw a

tie to

the

Eastern Board as a vehicle to their own political elevation. When John Throckmorton purchased proprietary shares in the late seventeenth century, he began a relationship between his family and the Board that lasted until the Revolution.

By shrewdly manipulating judiciary

patronage appointments

over several decades, the proprietors eventually established an alternate

power base

for their clients

the triumvirates'

power

A political battle

from which the Throckmortons could challenge

in the county.

19

between the Throckmortons and the Holmes family

in

the 1730s illustrates the effect of the proprietors' patronage on local political life

in

North

Jersey.

distribute the paper

At issue was money issued

the loan office created by the assembly to periodically throughout the century;

the key institution in local credit markets.

Loan

However, the human were

still

was

modern economies

cash nexus historians associate with the development of

by giving low-interest,

it

helped create the

officers

fixed-rate mortgages to farmers for their property.

acts associated

with the

office's

day-to-day operation

understood through the frameworks of patronage and deference,

honor and

virtue, the values

of a premodern

society.

The

creation of a cash

nexus acted as a powerful solvent on these values, but that transformation re-

mained tual

in the future. 20 Perceived as

framework, the loan

office

it

was

was the one

in an eighteenth-century intellecinstitution that

made everyone

in

the county dependent on the holder's goodwill.

This

specific

dispute concerned whether the

Throckmortons and other

Holmes family and

appointed justices (the

friends of the Board) or elected officials (the

would control the loan office. If the Throckmortons won control, all county residents would be figuratively, if not literally, in their debt. "Came home," recalled Jonathan Holmes, "6c discorsd with some of the Throckmortons about Accts. of Assembly." The Throckmortons, their allies)

Holmes recorded with

irritation, believed these specific

assembly acts "gave

liberty to the Justices and Freeholder to dispose of money

as

they thought

fit

I warmly oppose and said no farther then the acts plainly said." The Throckmorton party comprised the majority of the county's justices, and Holmes correctly perceived that they were now claiming the loan office.

which

ii4

When

Conflict

town meeting nominated Holmes's friend and ally James as a loan officer, "Throckmorton said there was a Reason [to reject him],... but Every mans Reason was to him self. Then Robert Lawrence [another Holmes family ally] was set up and voted by the major of the freeholders," but Throckmorton nullified his election as well. 21 a local

Groves Jr. to act

Keenly aware that his family's

political position

was threatened, Holmes

and patronage networks to combat the Throckmortons' power

rallied his kin

grab, revealing in the process* the latent political character of these social relationships.

Saml.

On

February

27, 1736/37,

Holmes William Mott was

day before officer."

.

.

.

between the

he recorded going "to Uncles, thence to

there

we

talked about the Proceeding the

justices 6c freeholders,

about Choosing a Loan

On March 7, he warned the Tilton family about the Throckmortons'

efforts to gain control

of the loan

office,

and "too choose such freeholders

as

At a Middletown town meeting, Holmes learned Throckmorton was on his way from the proprietor stronghold of Perth Amboy "with a mandate ... to the constable to warne the freeholders as soon as they was Chosen to come 6c choose loan officers." A furious Holmes returned home, moving "among my Relations and neighbors" to discuss "the

would

suit arbitrary ends."

that Justice

proceedings of the court party concerning the choosing of loan

Holmes's description of the Throckmortons

been merely a reference to the

officers."

as "the court party"

family's judicial connections, or

it

22

may have may well

have been a pointed application of the Country ideology already becoming prevalent in colonial politics.

The

Enlightenment's political language was

unfixed in this period; one man's court was another man's country. Ironically,

James Alexander and Lewis Morris quite possibly supplied Holmes with the ideological framework through which he understood the actions of the proprietors' allies in

Monmouth. Holmes read Country tracts and the New York at that very moment in Country ideology because of the

newspapers awash

Zenger

which

Crisis.

He

was

also familiar

Jersey's court party.

arbitrary power:

23

To Holmes,

and the proprietary

the Throckmortons

interests as

New

seemed to represent

dependent on Board patronage, they used their connections

to gain control of public capital. try,"

with the assembly's published minutes,

referred to the royal governors

Holmes and

his allies represented the "coun-

virtuously defending their county against corruption.

The

seesaw battle for control of Monmouth's loan

office

continued until

Monmouth between Board

clients

and

the three leading families continued intermittently until the Revolution.

The

early 1741,

and the power struggle

Throckmortons proved

to be only the first of the challengers in this struggle.

John Anderson, deputy surveyor ship as

in

for the Board, used his

Monmouth judge-

a platform for an unsuccessful run for the assembly in

1754.

Edward

A Cage without Bars

775

Taylor, an investor in proprietary lands elected to the assembly in 1763, also

challenged the

The

Holmes family for power. 24

great gentry's patronage encouraged a similar rivalry to develop at

Newark. In

1738, a

member of the Crane

family contested the validity of the

Anglican Josiah Ogden's election to an assembly a recount

and petitioned the assembly

the Ogdens' patronage

The Cranes demanded

for redress, but they failed to count

East Jersey Board

ties.

seat.

on

member Andrew Johnston

headed the assembly's investigation of Crane's charges, and unsurprisingly,

Ogden was confirmed in his election. Significantly, the assembly disqualified many of Crane's supporters for lack of property as Ogden's (seventy-

twice as

eight to thirty- nine), suggesting that the political division also reflected an

economic one. Small-holding farmers supported Crane against the more substantial landholders

The

political rivalry

who

supported Ogden. 25

between the Ogdens and the Cranes

with the ongoing property disputes. Even

den family

allied itself

with the proprietors, the Crane family established a

stronghold on contested lands in the

ElizabethTown leaders

clearly meshed Newark branch of the Og-

as the

Newark

interior.

When Newark

hostile to the great gentry petitioned the

Crown

and for

redress of the Essex property disputes in 1743, the proprietors learned that "Coll. Ogden says none of the Ogdens had any hand in it." The major Newark proponents of the petition were "Capt. Wheeler, Justice Crane, and 26 In February 1750, David Ogden used his patronage conJustice Farrand." tacts to keep Caleb Crane from being appointed as a Newark justice of the .

.

.

peace by reporting to the council that Crane suffered from convulsions, had taken no stance against the rioters, and in fact was married to a women whose brothers were rioters. 27 By 1763, eight members of the Crane family had participated directly in antiproprietary activities. It was exactly people like the

Cranes

who

the Board sought to neutralize

when

they extended their

patronage networks in the countryside. 28

The

struggles

between

locally

prominent kin networks for control of New

Jersey counties were, broadly speaking, similar to those taking place in

other locales in British North America. leading local families brought

mained outside the charmed

extension of patronage to some

them under the high

was simply not enough patronage

there

The

circle,

and

to go around. in

North

held land in defiance of the Board of Proprietors. litical

gentry's influence, but

Too many

families re-

Jersey, these families often

Towns

that

had known po-

unity in the seventeenth century were gradually sundered by patronage

as well as religious schism.

These

The

many

29

divisions eventually

undermined the

royal judiciary's legitimacy.

subjectivity of concepts like legality, justice,

and due process became

n6 more apparent

as the

Conflict

property controversies intensified.

the Board's patronage network gave

them

The

perception that

of the bench and

effective control

The Board composed of local kin netthe proprietary interests. Over

the bar undermined the legitimacy of the courts in popular eyes.

members

firmly believed that the biases of juries

works hopelessly prejudiced them against

time, the courts' ability to arbitrate the boundaries of

deteriorated until

it

society

civil

markedly

finally collapsed.

Anglicization Revisited: The Transformation of the Legal System and the Paralysis of the Courts i

Historians understand the provincial legal systems' Anglicization as evi-

dence of the rapid restructuring of colonial society along English glicization, however,

lines.

An-

proved a nonuniform, nonlinear process, for the trans-

formation of provincial legal structures simultaneously encouraged both the society's self-conscious Anglicization

and the preservation of ethnic and

gional cultures transplanted to seventeenth-century America. 30 In sey,

re-

New Jer-

the political royalization of 1701 led to the successful reconstitution of a

judiciary humiliated

by angry crowds

ever, the Anglicization

at the seventeenth century's end.

How-

of New Jersey's courts unwittingly created a judiciary

that provided institutional expression to

two

different value structures,

one

learned through formal legal training and expressed by gentlemen lawyers, the other informed by the customs of the ally,

yeomen who

sat

on

juries.

Gradu-

the courts lost legitimacy in the eyes of patricians and yeomen. Patri-

cians

would not

yeomen deemed judges.

When

trust juries

illegitimate

drawn from a judiciary

hostile local populations

and the

dominated by gentry- appointed

the great gentry sought to break the resulting legal deadlock

by moving property-related

cases into higher, juryless courts, frightened

farmers refused to recognize the legitimacy of these proprietor-dominated courts and turned to collective violence to protect their homes.

After 1701, the rudimentary court systems of the proprietor governments

were royalized and remade along more obviously English courts run shillings.

31

by

The county

courts of quarter sessions,

first

pounds

up

as well as noncapital criminal cases.

Monthly to forty

adopted in 1683 and

normalized in 1702, met four times a year and adjudicated forty

lines.

three justices of the peace presided in cases

civil

The Supreme

cases

up

to

Court, estab-

and modeled on the English Courts of Queen's Bench, Comor Exchequer, acted on capital crimes. Criminal cases and cases

lished in 1704

mon

Pleas,

involving property valued over a fixed amount, usually forty shillings, were

A Cage without Bars heard by a jury of twelve good

men

iij

in these courts.

The governor and

council

were a court of final appeal and could hear any case involving over £ioo. 32

The Crowns

authority legitimated the courts'

and the population accepted the

century,

related cases.

The

1714 case

Vaughn

power

in the early eighteenth

courts' jurisdiction in property-

Woodruff illustrates the royal court sys-

v.

tem's legitimacy. All the emotional factors that encouraged violence in the

1730s

and 1740s were

in play.

The

case pitted a defendant holding land under

an ElizabethTown tide against an aggressive

under proprietary

right.

plaintiff claiming the

same lands

Powerful religious overtones surrounded the case be-

cause the plaintiff was the ElizabethTown Anglican minister

Edward Vaughn

and the defendant was the Presbyterian deacon Joseph Woodruff. After a

May

of delays, in

ries

1718,

se-

a court decided the case in Vaughn's favor.

Woodruff vacated the property and

filed

an appeal,

later

dropping

it.

33

The

case caused hard feelings, but the parties to the dispute respected the court's decision, at least publicly.

They saw

the legal system, which based

direcdy on royal authority, as a legitimate arbiter of justice.

power

its

Over

time,

though, that perception would change.

The

majority of superior court judges in

great gentry provided the

eighteenth-century

New Jersey. The

intertwining of the social and political

structures, the proprietors' ability to influence judicial

appointments through

the council, and the increasing tendency to require judges to have

of legal education assured that gentlemen with

dominate judgeships. least thirty

men

A

ties to

partial survey reveals that

some form would

the Proprietors

between

1701

and

1775 at

holding East Jersey proprietary shares served as justices of

the peace, eighteen acted as quarter-session judges and judges of the

mon

pleas, seven acted as judges

sheriffs, six as

supreme court

com-

of the court of oyer and terminer, seven

justices, six as

as

judges in chancery, three as

judges in the prerogative court, fifteen held other legal posts, and twelve held

The judiciary came to be identified with 34 feared by many living on the contested lands.

legal posts in other colonies.

proprietors

and thus

The yeomen's

identification of the courts

the

with the proprietors intensified

in the 1740s as the great gentry aggressively pressed suits of ejectment against settlers on the contested tracts. Common people recoiled from the legal system because they knew that the gentry intended to use it to displace farmers living in areas of disputed ownership. Hunterdon County squatters wrote in

1747 that

we

"we have not yet had any justice, neither could we expect any unless

could conceive

men would

act

.

.

.

Contrary to their

.

.

.

interest; as

our op-

ponants are Judges." In another petition from the same year, the Newark Indian claimers begged the to "be distroyed

new governor Jonathan

Belcher not to allow them

by Suffering our Adversaries 6c diometrical Oponents ... to

n8 Sitt as

Judges

of our cause." 35 Respect for royal authority

...

yeomen from

Conflict

initially inhibited

directly challenging the legal system, but in the early 1740s

popular frustrations with proprietor-dominated courts rose sharply.

The

rise

judiciary-.

of a professional bar further alienated

common

farmers from the

In seventeenth-century America, educated lawyers were rare.

some were only

lawyers had no formal legal training, and

eighteenth

century

Alexander being

a

this

changed

as

Many

semiliterate. In the

London-trained* attorneys

(James

prominent example) arrived in the colonies and estab-

lished informal law schools in their offices. Soon, a trained legal cadre

emerged and reignited

a deep, latent hostility to the bar, variants of

were evident throughout Anglo-American

yeomen toward

society.

The

hostility

which

of provincial

lawyers was strong because they were understood as dispute-

encouraging parasites. "There

no Set of Men that bear so

ill

is,"

wrote a young law clerk in

1745,

"perhaps

a Character in the Estimation of the Vulgar, as

gendemen of the Long Robe." 36 The fact that James Alexander trained many of New Jersey s lawyers in his office only reinforced popular hostility to the

the bar. 37

The

bitter

resentment caused by the Board's use of professional lawyers in

increasingly complex courts translated into feelings of mistrust directed at

the legal system. In 1737, Jonathan that "there

was

a

many

Holmes of Monmouth County

declared

Sort of Courts," organized in a system he did not un-

derstand despite being educated. 38

When

three

gendemen

served a writ of

ejectment on Newark's Samuel Tompkins, "said Tompkins not being able to

manage in the law," because of the complexity of the legal system, "and not knowing where to gett an attorney for that purpose," made no defense and later

joined in collective violence to defend his property. 39 In the early 1740s

yeomen of Middlesex, Somerset, and Hunterdon counties denounced the Board for using lawyers to press lawsuits "untill we can Deffend no longer." 40 The transformation of the bar led to the creation of complex legal instituthe

tions

and

rituals that

expressed the values of the trained legal cadre rather

than the beliefs of yeomen farmers. Paradoxically, another English institution introduced to colonial society in

the seventeenth century, the jury, protected local interests from the gentry's legal offensive. Popular esteem for juries suggests the legal system's Anglicization, as juries

ambiguous meaning of the

became the primary

maintaining local perceptions of justice.

legal institutions

The yeomanry's embrace of the

jury

system in the eighteenth century represented a reversal in sentiments for

many. Seventeenth-century American courts did not always use juries in

uncommon (and unpopular) in the home to many of the East Jersey settlers.

criminal matters, and they were especially

New Haven Colony, the original The New Haveners felt juries were

unnecessary in a society run by godly

A Cage without Bars magistrates.

Echoes of this disdain were evident

when

Jersey

towns neglected to

several

control of the courts.

cured the

up

41

in seventeenth-century East

grand

raise

juries despite proprietary

Decades of conflict with the proprietors completely

yeomen of their

aversion to juries.

By

were fixed in the

1740, juries

popular mind as the primary institutional defense against grasping gendemen.

The

extensive kinship networks

counties

made

these juries a potent

common weapon

North American

to British

in the legal struggle against the

great gentry. "I am," wrote one proprietor in 1742, "well assured that

can be found in Bergen County that will give

He knew the

majority of the county's people were related to one another and

and

unlikely to decide in favor of the great gentry over their friends 42

no jury

of the Proprietors."

in favour

it

rela-

Coxe family complained that they could not legally recover any of the lands near Maidenhead and Hopewell from popular "interlopers" because the "great Many of ye Inhabitants of Hunterdon Co. are so far interested in this cause ... 6c a great many others of them are related to tives.

In

1737, the

those that are so far interested ... that an indifferent Jury cannot be had." 43

Kinship influenced everything in colonial society: the administration of the law, politics,

were

economic development, and

less political entities

hundreds,

if

religious belief. Provincial counties

than the homelands of superfamilies composed of

Few jurymen would

not thousands, of related people.

decide

against a relative engaged in a civil or criminal dispute with the proprietors. 44

The ries

proprietors initially responded to the conflict between judges

by pressing harder through the county court systems. 45 In

Board minutes recorded that "[Mr.] Alexander received a Dunstar of April 29th with notice of serving

Turkey

of the EHzabethTown

[a portion

and ju-

May 1744,

letter

from Mr.

fifteen ejectments, twelve at

tract near the

Essex/Somerset/

Morris borders]." In the same year Robert Hunter Morris noted with faction that the "proprietors have ciates]

these victories final

than

As

now drove them

[the

came

at

...

an enormous cost in legal

now

fees,

3 or

4 miles

depending." 46 But

and they were no more

earlier legal decisions.

early as 1740,

Board members worried that individual ejectments would

not alone win them the contested after "long experience" that

verdicts

Ejectments

there's 10

satis-

EHzabethTown Asso-

back from their Sallying out about forty miles, to within

of their antient possessions

the

upon

tracts.

In August

1741,

their title against the pretensions of Eliz:

Province are very uncertain

the Board admitted

"though the Proprietors should get a number of

.

.

.

Town. Juries .

in this

those several verdicts would not produce any

settlement in the points in controversy."

47

The

only solution seemed to be to

pursue their cause in the higher courts, where a decisive proprietary victory

was more

likely.

In 1742, a team of Board lawyers led by James Alexander be-

gan preliminary research on what would become early

New Jersey's

most

in-

120

famous laid

legal

Conflict

document, the massive ElizabethTown Bill in Chancery. The

Bill

out the proprietors' claim to the entire 400,000-acre ElizabethTown

Tract,

which stretched

across northern

of thousands of people. In liance with

1743,

New Jersey

and contained the homes

Alexander and Robert Hunter Morris, in

Newark lawyer David Ogden, prepared another

al-

lawsuit for the

Supreme Court

to gain possession of the contested 13,200 acre tract in

Newark's

48

interior.

Alexander and Morris knew that they stood a in the higher courts,

and the yeomen recognized

far better

was presided over by the governor and two supreme court popular legitimacy precisely because

it

The and many among the

than the assembly and had no Jersey before 1720,

jury.

son Robert Hunter Morris

lent chance to

win the

(a

Chancery court

justices. It lacked

originated with the governor rather

court had scarcely been used in disaffected

deep suspicion. Since Governor Lewis Morris

three judges, proprietors

chance of victory

this as well.

yeomen looked on

sat as the

it

with

head judge, and

his

supreme court justice) would be another of the

and yeomen

alike felt that the

Board had an

case against the ElizabethTown Associates

dissident landclaimers. 49

New

One

excel-

and other

Ramapo Tract put the Ramapo

dis-

pute "in Chancery," where the Morris family would decide the case. 50

The

nounced the Board's

propertyholder on the

judicial abuses

and

their efforts to

proprietors' strategy of seeking victory in the higher courts

alienation of the

yeomanry from the

legal

de-

completed the

system in matters of property.

In the 1730s and early 1740s, two divergent value structures competed for

supreme expression in the judiciary.

One grew from

local experience, custom,

and evangelical Calvinism and was expressed by jurymen; the other sprung from professional

legal training, readings in neoclassical literature,

and An-

glican theology. In their conflict, the adherents of these competing structures

neutralized the effectiveness of that judiciary. structures as a tree

and a

One might think of these value

vine, intertwined, almost indistinguishable,

and yet

ultimately in a destructive relationship. Unable to afford lawyers and fearful

of the higher courts, the yeomanry began to turn to crowd action to assert their perceptions of legality.

The

People

Come Out of Doors,

1730-1745

In 1747, James Bartlett of Essex County recalled that in 1743 or 1744 his son John had fallen into debt to the defrocked Presbyterian minister John Cross. Cross

demanded young

see," Bartlett reported, "his

Bartlett 's land as

payment

for the debt.

"He

son John deliver unto John Cross possession, by

A Cage without Bars Delivering unto

same place

him hold of a twigg Struck

aforesaid."

John Cross takes on ing

if

we

51

The

121

upon the

into a piece of Earth

property transfer between John Bartlett and

of proportion to the size of the hold-

a significance out

conceptualize the law as process, as a series of interlocked rituals

that maintain the social fabric. This customary act served to signify the transfer of property

mal

from one individual to another without recourse to

legal procedures. It thus implicitly challenged the gentry's

of the

for-

domination

society.

Like the exchange of earth and twig, the small acts of collective violence that occurred between 1735

and

1745

were part of an autonomous system of

popular jurisprudence in matters of property. These acts began in a series

when

the

first

of legal actions by the gentry prompted the yeomanry to pick up

clubs to defend their

homes from

incidents between 1735

and

the gentry's clients.

The

majority of violent

1745 involved dispossessions or trespasses

by land-

claimers trying to protect property from the proprietors, but predatory sur-

veying by both the Board and yeoman propertyholders became a prominent cause of conflict after 1737. This shift indicated a hardening of tensions as

competing

parties appropriated the quasi-legal ritual

assert their

power over the countryside.

Mob

mapped

actions in this period,

of property surveying to

chronologically on Figure

1,

can

si-

multaneously be understood as a method of driving the proprietors' tenants

from the contested lands and

as

an assertion of popular perceptions of justice.

Dispossessions or trespasses comprised the majority of violent incidents in the period. Typically, small crowds or individuals targeted Board tenants or clients settled tles.

on property claimed by

Twenty-two of the

of this 1742.

sort.

Of the

The

thirty-six

majority of incidents

remaining violent

local people using non-proprietary ti-

known

—

volved groups of proprietor "tenants"

The

sixteen

— occurred between

1735

and

involved attacks on the property of

acts, three

great landlords, one involved an attack

ers involved contested surveys

violent incidents in the period were

on

who

a proprietor agent,

and

six in-

refused to take leases. Several oth-

and occurred

after 1737.

52

geographic distribution of these early assaults suggests the relation-

ship between the outbreak of violence and the gentry's lawsuits. Figure 2 charts the incidents

by county; thirteen occurred

in Bergen, eleven in or near

Maidenhead and Hopewell in southern Hunterdon, and one more on the Great Tract in the same county. Three more violent episodes occurred in Essex County, two in Middlesex, two in Somerset, and at least one more in Morris County. More people rioted in Hunterdon and Bergen the townships of

because of aggressive but localized legal maneuvering by great landholders

with

ties to

the Eastern and Western proprietary boards.

122

Conflict

8-1

Violence loomed in Hunterdon as early as family filed

fifty

1731

when members of the Coxe

ejectment suits in order to gain control of lands at Maiden-

head and Hopewell. The

family's actions aroused bitter resentment

among

Maidenhead-Hopewell purchasers, who had bought the land from the Western Society of Proprietors. In 1735, a small Hopewell crowd dispossessed two of Daniel Coxes tenants settled on contested lands. 53 the heirs to the original

The

incident established a violent precedent.

lently resisted efforts to eject

them from the

At

least eleven families vio-

area before 1745, either

by

refus-

ing to be displaced or by violendy ejecting the Coxes' tenants from contested lands "by force and arms."

The

character of these incidents remains unclear

because the court documents do not describe the confrontations. they consisted of tenants.

The

fist

fights or attacks

Most

likely

by small family groups on the Coxes'

54

actions of the 1735

guided their behavior.

The

Hopewell crowd suggests that English customs rioters

came

"all

disguised, having their faces be-

A Cage without Bars

12

15 —

1

10-

county Figure

2.

Violent incidents by county, 1735 -1745

smeared with blacking, and armed with clubs." The disguise was typical of English crowds fearful of the law.

They ripped

the roofs and the siding off of

the homes; by denying their victims shelter, they indicated that the proprietors' tenants

were not part of the local

customary law. Such into the

European

social

ritualistic violence

had a history stretching back deep

However, because

past.

body and thus not protected by this

crowd had acted

to assert

property rights in defiance of the Supreme Court, and property rights established political rights, their actions

were perceived

as subversive.

55

A shift in the geography and character of the violence illuminates the society's subjective

understanding of property's origins.

By

1738, the proprietors'

aggressive legal activities in Essex, Morris (formed in 1739), Middlesex,

Somerset counties provoked a popular response. 56

The

and

people in these more

populous counties began violently confronting gentry agents as the tensions caused by contested

titles

became more pronounced. While dispossessions of

gentry tenants occurred, violent incidents involving surveying parties sud-

denly became a problem

when

these areas

became

unstable. Surveying,

which

124

in a

normal society

rights,

became

means of

legally securing

an individuals property

a provocation as groups of surveyors

from both camps appro-

is

a

priated this legal ritual and used nents.

Between

Conflict

1738

in violent incidents, conflicts as well.

57

that gave the law

and

to violate the land claims of their

oppo-

became involved

and documentary evidence suggests surveys caused other

These incidents

meaning came

The Board and

it

1744, at least five surveying parties

the

reveal

how

the public and private rituals

to be understood subjectively.

yeomanry complained

in turn about the use

of preda-

As early as December 1735, Board members complained that the ElizabethTown Associates "have made many upon the Proprietors lands, and for small consideration have resurveys ceived many persons into their company to be entitled to lands." The Astory surveys in the property disputes.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

sociates "are daily proceeding

people to

.

.

.

and that by

hold under their claim." 58 In

arts

and

.

.

threats they daily get

1738, proprietor clients in

Somerset

complained that they found an ElizabethTown surveying group "running Lines thro our land and marking

Daniel Cooper's

[a proprietary client]

and a chain and compass."

Town "six

Bill that

trees."

60

59

The

survey party also "ran thro

improvement with an ax and

James Alexander complained

ElizabethTown surveyors had pushed the

times" beyond their original length.

61

in

a staff

The Elizabeth-

tract's

boundaries

In turn, the disaffected, "dis-

gusted] that the Proprietors had surveyed some part of that Indian purchase above the [Newark] Mountain," denounced the Boards actions to George

II

62

Aggressive surveying suggests the degree to which commonly held perceptions of legality had fragmented as private parties assumed the power to mediate social norms. Quasi-legal rituals of order took on an ambiguous meaning. A surveyors chalk mark on a tree signaling ownership to one person became a writ of ejectment for another. The breakdown in a common understanding of the laws conventions was in a 1744 petition.

of course a product of conflicting

interests.

However,

it

also expressed the

deeper cultural gap separating the parties to the property disputes.

Bergen County's Ramapo Tract, for instance, ethnic origins

clearly

On

informed

Dutch freeholders traditions who embodied of a leader

these disagreements. There, the gentry's efforts to turn into English tenants encouraged the rise

received from Europe.

Gender, Ethnicity, and Popular Power: The Rise of Magdalena Valleau, Land Rioter In 1740, a convergence of cultural and legal conflicts between Dutch-

speaking farmers and the Board provoked crowd actions against the propri-

A Cage without Bars

on Bergen County's 50,000-acre Ramapo

etors' clients

speaking

725

woman named Magdalena

Tract.

A

Dutch-

Valleau led local farmers in their resist-

ance to the Board's renewed property claims. Valleau's actions during the unrest suggest that

Dutch

legal

and

helped guide popular

political traditions

behavior during the eighteenth-century property disputes.

While throughout Europe women played an important tions, particularly

food

and other urban

riots

America was overwhelmingly masculine. Magdalena agrarian leader

part in crowd ac-

unrest, agrarian unrest in Valleau's role as

was thus something of an anomaly. Happily,

unique historical cases

that, far

from being

irrelevant,

can

it is

tell

an

one of those

us a great deal

about broader patterns of change. Historians suggest that early modern

Dutch women were especially active in public life, defending property and community against external threats. Valleau's leadership of the Bergen disaffected can be understood as an assertion of Dutch cultural, gender, and le63 gal norms in a rapidly Anglicizing world. Valleau's father, Peter Fauconier, arrived from England in 1702 with Lord Cornbury

to act as

New

profited

from

suitable

accommodations

Jersey's port collector

and

treasurer.

Fauconier

good times and used them to make the time when his patron would be gone. As

his political connections in

for

part of a group of Dutch and French investors, he purchased property in hilly

northern Bergen County from the Eastern Board's so-called English faction in 1708/9.

The

group's

movement

to the

New Jersey

the broader tendency of non-English groups to leave

In this particular case,

it

began a

countryside was part of

New York after

1689.

reversal of the family's Anglicization

64

and

the beginning of their identification with the Jersey Dutch.

The

Fauconier surname speaks to their French origins, but like

French Protestant immigrants to colonial

New York,

many

the family gradually in-

Dutch- speaking population and accepted considerable French element had existed among New Amster-

tegrated into the middle colonies' its

norms.

A

Dutch settlers, and a recent study indicates that many of these early Huguenot immigrants assimilated into the Dutch culture. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought still more French refugees to New York dam's original

in the 1680s,

and the majority of these refugees who married outside

their

Dutch spouses. French mates evinced a strong tendency to accommodate Dutch customs, particularly inheritance customs. The Fauconier family was traveling a well-worn path when they changed their ethnic ethnic group took

identity.

The

65

Dutch subculture took time and was not without its ambiguous moments. They initially attended New York City's French (Reformed) church, and Magdalena Fauconier married a Frenchman, Peter Valleau. In 1716 the young couple baptized their eldest son in the Dutch Fauconiers' assimilation into the

72(5

Reformed church

in

Hackensack, Bergen County, but two daughters born

subsequently were baptized in

may have merely

Conflict

New York

City's

reflected circumstances, or

self-consciously struggling with their ethnic

The movement of the rior resolved their

Dutch

67

New Jersey inte-

donated land to establish a Dutch Reformed

Ramapo Tract. The church members rewarded

After 1730, the family never wavered in

Magdalena

Fauconier with

empowered by of female

its

Dutch

their cultural

activity

identity.

woman Dutch women were

appeal to an assertive

Valleau. Early in the eighteenth century,

customs to play a more active role in public

than were their English counterparts. 68

At

were Dutch inheritance

women

as Boedelhouderschap that favored

practices, particularly (relative to

of the property in a marriage regardless of sex.

trast,

life

the legal root of this larger realm

one known

contemporary English

practices). Boedelhouderschap dictated that the surviving spouse all

was

66

doubts about the advantages of assimilating into the

A Dutch identity would have had a certain like

that the family

religious identity.

himself and wife for a continual possession for themselves and their

"seats for heirs."

and

French church. This change

may be

Fauconier- Valleau family into the

culture. In 1730 they

church on the

it

should receive

An English widow, by con-

normally received only one-third of her husband's property. Related

customs encouraged Dutch parents to distribute property equally among their children regardless

Dutch husbands wills.

69

in

of

sex.

Between 1664 and

New York named

80 percent of

Valleau apparently was her husband's sole heir, and she also assumed

complete control of her elderly Valleau as the primary heir and

father's lands.

when

she wrote her

own

four sons and her two daughters.

The

Eastern Board regarded

representative, despite the fact that several

male members of her family were of practices

The

1725 over

their wives as their sole heirs in their

will,

legal age. Valleau

adhered to Dutch

dividing her estate evenly

among

her

70

transformation in her given

name and her church

allegiance

is

the

strongest evidence of Magdalena Valleau's self-conscious recreation of herself as a

Dutch woman. While

the earliest records identify her as the very French

"Madelaine," as an adult she was generally referred to by the Dutch

"Magdalena." In the Board.

1747, she signed her

While her

signature

still

name "Magdalen"

name

to a petition against

suggests a certain ambiguity, the trajec-

Dutch identity. Efforts by the proprietors to Angliname to "Mary" in the early 1740s failed. We know that she attended the Dutch Reformed church at Paramus until her death and that the church's burying ground became known as the Valleau Cemetery. Her son Theodorus was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and in the 1780s members of tory was clearly toward a cize her

the Valleau ( Vallo) family (probably Magdalena Valleau s granddaughter) be-

longed to the Dutch Reformed church in

New York. This French family had,

A Cage without Bars like

many

of other

127

Dutch

other such families, assimilated into the

women

in the

subculture. Studies

middle colonies suggest that more than one chose a

particular religious or ethnic identity because

offered

it

them

a vehicle to

greater freedom in one realm of their lives or another. 71

Valleaus rise to popular power during the property disputes should be

viewed in the context of her cultural conflicts

began

in 1740

when

identity.

Her

public role in the agrarian

the prospect of losing approximately 3,400 acres

of family land forced her to confront the Eastern Board.

On

April

21,

1740,

Valleau stepped into James Alexanders law offices "by direction of her [elderly] father."

the

She "expressed a great inclination

Romopock [Ramapo]

ended twelve years

later,

disaffected, attack the

ganize a

in a

compromise the matter of

to

Before the inconclusive negotiations

complex

full

series

leadership of the

Ramapo

of legal maneuvers, and or-

actions against the proprietors' clients.

Valleau used her position as an intermediary between the Board

and her elderly father vantage.

72

Valleau would assume

Board

number of crowd

Initially,

lands."

On June

to manipulate the negotiations to her family's best ad-

22, 1741,

Alexander met with Valleau again.

the Board that she claimed to have "found

it

impractical to

He

reported to

make up any

ac-

count according to the matter of compromise before proposed, for that her father

had

that she

memory." 73 She continually led the proprietors to believe

lost his

would reach an agreement with them

if

only

all

of the

details

could

be worked out, but such a compromise never materialized. This convenient lapse of memory

bought her two more months.

The exchanges between Alexander and ties to

Valleau

became heated

the disputes stubbornly refused to give ground

manded 5,000

acres for her infirm father (knowing,

—

literally.

as the par-

Valleau de-

of course, that she was

the sole heir) at the symbolic rent of one peppercorn per year. 74 She also

asked that past rents from a portion of the Tract be paid to her family; and that seven tenants be given

vincing the other his

Ramapo

up

to her father in exchange for her family con-

investors not to sue. Alexander could not contain

anger at her stance. "The said Alexander," recorded the Boards secretary,

"upon hearing those high and growing demands of Mrs. Valleau so very different

from the

first

proposition reported to this Board

—

was not

It

without putting some restraint on himself that he could keep his temper, but that he only said that as to the past rents

and tenants, he could not give her

any hopes that the Proprietors would concede any part of them." In the four dry volumes of Eastern Board records, this

is

perhaps the only account of

someone becoming upset or indeed emotional about anything. 75 Valleau maneuvered between other members of Fauconier's Company and the Board in an effort to secure as ings held in 1742 (during

much

for her family as possible.

At meet-

which the Board again remarked on "the unreason-

128

Conflict

ableness" of her demands), Valleau agreed to

Company in exchange

abandon the

rest

of Fauconier's

meeting the follow-

for concessions to her family. In a

ing year, Valleau "declared she was willing to stand to the agreement formerly

made with Mr. Alexander 6c Mr. and to execute

soon

it" as

would not trouble her the Proprietors terms

an original purchaser] etors."

76

By

.

.

and

member of the Board]

could determine that the other

She "had encouraged the people

father. .

Ashfield [another

as she

.

whd

.

.

to

settlers

comply with

refused to join with Barbarie [another heir of

pressed hard to stand suit against the Propri-

juxtaposing herself against the supposedly militant Barbarie,

Valleau encouraged the proprietors to believe that they were dealing with the

most reasonable element

at

Ramapo,

that the

Board had reached the best

deal possible, and that further efforts to secure the land

more

would only lead

to

conflict.

When

Forman arrived on the Ramapo Tract to he discovered that what had apparently been settled was in-

the Board's agent John

finalize the deal,

deed

still

actly

what lands and

subject to negotiation. After a sharp squabble with Valleau over exrights she

was

to have,

Forman

departed, the matter

still

unresolved. This sort of Fabian strategy allowed Valleau to simultaneously

maintain leadership of her followers in Fauconier's Company, retain control

of the Company's land, and to manipulate the proprietors into believing that the settlement that never materialized might be near at hand. 77 Collective violence played an important part in Valleau's strategy, and

Dutch popular

traditions

would have legitimated her leadership of crowd

tions in the eyes of her followers. In the Netherlands, older tively

women

ac-

of rela-

high status controlled mum-culture networks, social networks used to

organize crowd actions

women

when

outsiders threatened

led not just food riots, but tax, religious,

community interests. Such and

political riots as well.

Traditions of feminine defiance were part of the society's oral culture, and as late as the

eighteenth century Dutch-language pamphlets occasionally cele-

brated these political

"mum-culture"

woman may

leader.

of high status

not have

women. 78 In many

respects, Valleau

fit

the profile of a

Like her counterparts in Holland, she was an older

who

raised crowds to protect local interests.

known of these

traditions, her followers

may well

have.

the areas of British North America troubled by agrarian conflicts, surprising that a

Dutch customs,

While she it is

Of all hardly

Dutch-dominated enclave should produce a female leader. and her considerable

Valleau's status as a leading landholder,

leadership abilities legitimated her authority.

As

early as 1740, Fauconier's

the proprietors' tenants off the

gan attacking newly a

mob

of seven

Company used Ramapo Tract.

selective

crowd action

In April 1740, small

settled proprietor tenants. In the first

men and

three

women

(one of

whom

to force

mobs be-

of these incidents

was probably Mag-

A Cage without Bars

720

dalena Valleau) confronted a Board tenant, Isaac Brower, "forcible entered into his house

down

.

.

.

and 79

his house."

This

Civil

New Jersey where women

incident in

first

of property

rect action in defense

ing on the

him, family and goods out of doors and pulled

cast

title

Ramapo Tract.

life

wake of this incident

in the area deteriorated in the

Company launched

a

wave of

the proprietors' tenants.

"On

Ramapo

"William Ramsay [an agent for the proprietors]

who

that Isaac Bogart, one of the people .

.

.

pay any

last," .

.

.

acquainted said Alexander

have accepted of leases from this

rent."

"Josias Valleau [obviously a relative,

the point that "he

is

who

re-

the report maintained,

Bogart had probably been in-

timidated by the treatment received by his neighbor, Gerrit

Valleau] has abused," and

A 1742

sketches the intimidation suffered by

the 9th of April

Board, said that he would not

as Fauconier's

attacks against the Board's clients.

port from the Boards agent at

whom

took di-

signaled the beginning of years of riot-

probably the son,

Van Blercum, of Magdalena

received further abuse from Sias Valleau, to

almost blind." 80

Magdalena Valleau remained behind the scenes during most of these tions. Still, in

figures prominently. rioting,

The

much

Company. Her

Fauconier's

know

her as the leader of

organizing these crowd actions were

Dutch "mum-culture" traditions, and, number of large-scale crowd actions. 81

the mid-i740s, the struggle for

netherworld.

ants.

activities in

to

in keeping with

she would directly lead a

By

proprietors were convinced that Valleau inspired the

and by the end of 1742 they had come

Fauconier's

very

ac-

each account of rioting, her name, or a family member's name,

Dutch customs

Company

However,

this

in the

they refused to surrender their

those contemporaries

who

Valleau's leadership

failed to

Ramapo

break the proprietors'

spirit,

of

and

claims.

after confidence in the judiciary collapsed.

could see

foretold a broader confrontation

yeomen. By 1744

entered a kind of static

Magdalena

campaign of violence against the Board's ten-

harassment

Danger lurked everywhere

Ramapo had

legitimated

after 1745,

it,

To

these small acts of collective violence

between the great gentry and the disaffected

collective violence

had taken place

North

in every county in

Jersey, public trust in the court system had begun to collapse, and apprehen-

sion gripped the countryside.

The moment of great

Momentous Most steers

decisions

had

arrived.

Decisions

scholarship that considers the character of early

American

society

between the rock of collectivism and the hard place of emergent

liber-

alism. In trying to negotiate this intellectual Dardanelles, our studies have

ijo

become

filled

with

classes

Conflict

and groups, paradigms and mentalities, frame-

works that often encourage broad generalization. This study

no exception;

is

such generalizations are unavoidable and indeed they play an important part in historical scholarship. Unfortunately,

common

make up

people,

how

individual people, particularly

agony

their minds, the

their decisions cause, the

complexity of the process through which the inevitable conflict becomes inevitable,

often

is

Documents

lost.

82

created in the mid-i740s illuminate

how

individuals

and com-

munities came to articulate a position on the increasingly tense issue of prop-

The

erty rights'.

family

ties

broader fabrics of interest, customs, community,

to person. Proprietors

and the ignorant,

and

all

and townsmen, squatters and tenants, the innocent

faced the question of where they stood on property

In their diverse responses to this

sues.

faith,

shaped their decisions, but exact motivations varied from person

we

crisis

is-

can see the inadequacy of our

On the human level the conflict New Jersey was neither radical nor

often-monocausal analytical frameworks.

overwhelmed eighteenth- century

that

conservative, liberal or collectivist. It was, rather, different things to different participants.

And

from the records of their anguish comes the image of a so-

ciety self-consciously

Those

living

perched on verge of widespread social violence.

on contested lands faced

stark choices. Proprietors

James

Alexander and Robert Hunter Morris, along with Newark lawyer David Ogden, sent a letter to the

Newark backcountry

settlers in 1744 laying

out the

options for settling the question of ownership of over 13,000 contested acres.

The

gentry's letter reveals their persistent intention to

remake the country-

side

on the

Ogden

exploitative

model of Scotland.

"Sirs,"

wrote

ened Newarkers, "[we] make the following Proposals, of you take a Lease from

us, for

one

year,

to the threat-

First, either that

each

without paying any rent for your

farms, and then deliver to us the Possession; 2d, or that each of you take a

Lease for three years, commencing the paying the yearly rent of his Farm; for a

Or

that

farm or Plantation where each of you

resistance, or legal delaying tactics

The

day of December Instant, each

first

you purchase from live."

83

Immediate

us, sufficient flight, violent

remained the yeomen's unspoken options.

popular responses to this ultimatum, and to the gentry's legal pres-

sures across the colony, provide us with a glimpse of people accepting the inevitability

of violence. In

this

mental boundary into open

Some Newark yeomen were antagonists,

and

moment,

their positions

began to cross a

militant in their defiance of these

seem

to have

been

as

much

gendemen

a product of per-

Cook stood out as "a great styler for the Ogden found Cook's neighbor Hendrick Rush a

sonality as of legal standing. Francis

Indian Purchase." David

a troubled society

conflict.

A Cage without Bars 84 "very obstinate man."

When

iji

Robert Hunter Morris and Ogden denied

Rush's request to be allowed to purchase lands for a nominal sum, the angry

farmer replied, "They [Ogden and Morris] had better take an ax and knock his wife

and Children over the head" when they ejected them; without shel-

nourishment they were

ter or

and

clared that he

as

good

as dead.

85

Newarker Samuel

had purchased

his brothers

Dunn

de-

their land twice, their father

had done the same, and they would not pay again. 86

Other Newarkers acted more

discretely but

still

sought to avoid surrender-

ing their property to the gentry. Hendrick Fransisco "said he would agree but has not appeared."

blew before he

acted.

Samuel Harrison believe

He

appears to have been trying to see which

Prominent Newark backcountrymen John Condit and iooo acres," wrote David Ogden, "and I

"partly agreed for

would have compleated

by the gentry on one hand and

if

the

mob had

not prevented." 87 Pressured

their poorer neighbors

Harrison, a considerable landholder and the

itated.

of the peace, claims.

88

knew he

Still,

way the wind

on the

other, they hes-

Newark Mountain justice

risked his position by denying the gentry's property

long-standing community

ties

and the promise of freehold

property proved stronger than Ogden's persuasive powers. Condit and Harri-

son became leaders of the

Some Essexmen

Newark disaffected.

turned to violence against the gentry in order to preserve

the township's sprawling backcountry as a kind of generations.

James Alexander reported

at

super-common

for future

one point that "some of y

Mobb

party as Nathll Williams and sons [of Newark Mountain] and squire said to

him for

as

it

have

Drakes [Proprietor tenant] told

should lye in itt."

89

Common

Concern

for their

me

that he should

for ye benefitt

own no

land there

of ther Body, so he would not

growing families and future generations en-

couraged some farmers to defy the great gentry.

Somerset County yeoman Bout Wortman's story reveals the that

some

finally

level

of abuse

people in Middlesex and Somerset counties endured before they

organized to protect their homes. Bout purchased 350 acres from

Thomas Lawrence of tion, only to

Philadelphia, developed the land, even resold a por-

have Peter Sonmans (the English proprietors' agent)

land "to John Brocaw...who used

my

me

with

my

all

sell

the

the threats he could Invent,

Brocaw indeed began to rip the house down, "but was ... prevailed upon by my poor wife (who was within fourteen days of her lying in, and who shortly before had lost two threatening to pull

house above

children) not to persist."

head."

An exhausted Wortman then moved on, as Brocaw's

home. Eventually Wortman returned, "built a Hurt thereon and fell some trees 6c was arrested for the same by John Nevill, Esq [the brother of proprietor Samuel Nevill]." In the years following son-in-law

moved

in to his vacated

ij2

this arrest,

Wortman and

Conflict

his relatives

would run amok

stealing timber, attacking proprietor tenants,

a counterfeiting ring, in disorder.

90

As

and

in general

1743 gave

and Somerset, watching

way

to solve

its

becoming

becoming

antisocial irritants in a colony

Ten try's

Middlesex

turned "men out of Doors in hard in actively considering violence as a

property-related problems.

The

gentry precluded any other

we can Deffend no

decision by "worrying] us with divers Suits untill longer."

New Jersey,

active participants in

to 1744, a frightened population in

as the gentry

Winter Weather," followed Wortman

way

in central

91

years of conflict convinced the Great Tract squatters to resist the gen-

land claims violently. In

1735,

"one Lewis Morris

son," tried to force the squatters into tenancy, but

Mr. Skinner then purchased the

tract,

and he

Jur.,

our former Gov.s

some refused

also

to comply.

A

used "hard threats" to in-

timidate the squatters into paying rent. After disputing possession for several years, the tract

came

into the possession of James Alexander, Robert

Hunter

Morris, and several other Eastern Proprietors "withall threatening those that

would not agree with them

The

to purchase should

Immediately be dispossessed."

squatters tried to reach a settlement through binding arbitration, but the

proprietors instead "served upwards of thirty Ejectments." squatters were "hauld to

and there continued age."

The

Amboy.

until paid,

.confined,

.

and heavy

and that for murmuring

A number of the on

us,

own hard

us-

fines placed at our

experience of watching friends and relatives dragged in chains

across the colony to be imprisoned

proved to be too

much

by

a proprietor-dominated court system

for the squatters.

Morris "gave Judgements

[in the

When

Chief Justice Robert Hunter

supreme court] against us

at

Burlington in

the year 1745," the Great Tract farmers decided on violent resistance to the decree.

"We

have," they lamented, "been very

hard to bear."

92

As

others living

conclusion, a violent confrontation

Some

ill

used; the oppression

on the contested

became

tracts

is

reached the same

inevitable.

disaffected leaders feared the decline of social station that

accompa-

nied the loss of property and acted to preserve their status. In a revealing ter written to Newarker Nathaniel

clared, "If I lost

my

Estate,

too

let-

Camp, Maidenhead's John Bainbridge de-

and could not

live in fassion, [I]

should chuse an

unknown

land," rather than suffer the indignity of living in poverty.

erarchical

world where property established

status, loss

93

In a hi-

of both amounted to

social obliteration.

The

majority

who

participated in extralegal resistance against the gentry's

property claims were not faced with the loss of property, and their decisions 94

David Ogden believed three-fifths of the Newark rioters lived on homesteads legally secure from the propri95 etors. Indeed, Ogden believed that "but few of the rioters hold land under

to riot raises the question of motivation.

A Cage without Bars Indian

title

.

.

.

number

the greater

.

.

.

ijj

possess their lands by patent or survey

from the Proprietors." 96 Their years of violent resistance to the gentry de-

mand

explanation.

Blood

ties

encouraged

kins defense. This ties

many of these unthreatened

people to rally to their

hardly surprising, since in the eighteenth century

is

was

it

of blood, rather than agreement over questions of political economy, that

bound people together

moments of

in

crisis.

97

"There

is,"

complained the

Man in the County of Essex but what is resome one or another of the rioters." 98 The frequency of the same surnames among known rioters suggests that, as the minister of Newark Mountain wrote in the 1750s, huge interrelated tribes Board

lated

at

one point, "scarcely a

by Blood or Marriage

New Jersey

inhabited the

to

backcountry. 99

The

107

known

antiproprietor ac-

from Newark shared fifty-one surnames. Twenty- two families had more than one member (determined by surname) working against the proprietary interest; the Baldwin family had eight men active in the fighting against the gentry. In 1744 and early 1745, normal kin interactions must have become politically charged as families reached decisions on whether or not to tivists

join those determined to fight. 100

Kinship shaped political attitudes in Middlesex and Somerset counties as well.

101

For example, the Hooglandt family's hatred of the gentry probably

grew out of Samuel NevilTs ejectment of the "Widow Hogelandt" from her Middlesex home in

1738.

Family allegiance very clearly played a

in shaping antiproprietor actions across the colony.

critical role

102

Neighborliness too played an important a role in encouraging some

yeomen

to rally to their neighbors' defense. Neighborliness

ues and beliefs that

community members were

meant shared

willing to defend in

val-

moments

many of the rioters who owned that neither

of crisis. Essex sheriff John Styles reported he had "asked .

.

.

and

he nor

particularly Ball, the Prisoner his family

with the

now

in Gaol,

hold any lands, but under the Proprietors;

rioters [but never

Why they joined

could determine, except] but that they thought

Their neighbors wronged and They ought to

assist

them." 103 Here was the

heart and soul of community laid bare, neighbors rushing to their friends' defense. In

Middlesex, the specter of their neighbors' "wives and children Bare-

footed in the

Snow" while the Board took "from them

unaffected directly by the legal prietors' claims.

104

The

thick

crisis to

web of social

A powerful

they have" led

interactions that

gether pulled tight and joined old neighbors in

ment of crisis and

all

men

pledge violent resistance to the pro-

new

bound people

relationships in this

to-

mo-

decision.

norms governing proper relationships between violated by the proprietors also incrisis. Some yeomen believed that the the growing

sense that the

the mighty and the

formed participation

common had been in

ij4

Conflict

gentry were acting contrary to the Great Chain of Being.

County

sheriff John Styles tried to

ened by the gentry's

men,

a

suits risked

determine

why

so

When

many men

Essex

unthreat-

indictment for treason to help their towns-

member of Newark's Vincent

family explained to Styles that "when

you see two boys a righting would not You naturally Join with the weakest, and gave no other reason." 105 In the community of Vincent's imagination, for the strong to bully the we^ak transgressed

what seemed

In the autumn of 1744, farmers across northern inevitability

proper.

New Jersey

accepted the

of a large-scale violent confrontation with the great gentry.

David Ogden reported on October n, 1744, that the Indian claimers "had a meeting a few days before and they had concluded not to enter into Lawsuits with us but to Defend their Possessions

men

Right

thereabouts would joyn them."

Newark

parties to the

when both

vi

armies and that the other Indian 106

A last

desperate effort by the

conflict to avoid a violent confrontation collapsed

sides refused to

budge from

their prestated position.

107

Common

people had decided to take a stand against the gentry and the government

if

necessary.

Some

refused to take this step and chose flight rather than to fight. In

contested areas of Somerset the population dropped between 1738 and 1745 as

moved

becoming entangled in the impending crisis. That more dramatic when one considers that across the whole county the population increased from 4,505 to 8,289 m roughly the same time 108 span. The pathetic case of Garrett Durland is representative of the plight of those who sought to flee the property conflicts. In 1733, Durland bought settlers

drop

is

to avoid

the

all

150 acres near the Dividing Line

Sonmans. Durland etor "John

from the English proprietors' agent Peter

on a small homelot until Western propriupon Said Land." Durland turned to Sonand was given new land by the proprietary agent "near

lived peacefully

Coxe Entered

forcibly

mans for assistance, Bound Brook," in Somerset County. "Notwithstanding,"

the beleaguered

farmer continued "said Coxe, his father and his brother Phineas followed

me

A series

... [I] was assaulted by the said manner that I lay six months unof ruinous lawsuits followed, until Durland

again, seeking protection

and advice "of the Associates and Commit-

to the latter Tract,

and Claimed that

also

Coxe's, beaten and Battered in such a cruel

der the Doctor's hand."

moved tee of

ElizabethTown."

He

enjoyed a few years of peace before again being

challenged, this time by James family,

only

who

Ogden

"of Pennsylvania," agent for the

held proprietary shares. Durland agreed to

if Logan

Still

Logan

become

Penn

their tenant

would protect him. 109

others submitted rather than resist their society's great men. David

described

Newark yeomen Abraham and Barow

Francisco as "peaca-

A Cage without Bars ble

men

mit." as

110

not able to purchase [from the great gentry] but are willing to Sub-

The

he knew

wanted

ij$

fact that they surrendered symbolically

it

would be

to

was important

Ogden

to

James Alexander and Robert Hunter Morris, who

their social authority recognized as

much

wanted the con-

as they

tested property.

The ambiguous

legal situation

of a number of yeomen led them to turn

grudgingly to the Board for help as open conflict loomed. Aggressive acts

some of these farmers into the arms. "John Moore," records the Board minutes in 1742,

against the English proprietors' tenants drove resident proprietors'

"being settled on Dockwra's [an English proprietor] 3,000 acres, ...ac-

quainted this Board" that he was prepared to become their tenant. clared, "that

now

he has for

many years

Moore

de-

held possession for Dockwra's heirs but

threatened by ElizabethTown." 111

The

autonomy

Associates led him, and others, to surrender their considerable

is

by the

threat of being displaced

to

the resident Board.

James Alexander's

desire to build a

mighty landed empire was undimin-

ished by the prospect of violent resistance or indeed by any obstacle to his design. In 1742, he risked death in an epidemic to prepare a lawsuit against

"When

the ElizabethTown Associates.

Alexander to a clerks to

...

client, "the

I

returned to

New

go out of town

I

was Left alone

to

make

trial

Alexander declared

his position in unequivocal language: "I told

Join them

the fear of their further Rioting, or if even

Man

6c

Woman ... for

if

they should

all

all

112

join, I

my

Jersey

In 1750,

Mr. Johnson

New Jersey

Should

doubted Not but

and would restore his Government. and make lastthem who had Rebelled." 113 If Alexander had any doubts

that his Majesty could

ing Examples of

New

the

against the ElizabethTown Associates]."

preparations [for a

also, that

York," wrote

Yellow fever broke out, the fear induced both

.

.

about his actions, he never expressed them.

community that ostracized his father for violating holy law informed Newarker David Ogden's decision to pursue with vigor the lawsuit with Alexander and Morris for control of the Newark interior. When Newark Mountain residents chased away a surveying party in 1744, Ogden Bitterness against a

told the

backcountrymen that he "was not

their turning

away the Surveyor." Their

from the proposals

I

at all sorry

actions,

had made them very much

but rather pleased

he declared, "discharged

at

me

in their favour, in having the

land laid out according to their possiossions and giving them the option to purchase." 114

The

byterian majority

Ogden family and the Presof Newark had poisoned Ogden against these farmers, and theological feud between the

by 1744 he not only wanted to see them ejected from wished to destroy the physical evidence of their homes'

their

homes, but

existence.

also

ij6

Conflict

Historians will never be able to quantify to change. In the

months and

some

aspects of

human

response

years before the outbreak of large-scale unrest,

the people of New Jersey decided where they stood on the stinging question

of property

The

rights.

decision always boiled

down

to the individual, think-

ing, reasoning, fearing, hoping.

They

waited, thousands of people, adrift between a tenuous social peace

and open

conflict.

down and

rioting

in the sey's

lence

By

1744, popular confidence in the judiciary

had taken place

in six counties. In the forest-covered hills,

towns and churches, in the gentry's law

human

had broken

offices in

New York, New Jer-

components staked their positions. In the eighteen years of vio-

which followed, old

relationships gained

new meaning.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The People against the Government

On

July

to the

17, 1747, "rioters

into the City of Perth

Number of Two Hundred

Amboy, One of

.

.

.

entered

.

.

the Capital cities of the

Province." Organized along paramilitary lines, led by fiddlers and a

pennant

bearer,

"armed with Clubs ... to the Great terrour of the inhabitants

them upwards of a Hundred in Number, marched on foot in a Warlike manner to the Kings Gaol." A confrontation loomed as the "magistrates both of the city and the county, the High Sheriff, and his deputy, and the constable were met together in order to keep the Publick Peace; the ...

a party of

Proclamation ... for dispersing Rioters was read, and the sheriff in a

civil

manner forwarned them from breaking open the gaol." Since September 1745, similar efforts to halt collective violence had failed, and this day was to be no different. "All this authority," the account continued, "was treated with scorn and Derision, the magistrates the sheriff 6c peace officer were assaulted

by the mob with

staves

oner John Bainbridge

and clubs

who was

Calmly withdrawing from the

.

.

.

the Gaol was broken

...

to get the pris-

thus violently set at liberty by these Rebels."

capital, the insurgents

"marched through town

with fiddles playing before them threatening Death and Destruction to that should oppose them."

1

In the months that followed, a power struggle

between the disaffected and the authorities led to signed to free popular leaders from royal

jails.

six

tional

intense violence in 1747

power

in

major crowd actions de-

These

government to the brink of collapse by December

The

all

assaults

marked the end of a great

New Jersey. The

brought the

1747.

government's inability to

transfer of institusettle

the ongoing

property disputes encouraged the creation of an alternate institutional power

composed of allied committees of landholders whose authority was legitimated by the direct acclaim of the people living on the contested tracts. structure

*37

ij8

This coalition embodied rights, liberties,

judicial

and

political

formed understandings of the

particular, locally

and properties of British

which became common

jails,

Conflict

subjects.

The

between

in the period

assaults against royal

and

1745

1752,

were the

instrument of institutions created to deal with the prob-

The

lems of contested ownership.

appearance of these

new

structures ex-

posed the gentry's weakness, and the creation of different types of extralegal, voluntary organizations across the provincial countryside ultimately under-

mined the

stability

of the

first

The Between 1720 and

British empire.

Rise of the Committees

1746, the disaffected

yeomen

living

on the contested

tracts elected

committees of leading local people to deal with the gentry's

gal offensive.

These committees organized responses

tions

and handled

The

committees' structure

beliefs

of the communities

legal matters for the disaffected.

and membership

reflected the traditions

and

le-

to the proprietors' ac-

where they originated. However, the dependence of these committees on

di-

rect popular acclaim for their authority suggests the degree that deference

had become self-consciously democratized. Democratic deference did not supplant ethnodeference, but rather existed side by side with

it,

forming an

overlapping body of values loosely governing the population's volatile behavior in this

time of extreme tension.

The

rise

committees'

early 1740s. chasers'

began

in the 1720s

The ElizabethTown

committee

(1734)

and accelerated sharply

Associates (1720) and the

were the

earliest

in the

Newark Pur-

and most prominent, but

similar

2 bodies took shape in six other areas as violence spread in the early 1740s. Initially,

these committees were

empowered

to deal strictly with matters involv-

ing property rights. Structurally, the

committees reflected the institutional character and eth-

nic traditions of the disaffected communities.

County formed

large

committees

(five to

The New Englanders

in Essex

eight people) very reminiscent of a

New England town council, and this, along with the duration of the property disputes, helps explain why the majority of committeepeople were New Englanders from Essex. At least thirty-two men of New England descent sat on the committees between 1720 and 1763.

Ramapo and

The Dutch-dominated

the Harrison Tract, as well as the ethnically mixed areas like the

Great Tract, had smaller committees (of two to tees

areas of

five people).

tended to be dominated by one or two people. At

Dutch surnames served on committees during

These commit-

least eight

people with

the struggle against the pro-

The

People against the Government

ijp

50-i

40

30-

20-

10-

o a,

c o

S

U CO

'£

o

residence

Figure

3.

prietors. ates

Committee people by

The

residence, 1720 -1763

presence of two Scotsmen

and one among the

similation of

some

New Englanders

among in

the ElizabethTown Associ-

Morris County reflected the

as-

Scottish immigrants into the predominately Puritan

population of East Jersey. 3 Figure

3

maps the geographic

origins of the

com-

mittee members.

Committee members tended prominent

families.

to be politically experienced

The Newark committee

and from

locally

elected in 1744 could certainly be

characterized this way. Samuel Harrison and

John Condit served

as justices

Camp and John same time that they

of the peace for the Newark Mountain region; Nathaniel

Condit served

as

Essex freeholders in March 1746,

at the

sat on the Newark committee. Their fellow committee member Nathaniel Wheeler served as an Essex militia officer. While Newarker Samuel Baldwin and Michael Cook had held no offices, their families played prominent roles in local politics and had been settled in the town since the seventeenth cen-

140

Conflict

summer 1746, John Low and Michael Vreelandt joined Newark committee as representatives of the Dutch communities in In late

tury.

in the assembly in 1744.

the

Low

was an assemblyman and farmer whose relative, George Vreelandt, sat

county- size township's northern reaches. Vreelandt was a prominent local

the

4

Some of Essex County's most prominent men

served as ElizabethTown John Crane, Robert Ogden, and Stephen Crane all represented the assembly at one f)oint or another in their lives. Joseph Bonnell

Associates.

Essex in

served as second justice of the supreme court, while future Declaration of In-

dependence, signatory

and Essex

clerk

Abraham Clark

sheriff. Clark's father

as a quarter session's

John Halsted served

eventually served as the assembly's

Thomas,

also

an Associate, had served

judge and a borough alderman, and fellow Associate as

could be characterized as

a freeholder.

men

The

eighteenth-century Associates

experienced in government and widely re-

spected in their community. 5

The committees

in other areas

Maidenhead and Hopewell, the Anderson

were similarly constituted. At the towns of locally

prominent

families led the antiproprietor

had members serving

as sheriffs

and

and

Brierly, Bainbridge,

movement. The Anderson family

justices

of the peace.

The

Bainbridges

West Jersey proprietary interest and played a prominent role in the Maidenhead town government. David Brierly had served as a militia officer. In short, the committee drew its members from among the townships' most important families. In Middlesex, justice of the peace Dollens Hegehad once held

a

man

took the lead in organizing resistance to the gentry's claims. 6 Local pol-

itics

prepared the committee members for their leading role in the antipro-

prietor insurgency.

The committee members'

political status

flowed from their material

cir-

cumstances. In that premodern era social structure and political structure

were

still

linked, even (at least initially) in an extralegal insurgency.

committeeman Samuel Harrison owned considerable sawmill,

property, a successful

and aggressively explored for mineral wealth. His neighbor,

Nathaniel

Town

Camp, had accumulated £1,582 by the time of his

death. Elizabeth-

Associate Cornelius Hetfield's estate revealed a final worth of £5,681;

the estate of his fellow Associate John Crane was valued at £3,997.

members of

the

was valued

at

at the

time of his death

Edmond

£440, and his neighbor David Brierly s,

siderably above the average in their day.

3400

acres,

While the

Maidenhead-Hopewell committee did not accumulate the

same kind of wealth,

least

Newark

Bainbridges estate

at £389, fortunes

con-

Magdalena Valleau controlled

and she may have had other landed

interests as well.

at

The

The People Wyckoff and Hegeman Tract's disaffected

against the

families

who

Government

141

provided leadership to the Harrison

were among that areas most materially secure

families.

A number of factors explain the willingness of prominent people to on

and sanction

extralegal bodies

7

serve

collective violence. Certainly most, al-

all, held property via nonproprietary titles. The great gentry way of the material aspirations of the aggressive entrepreneurial element among them, men like Samuel Harrison who were determined to

though not

stood in the

own

exploit the countrysides natural resources for their

profit.

But other

is-

sues were also at work.

The

erosion of the status of those

relative to

who

served on the various committees

gentry clients helps explains the leading dissidents' behavior.

Ogdens

proprietary patronage raised the star of the

in Essex, the

As

Throck-

mortons and Formans in Monmouth, the Hudes in Middlesex, the Ryersons in Bergen,

charmed

and the Boyles and Coopers

circle

complained

became

frustrated

bitterly to officials in

in

Morris County, those outside

and frightened.

London

8

this

Newark committeemen

that if "persons are put into places

of trust and power, merely through favour and friendship (without Regard

had

to their qualifications

way

to support themselves

and

fitness for

such

offices) or that

they

may have

a

it is a Bad omen," voicing a The committeemen had become imperial order. They still desired position but

by the Government,

fear that transcended the property issue.

ambiguously alienated from the

enough appointed places in the power structure to accommodate everyone. 9 The committeemen, then, like the assemblymen, became acutely aware that their public status came directly from the yeomen's there were simply not

acclaim rather than from the gentry or a distant monarch.

The mass meetings

that led to the formations of the committees only rein-

forced the local leaders' perception that their status

Newark Mountain yeomen of the

earliest

elected their

such meetings.

10

first

came from below. In

committee by

In 1744, "those living on the tract

neck in the Newark backcountry)," reported proprietor "had a meeting" and expanded the Newark committee's additional

members,

Great Tract

settlers

later

1734,

direct vote in

ally

size

(at

one

Horse-

David Ogden,

by electing three

joined by two more. 11 In the spring of 1746, the

"had two Great Meetings, in order to Agree to Stand by

one another in Defense of their Possessions against the said Proprietors." This meeting chose three people thus

knew

men

to lead

them

in the struggle.

12

The committee-

that the popular will rather than appointment legitimated

their authority in the society.

The

dangers of dependence on the popular will became apparent

when

pressure from below forced local leaders to sanction direct action against the

142

government. the towns

Conflict

The Newark committeemen insisted that the decision to attack September 1745 was made under popular pressure. "Bald-

jail in

win," wrote the committee members, "being one of the rest

of that

Number

Committee the The commit.

.

.

[the committee] determined to bail him."

teemen, in other words, wanted to pursue a course of legal redress. "But the People in general," continued the committee spokesman, "supposing the Design of the Proprietors

was to ruin them," attacked the jail* and freed the im-

prisoned committeeman. 13 petition

George

The Great Tract committee

instead leading crowds as the area's

agents and government

officials.

status only as long as they

find a quick

claimed

II to secure the squatters' title to the tract,

and favorable

ship left

them vulnerable

manded

violence.

14

yeomen confronted

wanted

to

itself

the proprietors'

The committee members

retained their

responded to popular wishes. Their inability to

legal solution to the

to pressure

from

problem of contested owner-

their followers,

The dam holding back

who

ultimately de-

popular emotions had burst, and

members found themselves

these committee

it

but found

in the torrent,

still

on top but

with an uncertain future.

The

gentry seized on the committees'

the growing social

rise to explain

disorder. Like all people in the eighteenth century, the proprietors under-

stood change in like

human

many of their

acies.

affairs as

the result of conscious

human

actions,

contemporaries they saw reverses as the results of conspir-

Obviously, a few cunning local

ment had hatched

men

own advanceinterest. The gentry

obsessed with their

a conspiracy against the proprietary

focused particularly on the Dutch-speaking assemblyman John

Newark

as the

Low was

and

author of the conspiracy against them.

man

Low

of

15

many social, ethnic, and political boundaries, and that ambiguity helped make him the target of the gentry's accusations. An assemblyman and a committeeman, a member of the official power struca

straddling

a British colonist and a Dutchman, Low seemed gendeman on the make, the Janus-like kingpin of a grand design to displace the Board members as the society's rulers. As early L [John Low] is at as October 1745, the Board "had information that J the bottom of the riot [at Newark in September of 1745] for he was with the rioters ... on the day they came down." But like all master conspirators, he

ture

and an opponent of it,

to the proprietors to be a

.

manipulated rather than led and "stayed behind." that he

had drawn "the magistrates,

the conspiracy.

we

civil

Having no perception

call sociological

and

What

.

.

.

.

The Board

military,

also claimed

of Morris County" into

that change occurred

by means of what

or historical forces, the proprietors could only explain the

unrest as part of "a traiterous Conspiracy. Dignity." 16

.

else

.

.

against His Majesty's

Crown and

could have caused the gentry's position to collapse but

Map

9.

Northern

area around the

New Jersey,

contested tracts, 1745.

The Monmouth

town of Woodbridge were contested

not in the eighteenth.

Patent and the

in the seventeenth century but

144

Conflict

the actions of a small group of jealous

own Crowd

ther their spread.

aims?

As

violence

men

bent on creating disorder to fur-

the great gentry feared, the conspiracy quickly

became common, and the committees joined

gether in a coalition that assumed

many

to-

functions of the now-delegitimated

government.

Localism Transcended:

The

Coalition

Alone, the local committees expressed the disenfranchisement disaffected propertyholders.

When they overcame

felt

by the

distance and ethnic differ-

ences to form a centrally controlled coalition, they became a threat to the royal government. After 1745, the

committeemen

established an extralegal

unicameral assembly to control the sprawling antigentry movement. This

power

coalition usurped the government's

and even

issue currency.

The

to set social norms, collect taxes,

coalition legitimated their actions

by making

reference to their seventeenth-century forebears' uprisings against proprietary

government. In the coalition, radical

Country ideology gained new

The

political traditions

autonomous of

institutional expression.

coalitions building blocks

were the pact-signing ceremonies that

transmuted private concerns about ownership into public concerns about

community

integrity.

lations living

on the

These ceremonies bound together the dispersed popu-

vast contested tracts,

some of which contained numerous

small communities. Allegiance and collective identity were reaffirmed as each individual affixed his

Newark Mountain on the Great fend the

name

in 1734

or

mark

and again

to the pact.

A pact-signing occurred at

During an April 1746 meeting

in 1744.

Tract, the squatters produced "a paper for that purpose [to de-

tract]

and about Seventy had signed

marked the modest stretched from the contested

it."

17

These pact-signing

rituals

beginnings of a popular political coalition that eventually

New Jersey- New

York border

to

Trenton on

the Delaware River.

In 1744, Essex committee leaders initiated serious efforts to build a broader antiproprietor alliance that transcended county boundaries. Newarker Samuel Harrison traveled twice to

New

England seeking help

for his

beleaguered community. His account book also records traveling "with Mr. Taylor" [the Congregationalist Minister] for "defense of title," and records a

York on the same mission. 18 In April 1744, proprietor agent Solomon Boyle reported on discussions between the people of

later visit to

New

Newark and ElizabethTown about

jointly sending "a complaint

home

to

The England

People against the Government

19

agt. the Proprietors."

From

these

145

modest beginnings

a powerful

coalition quickly grew.

Efforts to build a coalition that transcended local in

September

town's royal

1745, after a

jail.

Newark

crowd of 150 from the Newark

their position against the gentry.

alliance

Ten

21

stormed the

and Hunterdon counties, to strengthen

Early in 1746, informants reported to the

Essexmen had appeared

Dozen of them were

New Jersey] ... it was

[across tion."

20

.

.

.

Hunterdon County

in

with the Great Tract squatters.

or a

interior

representatives quickly established alliances with

dissidents in Somerset, Middlesex,

council that

communities intensified

The

to establish an

report also claimed "that about

riding continually backwards and forwards

believed in order to Unite

all

in

one Combina-

Later in the same year disgruntled Peapack tenants apparently met

with a representative of the Essex disaffected in order to establish a mutual defense pact against the proprietors of both divisions. 22 In June 1746, the

Boards agents

at

Ramapo claimed

that "the tenants

hood] stand true to the Proprietors tho'

Newark

signed the

into alliance

all

...

[in their

neighbor-

the neighbors thereabouts have

Magdalena Valleau and her followers with the Newark disaffected. A month later, these same agents papers," bringing

Company

described Fauconier's

as "strong for the

[Newark] clubmen." 23 By

autumn of 1746, this popular alliance stretched from the New York border to Maidenhead and Hopewell in the Western Division. The alliance was indeed a broad one. It included the disaffected from Newark, the Harrison Tract, the Great Tract, Ramapo, Peapack, Maidenhead, and Hopewell, as well as Turkey in the ElizabethTown Tract on the the

border between Essex and Morris counties, but

bethTown

Associates,

who had

it

did not include the Eliza-

decided on a largely legal course of resistance

They remained aloof from the coalition and used their both friend and enemy of order to great advantage, completely

to the Board's claims.

position as

blunting the impact of the proprietors' ElizabethTown Bill in Chancery.

The

connection with the

Ramapo

disaffected allowed the coalition to ex-

plore the possibility of alliances with disgruntled populations outside Jersey.

The Newark

disaffected

seem

to have

made

Yorkers in Orange, just north of Bergen County,

who were

border war with the Eastern Board over the unsettled

New

a political overture to

embroiled in a

New Jersey-New York

"The rioters of Newark," claimed a proprietor agent, "gave out that Dekey [an Orange County, N.Y., justice of the peace who led the proprietors' New Yorker opponents] is in strict league with them and has engaged to bring his regiment to Newark. to their assistance when required." He never did, though other magistrates from Orange County gave indirect

border. Coll.

.

.

146

Conflict

aid to the antiproprietor coalition. 24 In early 1748, the proprietors maintained

New York,

that the disaffected received encouragement from supporters "in

Long

and

Island, Pensilvania,

New England," and

claims that the disaffected

received help from outside the province persisted until the 1760s. 25

Even

as

some

liances, others tive

coalition emissaries crossed political borders to build al-

reached across social boundaries to enlist the assistance of Na-

Americans. In 1744, a Lenni Lenape Indian named Andrew gave the a new deed to replace the lost original when the gentry

Newark committee

filed their lawsuit to

gain control of the contested lands in the township

Rumors abounded of an

alliance

26

between the committees and Native Ameri-

cans living along the Delaware River,

who had come

to

New Jersey

"to be

taught the Christian Religion, by one Mr. Brainerd [David Brainerd, the

famed Calvinist missionary]/' They intended

Newark come to

"to build a

Town,

a

Church and

on lands claimed by the Board. In September

a School house"

disaffected let out that a group of Native their assistance.

27

The group

Americans were ready

to

may indeed have

with Brainerd

living

1745, the

eventually lent the coalition their support. "There was," wrote the Calvinist missionary, "at this time a terrible clamor.

.

.

Some gentlemen

people's throats."

The

outcry

was training them up

to cut

against the Indians."

originated with the "insinuations as though

I

threatened "to trouble

them

in the law;

pretending a claim to these lands themselves, although never purchased of the Indians." 28 Brainerd had accepted the idea of the Native Americans as

New Jersey's

original owners,

terian clergy;

whether

tainly,

and he had very close

this translated into a

ties to

formal alliance

the gentry repeatedly wrote of such an alliance.

As time passed

the Native Americans

Newark's Presbyis

unclear.

29

Cer-

30

became more aggressive in their anDavid Martin of Peapack com-

tiproprietor activity. In 1747, proprietor client

plained to the Board that Indian

Washaway Lewis had demanded

rent for

Martin's property under the premise that he (Lewis) was the original owner.

Martin indeed seems

ommendation.

31

to have

begun paying rent

to

him on

Proprietor Lewis Morris Ashfield reported in

"Blien [a Board client]

burnt his fence" in

.

.

.

made heavy Complaints of the

Monmouth

Hunter Morris had 1755,

"some

to lands in the

Board agent.

that

A

year

later,

Robert

33

Americans indicted for trespass. In Ocminded persons ... set the Indians upon making Claims

several Native

evil

May 1748

Indians, they have

County. Blien asked for legal action against

"Andrew, and one or two more of their Chiefs." 32

tober

the Board's rec-

upper parts of Morris and Sufsex Countys," according to a

34

African Americans were brought into the coalition as well. In several incidents in troubled Bergen county, African American

men accompanied whites

to violently dispossess gentry clients or attack the gentry's white servants.

35

The

People against the Government

147

These African American rioters, like their white counterparts, carried clubs, ripped out fences, and in general behaved like other participants in the crowd actions.

We know

how these African American rioters perceived their involvement in mobbing. Our knowledge of their participation comes from second-hand accounts like that of Gasparus Prior, who reported to the Board in 1749 that a mob composed of "ten white Men Inhabitants ... of the county of Bergen, together with four or five Negroes" had attacked him. 36 The African Americans may have been servants brought by their masters to add weight to their numbers, or they may have been members of the free black nothing of

tenant population in this county that was one-third African American.

Whatever

their origins,

it is

remarkable that African Americans were en-

couraged to commit violent acts against whites in this county frequently gripped by fear of servile rebellion. 37

As Figure 4

details,

New

Englanders,

Dutch, Scottish and Scots-Irish, Germans, Native Americans, and African

Americans were bound together against the gentry's

The

interests.

coalitions diversity strongly suggests the breadth of

port, yet

it is

difficult to establish the exact

census indicates that 8,972 white

men

38

its

popular sup-

depth of that support.

The

1745

over the age of sixteen lived in the six

counties that experienced collective violence; 678 of these

men were Quakers

unlikely to riot, leaving a base figure of 8,294 possible white male rioters. 39

We can identify 227 male

we know that men (and at least Ramapo attacked the home

antiproprietor activists by name, and

over 300 Newarkers rioted on January

1,

1746; that over 40

one woman) of the approximately 63 yeomen at of a proprietor tenant in 1746; that dozens of violent incidents occurred in

six

counties between the early 1730s and the early 1760s; that during the unrest

the proprietors often declared that they could not find twelve sympathetic

men

in the northern counties; that militia units could not be counted

on

to

suppress the disturbances; and that the vast majority of people involved in collective violence avoided

punishment

for their actions. In 1748, the

reported to the British authorities that the "great Majority.

.

.

Board

are Favourers

of

County deputy sheriff estimated that "one the county had engaged in rioting, and that over 80

the Rioters," and in 1749 the Essex third

...

of the men" in

percent of the county's

of the white gree.

The

men

227

men

supported them.

known

activists

in violent acts in the 1740s

Determining the allegiances of the speculation.

against the

that 80 to 90 percent

some de-

were a larger percentage of those involved

actual rioting, but they probably represent

who engaged

I believe

in the affected areas supported the disaffected to

no more than

and

rest

1750s.

in

a quarter of those

40

of the population involves further

Most women supported their husbands, brothers, and fathers gentry. Certainly we know the views of Magdalena Valleau and

148

Conflict

125-1

100

75

S 50-

25-

I c W

G

i

ethnicity

Figure

4.

Rioter ethnicity

the other

women who

engaged in Bergen County crowd

actions.

The rem-

nant Native American population supported the disaffected, while the views

of the 4606 African Americans are beyond recovery apart from the experience of a few Bergen County

rioters.

Real tensions existed between the

coalition's different cultural groups,

making their unity all the more remarkable. Puritan Jerseymen and the Jersey Dutch did not always mix easily. Newarker Esther Edwards Burr asked rhetorically at one point during a trip, "What, lay here amongst a parsle of dumb Dutch people a whole week?" 41 Before the riots, before the revival, localism, and ethnic insularity kept New Jersey's peoples largely apart, and while these barriers remained, the unrest temporarily lowered them. Obviously, hatred of the proprietors encouraged this lowering, but other factors helped

overcome the

coalition's ethnic divisions. Religious experience

The People

Government

against the

149

helped bind the disaffected together. Newark, Maidenhead, Hopewell,

Mor-

County, and parts of Bergen County saw evangelical activity sporadically

ris

from the 1690s onward and intensely

members

first

learned of their shared problems in the great open-air revival

meetings of the 1730s and 1740s;

between

iarity

certainly, these

different ethnic groups.

large role in the committees' rise,

how

ample of together.

Quite possibly, coalition

after 1730.

religious ties

42

and

Two

meetings established a famil-

evangelical clergymen played a

their actions represent a concrete ex-

bound the

ethnically

complex

rioter

movement

"Who can withstand their interest," asked an exasperated proprietor

spokesman during the

unrest, "especially as the

worthy committee ... have

two Supernumerary promoters behind the curtain- Clergymen- who their actions."

43

The

passage refers to

Newark Mountains

sanctify

Congregationalist

preacher Daniel Taylor and Basking Ridge's defrocked Scottish Presbyterian minister John Cross, both well-known opponents of the gentry and believed to be organizers of resistance in the countryside. to the gentry's claims, publicly tion,

proclaimed in the pamphlet

helped keep a diverse population united in

Kinship relationships also solidified tion.

God's sanction of resistance

ties

its

A Brief Vindica-

resistance.

within the committees and coali-

In at least one case marriage seems to have been used to cement an

liance

between two regions opposed to the proprietors. Weeks

after the

al-

Sep-

Newarker John Dod married Caroline Schemerhorne of the Great Tract in Hunterdon. She was

tember

1745 assault

on the Newark

disaffected

jail,

probably the daughter of Great Tract committeeman John Schemerhorne.

Ties of blood also linked rioters from the Harrison Tract in Middlesex to farmers living on the Great Tract. 44 Kinship, the glue which held Early

America

The

together, played an important role in binding the rioter coalition.

gentry's hostile rhetoric helped unite the disaffected in a

common

The yeomanry's ability to appropriate the language used to demothem to achieve unity suggests the speed with which all political rhetobecomes potentially subversive in an unstable social situation. The gen-

identity.

nize ric

try's

opponents accepted the

identities

"clubman," or "the disaffected."

used to denounce them:

Time and

again, the disaffected

"rioter,"

would ex-

press their willingness to "stand to the club" or violently enforce so-called

club law. 45 In this

way they came

to perceive themselves as a group despite

their differences (see Figure 5).

The

1746 election of

men from

five areas to a

colony-wide "Committee of

46 the Disaffected" provided central authority to the sprawling movement.

This committee quickly became a kind of extralegal unicameral assembly governing the northern half of the colony.

It

to the assembly's twenty-two, the smaller

had

fifteen

number

members,

as

opposed

reflecting the coalition's

150

Conflict

125-1

100-

75

50-

place of origin

Figure

5.

Geographic origins

lack of ties to

West

Jersey's

Quaker communities. The Newark Tract pro-

vided seven committemen; three came from Maidenhead and Hopewell; three from the Harrison Tract; and

mittees

became arms of a

two from the Great Tract. The

local

central authority that held the loyalty of

com-

much of

the population.

Power flowed

to the coalition as the disaffected

became the arbiters of leSolomon Boyle re-

gality in the countryside. In mid-1747, proprietor client

ported several conversations with the disaffected that revealed the extent of the collapse of the government's legitimacy. Boyle confronted a

helped dispossess a proprietor tenant and asked him son said they got l'd

it

[the lands]

that [riotous dispossession]

how he'd done

by law." A surprised Boyle

Law yes

says

man who had

"ask'd

Johnson by Club

him

it.

"John-

if he cal-

Law and

called

The

their proceedings a

People against the Government

Court of equity. .preferable to the .

151

Common law." John-

son then revealed that the rioters intended to expand their legal ultimately supplanting the royal legal system.

know why

activities

by

The informant demanded

to

this court only heard one side of the cases

to

it tried,

which he

re-

ceived the startling reply that "for the future they intended to proceed other-

wise and not to act

.

.

.

The

partys in writing."

they received the Complaint and Defense of the

till

dissidents claimed that their coalition "intended to

Mr. Dunstar [an East Jersey Proprietor] and put him

take

rioters reportedly built] or

said [against the rioters]."

them, had

prietors called

in gaol [a jail the

send him to England to answer for what he had

47

This "rabble,"

sympathetic to the pro-

as those

at least partially institutionalized

popular percep-

tions of justice.

These claims

clearly

shocked Boyle, but not

as

much

as the explosive epi-

logue to the whole conversation. "That they," as he recalled the comments, "should have

it

[the land] for as they

now

themselves

ruled by arbitrary Power."

government had violated jects,

had been ruled by

its

and that by doing so

it

48

The

power they

arbitrary

perception was that the

sacred trust, to protect the property of

had destroyed

its

By

legitimacy.

its

sub-

summer of

the

1746 authority rested with popular forces.

As

the coalitions power gelled, the government predictably lost

its

hold on

the institutional structure of the colony. Control of the militia collapsed in the affected areas because the crowd

acknowledge appointed Boyle in

1747, "the

officers.

Company

at

members were the

"On

militia

and refused

the last training Day," wrote

Turkey

out that they had the Liberty to chuse

[in the

new

to

Solomon

ElizabethTown Tract] gave

officers" rather

than accept Boyle

and the others appointed by the proprietor-dominated government. "And," Boyle continued, "that they had either Chose or were about to chuse the said 49 Nathl. Davis foe their captain [he was an antiproprietor militant]."

the government in collapse, the disaffected

New

County turned to political customs New England colonies.

of militia

like election

With

Englanders in Morris officers

common

in

the

The

coalition also eroded the government's all-important financial powers,

including the powers of taxation. "For the three years past," the council

Crown

plained to the

ing taxes]." 50

weakened feit

Cut

still

money

off

had been

in 1748, the coalition

"raising

money

com-

[collect-

from part of their revenue, the governments influence

further.

But the

coalition's implicit legitimation

of a counter-

supply proved to be a greater challenge to the gentry's control of

the colony's political economy.

Counterfeiting and other disorder. It

is

illegal acts are

thus not surprising that the

not

uncommon

in times of civil

London government's

opposition

ip

to paper

money encouraged

in the early 1740s.

What is

Conflict

the rise of a counterfeiting band in North Jersey

remarkable about these particular counterfeiters

is

that neither they nor the communities they lived in were convinced that their actions were illegal.

New Jersey and At

dollars.

bogus money in

reinflaters distributed

Pennsylvania, and with twelve molds coined silver "Spanish"

least sixty

ute this currency.

The

These premature

people in Morris and Somerset counties helped distrib-

51

counterfeiters sought to

make

a stable currency

lenge our perceptions of legality and

County discovered

their seriousness

illegality.

and in so doing chal-

Thomas Benton of Morris

of purpose during transactions with

March 1747. "This Examininant," recalled sometime in March Jacobus Vanetto told him he was little money." Benton lent him some cash to tide him over,

counterfeiter Jacobus Vanetto in

Benton, "says that Straightened for a

.

.

.

only to be repaid in counterfeit paper

bills.

When

Vanetto, the counterfeiter recalled the money, admitted

.

.

Benton challenged it

was bad, and gave

Benton proclamation (government-produced) money. Vanetto then promised

make

to

the

counterfeit

"good." 52

bills

Under examination, Somerset

County's Isaac Davis declared that local counterfeiter John Jubert had convinced

him

that the silver coins he

and

his friends

were making were

"as

good

any that came from the Spaniards." 53 Davis accepted eight of these coun-

as

money was good thinking them to know that the coining of Good silof a paper money supply had altered popu-

terfeit silver pieces, believing that "the

be made of Good Silver 54

.

The

.

.

and did not

.

.

.

.

.

.

ver

was

lar

perceptions of the society's appropriate political economy.

The

criminal."

counterfeiters

value. Rather,

form

(a

seemed

money had an

well-drawn

and Benton's

creation

bill),

and

to maintain that authority did not give

its

use as a

based on

money

content (real

silver),

medium of exchange. Both

Davis's

intrinsic value

its

affidavits suggest that the counterfeiters believed that the

ernment should not enjoy a monopoly on the creation of money. Only

gov-

in 1748

did the government crush the counterfeiters and at the same time issue more legal tender.

When

the counterfeiters were finally arrested in that year, they

promptly escaped from Morristown jail, apparently with the assistance of the sheriff, magistrates,

and general population. 55 The people of Morris County

saw the creation of such a competing paper currency

as a

good whatever

its

source.

Courts, militia, taxation,

government

to their

money

supply

gentry describe the situation, "knows their

of government."

56

And it is

coalition's intellectual

— the own

power from the "The Mob," as the

transfer of

opponents was completed in

1746.

strength

& also the weakness

obvious that some of this strength grew from the

mooring

in a particular history of dissent.

The Committees

The Turkey-Morris County Committee Nathaniel Davis, the Reverend John Cross, ind

members of

the Beedle family led the

engaged n a number of violent incidents during the 1740s but had no representative on the colony-

disaffected in these areas. Militants

wide committee.

Great Tract Committee

mass meeting

V

in

1745 led to the

ormation of a committee on the tract, "ornelius Dehart, John Schemerhorne, nd Robert Shields led the committee, 'heir surnames reflected the ethnic liversity of the Great Tract topulation.

Between 1746 and 1748

hey played a role on the colony-wide ommittee of the disaffected.

The Peapack Disaffected kittle is

known about what happened

'eapack between 1744 and late 1747.

nown

that disgruntled residents

at

It is

met with

ElizabethTown Associates, the Newark lisaffected, and the leaders of the Maidenhead-Hopewell disaffected. In July if 1747, a crowd freed John Fenix from the lomerset jail; he may have been a leader of he anti-gentry faction at Peapack. tie

Fauconier's

Company (Ramapo)

After 1741, this group of agrarian dissidents Valleau. This group included

Luke

was headed by Magdalena

Kierstead, Barbarie,

Moor, Peter

Fresneau, Valleau's son and her son-in-law Stout. This group allied itself

with the

Newark committee but did not have representatives on

the colony-wide committee.

Harrison Tract Committee leveral meetings led to the formation

group led by Dollens legeman and Simon Wyckoff. These two nen were on the colony-wide committee •f

a leadership

•etween 1746 and 1748.

Maidenhead-Hopewell Committee

The Newark Committee

A Newark committee first

appeared on the contested lands in A larger committee appeared in 1744 as mass meetings elected a number of new committeemen. The committee changed personnel a number of times during the riots. In 1747 the Newark Committee was composed of John Low, Nathaniel Wheeler, John Condit, Nathaniel Camp, Jonathon Pierson, Samuel Harrison, and Samuel Baldwin. the township's interior in 1734.

/iolence began in this area in 1735, and

The ElizabethTown Associates

some point a leadership group emerged rom among the leading families in these owns. Edmund Bainbridge, John Anderson, and David Brierly were on the

The Associates first met in 1720 to defend the Nicoll's claims. The Associates avoided joining the colony-wide coalition during the 1740s and did not openly sanction crowd violence during that decade. Dozens of the town's leading men served

t

olony-wide committee between 1746 and 748.

Map

io.

The

rise

as Associates during the colonial period. In 1749 John Crane, William Miller, Thomas Clark, John Chandler, John Halsted, and Crane served as Associates.

of the committees, 1734-1748.

i$4

Conflict

Popular political traditions autonomous of Country ideology helped

mate the coalitions seizure of power. The

form the

coalition gave

to a dissenting political culture that oral traditions

first

new

legiti-

institutional

had kept

alive since

antiproprietor rebellion in the 1670s. In 1744, a traveler reported con-

versations in East Jersey towns concerning an earlier rebellion (in the 1670s)

when

the proprietor government had been thrown off and an extralegal as-

sembly had seized power. property" had led to the

He

also recounted

how

the "great uncertainty of

"many mobs and tumultuous

the proprietors to surrender their government in 1701. selves

made

cutting reference to a crowd action in

risings" that

57

The

had forced

disaffected

them-

which the ElizabethTown

Associates had broken Governor Lewis Morris out of

jail

during the late-

seventeenth-century rebellion against proprietary government. 58

son of the surnames of known eighteenth-century antiproprietor

A compari-

activists

with

seventeenth-century dissidents reveals a close correlation, suggesting that hostility

to the gentry

eration.

At

was passed down

least twenty-six

orally in families

known surnames of the Newark Newark Town Book before 1700; many of

of the fifty-one

disaffected in the 1740s appear in the

the disaffected were descended from people

pated in the earlier rebellions.

arisen

town

who saw and most

likely partici-

At ElizabethTown, nineteen of the

known surnames of eighteenth-century early (and incomplete)

from generation to gen-

thirty-five

disaffected landholders appear in the

records. Since the

ElizabethTown yeomen had

enmass twice in the seventeenth century,

it

seems

likely that their

knew of the earlier rebellions. 59 Dutch traditions of dissent also may have informed the coalitions rise. Dutchman Michael Vreelandt of the northern Newark Tract served as a liveighteenth-century descendents

ing link between the followers of Jacob Leisler and the land rioters. Vreelandt settled in

Newark after

Leisler

was executed, and shortly thereafter he signed Dutch mechanic preacher be-

a petition in favor of Guiliam Bertholf, the lieved

by both contemporaries and

historians to have a special appeal to

Leisler 's former followers. 60 In 1700,

Vreelandt, signed a antiproprietor

"M. Vrelandt," almost certainly Michael remonstrance to the Crown. At least Vree-

when New York's ma-

landt 's hostility to the proprietors ran back to the seventeenth century,

Dutch as known Dutch surnames of

Leisler 's failed rebellion foretold the eclipse of the 61 Eight of the jor cultural group.

activists

from northern Essex and Bergen County

peared on the Bertholf petition of 1694.

62

The

in the 1740s

antiproprietor

and 1750s ap-

existence of these traditions of

political dissent legitimating direct action against the gentry's authority en-

courages us to reconsider what political attitudes.

shaped popular

Local

we know

about the origins of early American

political action at least in

much

Country ideology eighteenth-century New Jersey, and

political traditions as

perhaps elsewhere in British North America.

as

The As tion. ter

power grew, the gentry scrambled

the coalitions

On December

People against the Government

9, 1746, at a council

zj^

to restore their posi-

meeting dominated by Robert Hun-

Morris and attended by West Jersey Proprietor John Coxe, the minutes

declared that "numbers of People in different Parts of this Colony have afsociated

.

.

.

with thes.d Rioters 8c Entered into a Combination ... to Obstruct

the Course of Legal Proceedings." "Steps," the to be taken in order to Putt a check to so

.

.

men

continued, "are necefsary

dangerous a Confederacy." 63

.

The

found themselves besieged pours through the sediments

fear they felt as they

of 250 years. Physically powerless, the gentry used cultural and linguistic manipulation as their

primary weapons in the struggle against the

divide the disaffected

by rhetorically reconstructing them

outsiders. Initially, the gentry

American

allies;

coalition.

drew attention

over time, the Jersey

Dutch

They

as ethnic

tried to

and

racial

to the disaffecteds' Native

also

became

targets of the gen-

try's attacks.

The began

efforts to construct the disorder in the society as

Governor Lewis Morris wrote

late in 1745.

an alien insurgency

to the assembly that "if the

Indians can be prevail'd on to join in Attempts of this Kind [attacks on jails],

we may soon have

War

a

with them, in our

own bowels encouraged by

King's Subjects." 64 Morris understood the widespread fear of Native cans,

and he knew that some

nial wars.

settled

tribes

were

allied

the

Ameri-

with the French in the colo-

Another proprietor correspondent described the Native Americans

with David Brainerd

lace coat on,

which

it

was

as "forty fighting

said,

he had got,

men," one of whom "had a blue

as a present

from the Governor of

[French-controlled] Canada." 65 Variations on this charge appear in numer-

ous proprietor addresses as the great gentry rhetorically constructed the coalition as a socially alien

group with

ties to

the hated papist French.

In 1747, the proprietors took aim at the coalition's primary ethnic fissure to

New Englanders

and the Dutch disaffected. PuriDutch presence on four (Ramapo, Newark, Harrison, and the Great Tract) contested tracts made them the create discord

between the

tan Newarkers led the coalition, but the

coalition's

primary ethnic subgroup.

The

gentry hoped that by sowing dissent

between these groups that the coalition would effort

was a

English.

letter to the

The

letter,

New York

split.

The main

thrust of this

Weekly-Post Boy written in pidgeon Dutch-

purported to be between Dutch committeemen

M. Van

came from the pen of Robert number of charges common in proprietor lit-

Freelandt (Michael Vreelandt) and John Low,

Hunter Morris. 66 erature: that

It

Low

included a

was using the

crisis to

gain electoral favor with the "de

comon peepol" of English descent; that the committees intended that "dat such mans be put into offices as owr Committee tink best qualified to promote our publick good"; and

that the Congregationalist minister Daniel Tay-

i$6

was "de good fader of de Cummittie,

lor

de sevaral papers

on

Conflict

in faver

rit

.

.

of de Rioters,

.

and of de Clubmans,

good

dis

to claim that "destroying de Proprieteurs Titel, will

fecting almost

de Estates in dis

all

as well as

The

.

.

.

autor of

went be unhinging and de-

preest."

letter

de oder provinces in America."

In the gentry's construction of the rioting, alien ethnic groups were using the 67 disorder to seize power.

The

rhetorical construction of the disaffected in terms* of socially margin-

alized cultural groups highlights elites to

how control of print culture allowed colonial By portraying the

manipulate perceptions of popular movements.

primarily (although obviously not totally) English-speaking rioters as either

Native Americans or Dutch, the Board's defenders tried to suggest that the riots

were

a

non- English insurgency in an Anglicized world rather than

gitimate defense of the rights and liberties of Englishmen. ethnic diversity provided the proprietors with identities in

which

manipulation failed further demonstrates

many

how

a le-

coalition's

possible subordinate

That these

to dress their opponents.

The

efforts at cultural

violently the society

was po-

larized.

The coalition represented the beginning of a new kind of popular political movement in the American countryside centered around the creation of new institutions. The goal of these movements was not to help one set of gentlemen topple another as the seventeenth-century colonial American rebels had; the intertwining of the social structure with royal power made that an impossibility until 1776. Instead, new institutions were created, and in the

—

case of

by

New Jersey

direct

became an alternative power structure, legitimated popular consent, which usurped the prerogatives of the royal govthese

ernment. In the decades that followed, imperial authorities and the provincial gentry would have to contend with the continuous creation of new religious, political,

and

social institutions until, ultimately, they

The mass crowd

actions that

began

the disaffected to retain their property. It

crowds

as the

is

were overwhelmed.

were the instruments used by

in 1745

only by seeing these agrarian

products of institutional creation that

we

can begin to under-

stand the riots as artifacts defining the development of popular political consciousness over time.

The

People against the Government

"Since that time [September 1745]," lamented the Board in 1748, "[the rioters]

have gone on

upon

all

like a torrent

bearing

down

all

before

them 8c trampling

law 8c authority." 68 The proprietors' words aptly describe the physi-

The

cal attack

on the

People against the Government

gentry's institutional power.

teen riotous assaults on

between

ants

and

1745

757

Out of the

descriptions of thir-

and numerous dispossessions of proprietor ten-

jails

1752 pours the story

violence to achieve a transfer in authority.

of the use of sustained collective

The crowds of yeomen were

the

conduit through which power flowed from the government to the commit-

and the

tees

By

coalition.

the end of 1747, royal institutions stood on the

brink of collapse. Assaults against royal

tween at

1745

and

1747.

Newark, building

attacks spread geographically

to a general crisis that convulsed

half of 1747.

Between July

tacked royal

jails six,

for

defined a period of intense confrontation be-

jails

These

1747

from

their epicenter

New Jersey in the latter

and January 1748 the coalition successfully atas part of an open struggle

and probably seven, times,

power with the government.

The and

Newark were

militant majority at

their actions established

some of the

the

first

to assault the royal jails,

basic patterns visible in

all

such at-

A crisis began in the second week of September 1745, when the Essex

tacks.

Newark

sheriff arrested

antiproprietor leader

Samuel Baldwin

for cutting

timber on lands claimed by Governor Lewis Morris's grandchildren. 69 Bald-

win refused

bond for him. To do so would him on property that he and the

to give bail or allow others to post

have confirmed the sheriffs right to arrest

community recognized as his. Believing (erroneously, at least in an immediate sense) that the arrest marked the beginning of a proprietary campaign "to dispossess one and all, who would not yield to their Right and comply with their unreasonable Demands," the disaffected set in motion a majority in the

He

plan to free Baldwin by force.

when

1745,

150

men

sheriff would not

him, ripped the cheering

more

men

rioters

remained imprisoned

appeared at the

jail

and asked

until

September

for his release.

When

19,

the

comply with the crowd's demands, the angry yeomen beat jail's

left

doors off and freed their imprisoned leader.

the

and bring

jail,

they

a large

let

As

the

out that they could mobilize hundreds

group of "fighting Indians" to

need be. 70 In Newark, the King's Writ no longer ran,

assist

them

at least in matters

if

of

property rights.

many ways

In

this incident

was representative of the ones that followed.

began with a confrontation between

and

a magistrate. Carefully

sheriffs inevitable refusal to

leased; the

a large

It

group of club-carrying yeomen

planned and controlled violence followed the comply with the demand that a prisoner be re-

crowd attacked the

jail,

then retreated without doing further

harm.

many ways, the Newark incident also provides from which we can examine how the unrest itself altered the

While point

typical in

a starting disaffect-

Conflict

158

eels'

The

political consciousness.

well-organized rioters of September 1745

had not yet developed the trappings of an autonomous

There rioters

is

political

movement.

identity, like pennants,

and the

were mostly from Newark and the interior of Essex County. The

coalition

was

no mention of external symbols of

still

was

still

in

its

formative stage, and resistance to the gentry's claims

localized.

The September 1745 incident also provides a starting point for understanding how the disaffecteds' manipulation of language conventions changed over time as the violence intensified. In the eighteenth century, threats and ru-

mors played an important part

in politics. In this era before scientific

forms

of knowledge, threats and rumors were sometimes elevated to the status today grant only to facts by their inclusion in legal documents whose

macy was

certified

by complex

institutional court rituals.

The

we

legiti-

acceptance of

imprecise language as fact created a broad realm of the possible even in nor-

mal times, and was

in times

this elasticity that

march on

New York

of disorder the possible became extremely

made

"real" the threats

of

New

York land

City in the 1760s and the Paxton Boys'

vow

elastic. It

rioters to

to destroy

Philadelphia in the same decade. 71

In September 1745, the strained, controlled, as

rioters'

use of threatening language was

and largely defensive in

yeomen understood

character.

Gentlemen

that the claim of aid from outside

case the fighting Indians)

was just

a threat.

lieved they could control the situation

course. Collective violence linguistic forms,

its

The

Newark

society's leading

and that they dominated

had not yet amplified the

effect

men

still

re-

as well (in this still

be-

political dis-

of these informal

nor had the disaffected yet refined their use of such rhetori-

cal conventions.

A

second crowd action

at

Newark

in January 1746

disaffecteds growing political sophistication. 1,

1746, for their participation in the

Three men

September

demonstrated the arrested

on January

1745 riot refused to post bail.

The authorities' efforts to transport one prisoner to a more secure jail failed when a large club-carrying crowd intercepted the party and freed him. Sheriff John Chetwood then posted an armed militia guard of thirty men around the jail. These militia men almost certainly had kin and patronage ties to the Anglican, proprietor Ogden family, who apparently helped raise the guard. 72 At two o'clock, three hundred well-organized yeomen assembled to confront the militia. The magistrates read the King's Proclamation against rioting, and Chetwood sent two militia captains "with their Drums to the People so Assembled ... and Required those men that belonged to theirs Drums." Almost simultaneously, crowd leader who are apon my List, follow me." Forming behind Roberts and a man bearing the disaffecteds' newly created pennant,

Company's

Amos

to follow the

Roberts cried out "those

The

the

yeomen stormed

People against the Government

the militia lines, beat the sheriff and

two imprisoned

freed the

750

rioters,

This incident proved to be a

some of his men,

and moved off cheering King George critical

A

giance to royal political symbols.

event in breaking Newarkers'

rally to the

of royal authority and to their extralegal movement's standard.

drums

set the militia

to beating,

crowd leader

Amos

Roberts called the

moment?

First,

Chetwood was appointed,

He did not derive his power from popular consent, Amos Roberts, who had been anointed a leader by

effect

was

74

The arguments with

—

their cumulative

rallied to

support

disaffecteds' organizational strength.

months

against a royal

jail.

The

after the

and pre-

actions against the government.

Amos

Roberts in a town that

probably had no more than four hundred freeholders in 1745

eleven

Newark

the gentry's agents, the hostile

mass meetings, the pact-signing ceremonies

That three hundred men

The

the

to delegitimate the local representatives of royal authority

Newark yeomanry to support crowd

pare the

unlike crowd

time of crisis, explicit consent had supplanted deference as

a source of legitimacy.

surveys, the

symbols

Why was the symbolic system representing royal

authority ignored in that dramatic

disaffected. In this

alle-

As Chetwood

not elected. leader

73

turning point in the property conflicts

began when the disaffected were called simultaneously to

disaffected to their pennant.

II.

testifies to

the

75

second Newark

riot

saw only one

assault

reasons for this relative quiet are complex. Governor

Lewis Morris's death in

May

76 1746 left the government leaderless.

The

77 assembly's lower house did not press for action against the rioters. The gov-

ernment

carefully avoided arresting the

crowd leaders even

as the courts in-

Only the proprietor-dominated council demanded action against the Newark crowds, and even the councillors may have hoped the crisis would blow over. But it was in this moment of apparent dicted the defiant yeomen.

calm that the coalition seized the countryside from the government.

The

was accomplished by violence and intimidation directed against the proprietors' low-status clients. This popular political movement, like all such movements in the Anglo-American world, saw significant tensions

seizure

between people of similar

social rank.

The

gentry's tenants

edly forced to surrender homesteads to the coalition.

We know that two such

incidents occurred west of Newark in 1745, at least one in 1746, several

more

on the Ramapo Tract

on John Burnet's 2000 acres in the Essex interior, an-

other in Essex in 1747, two or perhaps three in Morris year,

and

prietors'

a

were repeat-

number of other

County

in the

same

incidents alluded to but not described in the pro-

correspondence. 78

Joseph Dalrymple's account of his 1747 dispossession suggests the terror by the Board's clients as the disaffected swept the countryside. Dalrymple reported that "on the Thirtyeth ... of March ... at Night Some persons un-

felt

.

known

Deponent

to this

.

.

.

160

Conflict

knocked

at the

door of

house

his

Morris

[in

County]." For a gentry tenant living on contested lands, such a knock was

tantamount to a writ of ejectment. Dalrymple,

who had

heard rumors that

knew he was going Some one without made answer

the coalition intended to displace him,

He "asked who was dricks,

there,

.

and wanted to Light

to lose his .

.

Dalrymple saw through

his pipe."

declined this neighborly request. Immediately, the

home.

Abraham Henthis ruse

mob -threatened

and

to rip his

roof off.

A human drama followed that had already been played out in many other Ten men burst in dispossess him and his

places.

to the house as visibly

Dalrymple pleaded with them not

Thomas

pregnant wife. Dalrymple's friend

when one of them grabbed

Miller began arguing with the rioters

to

the preg-

nant woman. "After a few minutes," Dalrymple remembered, "said Rioters told

him and

More." The

Wife

rioters'

when

declare

his

that they

might Live

power had reached such

they would

act.

house fourteen days

a point that they could openly

Crowd members lamented

begun such dispossessions seven years

On

the benefltt of the country."

in said

had not

that they

would have been for armed clubmen rewife watched they divided the

before, "saying

it

the appointed day thirty

turned and as Dalrymple and his terrified farm. William Breested of Morris

County

received half, while James

Hamp-

ton received the other half to hold as a tenant for the defrocked Presbyterian minister John Cross. 79 Several rioters claimed that their "court of justice" had

made the right decision in dispossessing Dalrymple. 80 The shifted boundaries of physical power and popular

political sensibilities

shaped the

The

crisis

arrest

of Hun-

end of 1746

set off a

that erupted in the second half of 1747.

terdon antiproprietor leader

Abraham Anderson

at the

chain of events that brought the government to the brink of complete collapse within a year.

When

a

crowd drawing strength from Essex, Somerset,

and Hunterdon counties arrived jail

in

December

to free

Anderson from the Somerset County

1746, the great gentry realized the period of quiet had been

only a respite. 81 "A body of men," the worried proprietors reported to royal authorities, fifty

"who

chiefly

belong to Newark... and Maidenhead ... places ..

miles apart, and both

haughtily and imperioufly liberty."

82

The

coalition

of coordinating their

had developed a well-organized

men from

.

.

at

arm capable miles away from

striking

different counties in direct action

homes.

The yond

many miles distant from the said prison, did demand the Prifoner, and then fet [Anderson]

had changed and now stretched benew kind of consciousness, not class born,

disaffecteds' political awareness

their communities. It

for in a preindustrial

was

a

world such consciousness was impossible, but rather

The

People against the Government

161

defined by legal categories and popular perceptions of justice. This did not

mean

any way that they had forgotten their local or ethnic

in

identities.

Rather, the disaffected were thinking on the provincial as well as the local

(town and county)

seeking alliances with those whose legal circum-

level,

stances were like their own.

They had begun

to be able to see themselves in

others.

This new consciousness was expressed during the July 1747 march on the Amboy jail. Two hundred men from all over North Jersey rallied to free

Perth

Hunterdon County leader John Bainbridge. 83 Of the twentyone rioters recognized during the assault, the homes of sixteen can be located with some certainty. Two were from Newark, two from the Great Tract in Hunterdon, one was from Ramapo in Bergen County, at least one was from the imprisoned

Maidenhead

in

Hunterdon, two more came from the Great Tract,

one from Peapack in Somerset, another from contested lands

Ridge in the same county, and Figure

6).

to

from the Harrison Tract

set

by displaying

startled gentry observers

of political symbols.

85

(see

loyalty to a

Arriving in town, they "tyed their horses

Mr. Johnston's fence [proprietor Andrew Johnston's fence

planned to symbolically challenge his social authority] 6c

Edmond

with

Basking

at

Middlesex

in

84

This diverse crowd

common

six

at least

Bainbridge,

— an

Came on

Simon Wyckoff, 6c one Amos Roberts

head and two Fiddles Playing." Flanked by

their

pennant

act

foot

.

.

at their

bearer, they "struck

the Mayor, broke one of the Constable's head, beat several others," and freed the prisoner. these flags

The crowd

leaders' use

emblems focused the

loyalties

of pennants suggests their awareness that of the diverse movement. Then,

as today,

played an important role in maintaining group identity and in this case

autonomy from the gentry's control. 86 That pennant and fiddlers may have been "borrowed" from the militia training day made them no less signaled

potent symbols to the crowd.

The

transformation of popular political consciousness in that

discontent 250 years ago

is

perhaps best illustrated in the mob's use of threat-

Man

ening words. In declaring that "there should not have been a or a

House standing

coalition's edicts,

etor

Samuel

87

in

.

.

.

Perth Amboy,"

and following

Nevill,

88

guage forms to create

terrible

if

left alive,

the government tried to resist the

this declaration

the crowd showed

with threats to

kill

propri-

a refined ability to use these lan-

images of the future. Swelled with their

power, the coalition used language with the same deftness ating in their opponents'

summer of

minds the

possibility

it

own

used clubs, cre-

of more extreme actions

should popular grievances go unredressed. Samuel Nevill explicitly spelled out the transformation in popular political perception in his charge to a

Mid-

162

Conflict

400-1

300

200-

100-

T ON

Oh

>

CO

CO

incident

Figure

6.

Crowd

size at jailbreaks, 1745-1747

dlesex grand jury assembled to indict the Perth affected,

table

Amboy

rioters.

Laws by which we

.

.

.

.

now

.

.

dis-

have been governed." These insurgents "have Set

up the Laws of Violence, enforced by Staves and Clubs, and best

The

an angry Nevill insisted, "refuse to submit ... to those just and equi-

Laws

to govern the Constitution."

89

call

these the

Nevill realized that the coalition

controlled the processes that gave the law

meaning

as well as physically

controlling the countryside.

The

Amboy incident was win back authority from the 90 percent of the population had turned against

province-wide turmoil that followed the Perth

initiated

by a desperate government trying

coalition. Fully realizing that

to

them, the authorities tried to decapitate the insurgency in Hunterdon, ris,

Somerset, and Essex counties by arresting committeemen, only to watch

helplessly as the ers.

Mor-

yeomanry smashed

Several days after the Perth

royal jails to free their imprisoned lead-

Amboy riot,

a

crowd freed Peapack antipro-

The

People against the Government

prietor dissident John Fenix

from the Somerset jail, where he awaited

trial on by proprietor Andrew Johnston. 90 In the same

a charge of trespass initiated

month,

may have

a confrontation

arrest a

crowd

i6j

Newark when

occurred at

a sheriff tried to

immediately miscarried. 91 Early in Au-

leader; this attempt

gust, a

crowd rescued James Hampton from the Morris County

month

later a

at

mob

of thirty "armed with clubs

.

.

.

Morristown and again rescued Hampton. 92 The

the Perth

Amboy march

wod. take them out just as his

words

that "if there

as fast as

had been

a

they shod be put

to the frightened elite.

rioter

sheriff,

and

door off the

rip [ed] the

who

a

jail"

declared after

Hund. Committed they now seemed as good

in,"

93

The new boundaries of power were clearly delineated in December 1747, when the coalition's striking arm attacked the jail at Trenton in Hunterdon County in order to free Maidenhead disaffected leader David Brierly. 94 The outmanned door."

sheriff "contented

my self with

He "expostulated with them

gravation of their Guilt."

Anderson freed

Crowd

leaders

Edmund mob

Brierly; as they withdrew, the

had any legitimacy

with the coalition. "lay

in popular eyes stood

The assemblymen's

Complaints before all

.

.

.

near the prison

last

Bainbridge and John

governmental institution

on the brink of a confrontation

pathetic pleas to the insurgency not to

the Legislature in a Tumultuous manner," were

that saved

Conclusion:

The

.

leaders let out that a

them from an encounter with government's weakness was blatantly obvious. probably

.

crime so often was a Great ag-

this

march on the assembly was imminent. 96 The that

.

about the Heniousness of the Crime they

were going to committ; that the repeating 95

meeting [them]

the clubmen. 97

The

A Colony Asunder

Eastern Board, individual proprietors, and members of the West Jer-

sey Society

had

all

begun

to press localized land claims after 1720.

They

expected to get the upper hand against the groups opposing them. Then, suddenly, or so

it

seemed, a powerful multiethnic coalition appeared and or-

ganized widespread resistance to the gentry. These insolent dissidents

usurped the government's powers and attacked the king's

jails.

This movement's ideological framework proved to be every

bit as

menac-

ing to the proprietors and the government as their riotous actions. For the disaffected rejected the

argument that

all

property rights began with the king

and instead maintained that property was the natural right of those ated

it.

This

belief's explosive implications

public debate in 1746 and 1747.

became apparent during

who

cre-

a heated

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Problem with Property

A

heated public debate after the January 1746 riot at

Newark

illustrates

the basic parameters of the disagreement over the origins of property that existed within eighteenth-century society

cally insisted that all property rights originated

ing spokesmen for the

Americas

Newark

vastness, labor

lished ownership.

1

The

proprietors vo-

with royal authority, prompt-

disaffected to develop the

argument that in

and possession rather than British authority estab-

Natural law, these same writers insisted, protected prop-

erty rights established

by

labor,

and any violation of this supreme law would

lead to the dissolution of the social contract. This fundamental conflict drove

the property disputes and the rioting.

Property

is

both a physical

reality

and a construction of human thought. In

the course of the property disputes the society's fractured understanding of the origins of property became apparent. In the eighteenth-century AngloAmerican world, "property" linked political, social, and legal realities together and to the material world. Provincial society could not permanendy with-

stand the strain caused by uncertainty over the origins of ownership.

Royal Authority and Proprietary Property

From

the 1660s onward, those holding proprietary interest in

lands insisted that

through them. tury's

all

New Jersey

property rights in the colony derived from the

Crown

When the property conflicts intensified in the eighteenth cen-

middle decades, the great gentry elaborated on these claims. After

Board spokesmen began arguing

for a level

1745,

of royal supremacy in matters of

property that echoed the absolutist thought of seventeenth-century writers 164

The Problem with

like Sir

Property

Robert Filmer. Board spokesmen went

165

as far as to argue that to

hold

property by virtue of nonroyal sources amounted to treason against the British crown.

The Boards gan in

1745

insistence that royal authority established property rights be-

and continued intermittently

gentry's view,

all

until the Revolution. In the great

legal property rights derived

original proprietors

in

March

1664. In

from royal grants made to the

Samuel Nevill and James

1746,

Alexander issued a public statement insisting that Jersey do derive their Titles" from the

"all

the Freeholders of East

Crown through

the Board. 2 This be-

came the cornerstone of the proprietors' defense of their property rights. It also became the base from which they developed the idea that holding property by any other means amounted to open rebellion against royal government.

The

went

great gentry

property claims.

to considerable lengths to cast the riots as treason

crown

against the British

They

first

hope of delegitimating

in the

their opponents'

labeled the rioters as rebels and the riots as trea-

son in early 1746. Samuel Nevill maintained that the rioters amounted to a

"Multitude of People, treading upon the very Heels of Rebellion, ally

engaged in

and he found

it,"

if

not actu-

their indictment for treason appropriate,

given the circumstances. 3 After Lewis Morris's death in 1746, acting Gover-

nor Hamilton asked for "vigorous measures" to punish those "daring disturbers of the public peace."

tempt

"to

The

riots,

Hamilton

throw off his Majesty's Authority."

4

In

insisted,

May 1747,

the unrest as "a dangerous and terrible insurrection." 5

were a bold

Nevill described

A "lawless rabble," de-

termined "to destroy their Country and themselves," had attacked royal officials across the colony.

right rebellion,

and

all

rebellion against the ety.

By

6

Rebellion

jails

and

Crowd action "manifestly tends to downHigh Treason." 7 High Treason! It meant

is

monarchy and the

natural ordering of monarchical soci-

1747, the construction of the rioters as rebels against the

become commonplace

at-

Crown had

in the great gentry's public pronunciations.

This particular type of treason presented an

intellectual challenge to the

beleaguered gentlemen because of the ambiguous legal character of mob violence in the colonial period. Eighteenth-century political society accepted that the people

would from time

to time

come out of doors. While

these epi-

sodes might be severely punished, in general they were not seen as a threat to

monarchical

society.

not really focus stead, they

In consequence, the gentry's public pronunciations did

much on

the actual violence as a manifestation of treason. In-

used language introduced into the Anglo-American

political lexi-

con by the House of Stuart's seventeenth-century apologists to explain holding property by nonroyal

title

amounted

to treason.

why

166

The

Conflict

proprietors insisted that the efforts to hold lands without a royally

sanctioned

title

was an

into question royal supremacy.

March

1746, "to hold

monarchy because

assault against the British

"To pretend," asked

Lands by an Indian Deed

a proprietor

only,

is

it

called

spokesman

in

not that declaring the

Indian Grantor to be the Superior Lord of that Land, and disowning the

Crown of England threat to

crown

to be so?"

Samuel Nevill

fully

worked out the

sovereignty' yi a speech to the assembly. "If the Purchases,"

asked rhetorically, "obtained by the Petitioners [the rioters] be Lawful; then consequently the Purchases the

.

.

Crown of England, must be Void and

Course

logic of this

a royal fraud."

8

.

.

.

.

he

Good and

obtained by the Proprietors from

Unjust,

Bad and Unlawful, and of

Robert Hunter Morris pushed these arguments to

their logical conclusion in a petition to

London.

"If the people,"

Morris suc-

Dominions in America can Derive property in soil or powers of Government from any other source than the Crown which by the Laws of England is the fountain of Powers, and propcinctly declared, "settling

erly

then are they

.

.

.

the British

much independent of the Crown

as

6c nation of Britian as

any people whatever." 9 Morris believed that the ideas about the origins of property held by those

who had

purchased their land directly from the Native

Americans would ultimately undermine British warranted

level

The Crowns royal

power

The

He

authority.

added an un-

of immediacy to the threat, but he was essentially correct.

inability to control property acquisition did

in the

American

indeed undermine

colonies.

great gentry understood (as did their opponents) that the provincial

on an orderly system of acquiring and

social order rested ultimately

transfer-

ring property. For colonial society to continue to function, proprietor Samuel Nevill declared, property- could only originate with the

thundered to the assembly,

Not

Property."

Colony

is

The

issue,

vested in the

"carries

he

no double

said, "is,

face, Sir, it is either

whether the Property

Crown of England,

"how

this

Honourable House

will treat this

When

of this

A dan-

he asked the assembly

Bold Attempt upon the Preroga-

of the Crown, by calling in Question his Majesty's Right and Title to the

Soil of

New Jersey," he

property from which recoiled.

11

rhetorically granted the

many members of

Crown

was not firmly

English political society would have

established:

all

social

Of course

his

own

certainty of propertv.

monarchy.

a degree of power over

But Nevill knew that the monarchical worldview of eighteenth-

century Anglo-Americans threatened to disintegrate erty

Property or

in the Soil

or in the Indian Natives?

gerous Dispute to be disputed, Mr. Speaker!" 10

tive

Crown. "Property," he

and

if a single rule

of prop-

political identity rested

interests coincided

on the

with those of the

The Problem with

Property

i6j

Alexander and Nevill in particular must have been personally struck by the irony of their situation during this debate.

had helped

create the print culture that

They were

men and

enlightened

blossomed so broadly in the eigh-

teenth century. 12 Alexander had spread the neoclassical Country ideology as part of his spirited attack

Now, though, erty rights

the great gentry needed the

may have been an

to an admission that the aristocracy, could

sey s

monarchy to

Crisis.

13

legitimate their prop-

and rhetorically granted the British kings absolute authority over

property. This

The

on Governor Cosby during the Zenger

expedient of the moment, but

it

amounted

weakly rooted American gentry, unlike the British

not withstand challenges to

its

authority.

period of rioting proved to be an intellectual watershed for

yeomen

as well.

When

New Jer-

their traditional defense of the justice of their

contract with the Native Americans faltered in the face of tightly reasoned legal

arguments constructed by Board spokesmen, Newarkers turned to the

explosive works of John ize the origins

Locke and other

of ownership. But

libertarian writers to reconceptual-

like children

who

pull the threads of a fray-

ing garment, they found that to detach property from royal control meant

unraveling the entire fabric of monarchical society. Their predicament en-

couraged them to conceptualize society in contractual terms, which unmasked the artificial character of the provincial social order.

From Just Contract The

rioting

made apparent

to a

social, legal,

Labor Theory of Value

the diverging perceptions of the origins of

ownership that existed in provincial

were developing

in turn

and

society.

political

At

the root of this divergence

disagreements over the meaning of

labor.

As

ories

of John Locke and other seventeenth-century writers to argue that

the property conflicts intensified, the disaffected turned to the the-

property rights came from possession and labor rather than from institutional authority.

Their intellectual position threatened the

sumptions of monarchical Until 1745, the

Newark

which

manded

it

was

akin,

and

legal as-

society.

purchasers claimed the township's contested lands

by virtue of a just contract. The just to

political

contract, like the idea of

was a view of socioeconomic

moral economy

relationships that de-

that the parties to a financial transaction act fairly with one another.

Newarkers maintained that the towns original settlers had a just contract with the Native Americans. Disaffected spokesmen vigorously denied the Board's claims that the townspeople "had sham Deeds procured from strol-

168

ling Indians for a

Conflict

few Bottles of Rum." 14 To be

sure, the claim that

unap-

proved purchases from Native Americans provided legitimate ownership contained the seeds of subversion, but the rows remained unplowed until public pressure from the proprietors encouraged the working out of the implications of this stance.

The

beleaguered yeomanry faced a persistent dilemma in the Board's

forceful insistence that

were

illegal.

unapproved purchases from "Native Americans

all

In April 1746, the

Newark

disaffected challenged this assertion

by declaring that the Assembly Act of

1683,

which voided

all

such unap-

proved purchases, could not be used to invalidate the Indian purchases because

it

had been made by an

before the surrender of 1701.

illegal

15

government

—

that of the proprietors

Later legislation, however, passed by royally

sanctioned assemblies, particularly the Act of 1703 limiting Indian purchases,

could not be so easily disregarded. 16 Yet the townsmen continued to believe in the justice of their possession of the disputed acreage.

As

rioting spread after 1745,

to assert that labor

spokesmen

for the

Newark

and possession established property

disaffected

rights.

began

In February

1746, Griffin Jenkins's religiously charged pamphlet, the Brief Vindication,

maintained that the original possession and improvement of the Newark lands by Native

American owners established the

Jenkins also maintained that the years" validated their

title.

17

Newark yeomen's

later settlers' legal title.

"possessions these

many

This rudimentary defense was quickly im-

proved upon.

An

unsigned

letter to the

New York newspapers

in

May 1746 marked the

true beginning of the disaffecteds' intellectual transformation concerning

the origins of ownership.

The

letter integrated local

experience into the in-

tellectual framework provided by John Locke's writings. Drawing directly on Locke, the letter boldly asserted that the Newark purchasers had clear title

to their lands via labor.

clared, "of

any part of it [the

guished from the great

Man, who bestowed

"The Improvement," the unsigned piece deearth] lying vacant, which is thereupon distin-

common

his labour

of Nature, and made the property of that

on

it."

The

writer, in a passage that drifted

dangerously close to indicting the very idea of a gentry, continued that "no

man

is

naturally intitled to a greater Proportion of the Earth, than another;

Use of all, it may nevertheless be appropriated by every individual. This is done by the Improvement of any part of it lying vacant." Both the Native Americans and the European Newarkers had done this, establishing their just title. The writer denounced the grantbut tho'

it

ing of so

was made

for the equal

much American

land to so few (the great gentry), because

it

re-

quired that people buy lands at exorbitant prices, "a Hardship, that seems as

The Problem with great, as... the Necessity

Property

169

of buying the Water of the Rivers." 18 In sharp

contrast to the proprietors' authority-driven ideas of the origins of property rights, the letter writer

proclaimed the laboring individual's supremacy in

creating landed wealth.

The Newark purchasers' Answer of 1747 forcefully put

forth the

same argu-

ment. Again drawing heavily on Locke, the Answer maintained that

who by

Lands these 30 or 40

years" could not be denied

insisted that the Native

Americans owned Newark

"quietly possessed their

their estates.

19

The writer

virtue of their original possession

occupiers' ancestors

men

and improvement, and that the current

had peacefully purchased

this property.

The Answers

au-

thor maintained that the Board could not unilaterally nullify Newarkers'

property rights. 20

The yeomen's

stance challenged both the gentry's perceptions of the ori-

gins of ownership and their fundamental social assumptions concerning

physical

work

as well.

In the eighteenth century, a true gentlemen avoided

actual labor if he could. cial tenet. If labor ciety, since

The

spread of a labor theory of value eroded this so-

could establish ownership (and thus a place in political so-

property conveyed social status), then labor might be something

other than a despised activity suitable only for social inferiors.

The

yeo-

manry's insistence on ownership via labor implicitly challenged a key as-

sumption that maintained the

That the

disaffected

century writers aspirations

and

is

its

social hierarchy.

drew on Locke and apparendy other late-seventeenth-

hardly surprising. Fear of the

House of

Stuart's absolutist

perceived assault on the "liberties and properties" of

Eng-

lishmen prompted John Locke, the Mathers in Massachusetts, and a host of others in the late seventeenth century to write extensive tracts in defense of

the nonroyal origins of property.

How the

Newark spokesmen came

to

know

of the Second Treatise and a fragment of the Mathers' writings that they seem to quote

is

unclear, but the writer(s) understood that the Treatise supported

the position that possession and labor rather than authority established legiti-

mate property ideas

rights.

21

Eighteenth-century yeomen

more intimately than

may have known

Locke's

that of any other political theorists, but until re-

cendy the writings generated by provincial America's agrarian radicals have remained unexamined. In a sense, they launched the Enlightenment's second of libertarian ideals to consciously erode the old social order. While the idea that labor and possession established ownership made per-

offensive, the use

Newark's threatened farmers, they knew that it ran counter to provincial laws. The bundle of officially sanctioned legal assumptions confect sense to

cerning ownership in the British world was gradually losing

America

as

its

force in

radically different conditions transformed perceptions

about

ijo

property rights.

The

Conflict

disaffected eventually realized this

position that the laws of

man no

and articulated the

God

longer embodied the higher laws of

and nature.

Natural LawTraditional English legal thinking maintained that the

common

law em-

bodied a higher law

—

law, as this universal

law was known, was introduced into Western thinking

universally

knowable and decreed by God. Natural

by Cicero and had been part of European

Roman

the

empire. 22

time of

intellectual life since the

Newark spokesmen came

to insist that the riots

were

actually a just effort to maintain their townsmen's natural right to property in

the face of oppressive authority.

The

disaffected denied the legality of royally

sanctioned laws by claiming that these statutes breached the articles of natural justice. Griffin Jenkins's Brief Vindication contained a rudimentary defense of the

Newark Indian purchases

via universal law. Jenkins insisted that an unwritten

law of nations guarded the Native Americans' legal jected," he

we

call

wrote of the great gentry,

Heathens

.

.

.

"[to] the Title

rights.

"You have ob-

of those People

.

.

.which

these Nations were never conquer'd by the sword."

ing never been conquered, they were, like the rest of tected from arbitrary authority

"Human

Hav-

Kind," pro-

by a law of nations ordained by God. 23 Not

being British subjects, Jenkins insisted, the Native Americans were not under royal authority in property matters. Jenkins's

the Indian purchases by

way of universal

pamphlet teetered on defending

natural law without clearly articu-

lating that law's character.

The Newarkers'

publications of August 1747 developed the logic of the su-

common law and validated the Indian purchases Law of Nature," claimed a Newark writer, guarded of the Native Americans who had sold their property to

premacy of natural law over by

this

higher code. "The

the property rights the Puritans this

who

settled

Newark

pointed pamphlet, "they [the

Grant

for, their

of the

Whole

on Earth." 24

Lands

.

.

.

"And can it be supposed," asked Indians] had no Right unto, or Charter

in 1666.

they had, from the Great and Absolute Proprietor

Universe, and which had stood Regis ter'd in the best Record

God had

placed these natives in America; to question their tide

amounted to a breach of natural law. The Answer profoundly summarized the whole issue in the Purchasers' eyes: "Tis not to be doubted but they [the Indians] once had, and ... we cannot see how they have lost it [their property

The Problem with

rights] unless their

being Weak. .or unskilled in Religion, Policy and Arts, .

alter

tive

Americans could only "by 25

iji

The Na-

Matters of Right, upon the Principles of natural Justice."

can

lands.

Property

The

natives'

agreement" be induced to part with their

free

fundamental rights had rhetorically been placed on

a par

with those of Englishmen.

Such thinking fostered

a conceptual revolution as the disaffected

plained their local concerns in a universal language.

maintained that natural law stood distinct from the

now

ex-

Newark spokesmen

common

law and boldly

proclaimed that the "advantage any Nation hath over another, in Might

War

Power, in True Religion, or in the Acts of Government,

ments, or other Arts &, Sciences"

men and

—the very advantages

that defined English-

allowed them to gain their North American colonies

give the Nation so Ignorant affected's

...

and

&

or Improve-

— "doth not.

.

a Right to the Possessions of another People, be they ever Irreligious, ever so

Savage and Barbarous." 26

spokesman sharply contrasted natural law against the

The

dis-

royal govern-

ment's unjust, arbitrary dictates.

down

Natural law concepts penetrated

men

A

the

repeated their public assertions about

1750 petition to

George

II

its

Newark

social order as spokes-

supremacy in property matters.

signed by over four hundred

Newark yeomen

won by possession and improvement. "However rude Savage or Barbarous," the petitioners declared, "a people or they must have the inhabitants of any Country at the time of Discovery a right to being and existence which they cannot enjoy without place or Space to Exist in." 27 That eloquent declaration fully pronounced to George invoked natural law to protect property

.

II the universal

thority,

human

rights

even the Crown's.

which secured the

Many

their signatures)

.

.

natives' property

.

.

from

all

au-

of the signers must have heard the petition

read, or themselves read parts of

from

.

it.

Although we have no evidence

(apart

of their reaction to the petition, perhaps knowledge of

document legitimated what they felt in their hearts: I mine. Such thoughts foretold a radical challenge to the central

the concepts in the built

it

so

it is

assumptions of monarchical

society.

The The

property conflicts exposed the eighteenth-century's confusion about

society's origins.

God and but

it

Social Contract

The

late

medieval belief that royal authority flowed from

expressed timeless truths had already weakened to a large degree,

had yet

to be replaced

by anything

else.

In an effort to protect their

.

ij2

property,

Conflict

Newark writers began using Lockean

alize society's origins.

contract theory to conceptu-

In so doing, they threatened the foundations of monar-

chical authority.

The

common

Newarkers' perception that a breach existed between

law

and natural law disquieted them to the degree that they openly questioned whether a society so divided could continue to function. "The Dispute Depending," a

Newark spokesman

had a Legal Right or Not. This

declared in 1746,

"is

one Thing we Eye

is

whether the Natives as a

.

foundation which

.

if

overthrown The Super Structure Canot Stand Agreeable to that old Unalter-

quod non habet [he gives nothing because he has it "The Superstructure Canot Stand" this strangely contemporary

able Position, Nil dat not]."

28

—

statement captured perfectly the weight the validity

Newark disaffected placed on

the

of their purchases. They realized that their community's founda-

— not property ing — had become welded tion

just their

titles

but their way of living, praying and think-

to the idea that labor established legal

title.

And

the threat to the Indian purchases encouraged the disaffected to rethink the

very foundations of their society.

Newark

on the

writers initially tried to avoid dwelling

monarchical political implications of their stance.

explosive, anti-

They knew

that any claim

that property originated anywhere other than with the Crown's authority implicitly

to

threatened royal government, and they did not want to seem disloyal

George

kings were

God. The litical

II.

The monarchy

still

disaffecteds'

enjoyed immense popular support, and

still

believed to have

unsigned

somehow vaguely letter

received the sanction of

of June 1746 carefully skirted the poThe pamphleteer

questions raised by claiming land via natural rights.

Griffin Jenkins wished

George

II a

long

life

in

an

effort to dispel

that the rioters stood in rebellion against royal authority.

mittee tried to avoid the issue in

its

any notion

The Newark com-

writings of August 1746, although their

one attempt to use Latin ("Nil dat quod non habet") moved them dangerously close to subversion.

As the crisis dragged on, Newark spokesmen began macy of the entire monarchical social order. Drawing the Indian claimers declared, "It

is

is

Most Englishmen of this observation.

made

extensively

is

the great Ligament of Government:

uncertain and precarious, this

the period

on Locke,

a receiv'd Observation, That a settled Rule

of Property... impartially Applyed,

and when Property

to question the legiti-

would have had no

bond

is

broken." 29

trouble agreeing with

However, the deeper disagreement over the origins of prop-

erty rights turned consensus into divisive radicalism.

whose property the government should

protect.

No

one could agree on

The Problem with The Answer maintained

that any

Property

jyj

government that

ownership

nullified

without the consent of the governed was illegitimate. "Hence

it is

a Mistake,"

wrote the spokesman, "to think, That the Supream or Legislative Power of

any

Common Wealth can

.

.

.

dispose of the Subjects Estates Arbitrality." 30 In

verged dangerously close to open antiroyalism, the writer

a passage that

asked, "King Charles the

Second gave them [the lands of New Jersey] to the

Duke of York, and thence, by divers mean Conveyances, they are handed We hope you'll give us leave to ask down unto the present Proprietors 31 how he [Charles II] came by them." The spokesmen maintained that the riots represented a justified

defense of the principle that property rights, once

established through possession

and

labor, could

not be nullified

arbitrarily.

Questioning the origins of property rights exposed the provincial der's contractual nature.

"The purpose of the body

politic," the

thor maintained, was "the Preservation of Property being the

social or-

Answers au-

End

of Gov-

ernment; and that for which

Men

requires, that the People should

have property, without which they must be

enter into

Society,

supposed to loose that by entering into Society, which was the they entered into

it.

Too Gross an

Absurdity, for any

Man

men

End

for

which

32

If men And what was

to own."

entered into society, then the social order must be man-made. created by

necessarily...

it

could be dissolved and recreated, perhaps along radically

different lines.

This passage ring in

is

critical to

New Jersey

understanding the psychological upheaval occur-

and across British North America. Property

lay at the

core of the social and political universe: of political rights, economic liveli-

hood, marriage, generational relationships within families, and of course, communities.

The fundamental

disagreement over the origins of property

not only established the preconditions for violent resistance to the govern-

ment,

it

threatened to destabilize

all

social relationships.

The

conflicts over

property became one of the primary causes of the remarkable changes in

American

society

between 1740 and 1840.

That these Newark the July 1747

rioters issued their

march on Perth

Amboy

only reinforced their radical impact.

rioters'

rioters

A battle for political dominance, simul-

taneously physical and intellectual, raged in

with the

bold statements within weeks of

by a group of over two hundred

New Jersey that summer and fall,

writings providing a theoretical basis for violent resistance to

government.

Contested ideas about the origins of property played a central and heretofore unexamined role in destabilizing eighteenth-century America. Those

who

served the royal government, or derived their property rights from royal

.

i-j4

grants,

Conflict

saw property stemming from

came with and Growing numbers of

authority. Possession

signified obligations to those higher in the social order.

ordinary folk implicitly or explicitly rejected this view. Instead, they believed that property rights originated in experiences in America, in the

work

that

transformed land into farms, in the grants of colonial governments, and in purchases from the Indians. Property carried no hierarchical obligation, since the individual created

ued

it

by labor and possession. This disagreement contin-

until colonial society could not stand the strain.

Agrarian Unrest in Late Colonial America

The Newark

debate revealed the parameters of a growing disagreement

over property rights that was spreading throughout colonial society. In 1744, the ElizabethTown Associates petitioned the King-in-Council to ask that

The

the primacy of the Native Americans' property rights be recognized. titioners declared that "for great

pe-

and valuable Considerations, did purchase

.

.

from certain Indians, chief Sachems, then allowed Proprietors of those

On

Lands," meaning the ElizabethTown Tract. 33

the Peapack Tract, a

num-

34

Great

ber of disgruntled tenants also claimed lands via Indian purchases.

Tract rioters openly declared that their right to property was "in no Other

person but themselves

who were

possession and improvement gave

The tended

conflicts caused far

beyond

the Eldest inhabitants," thus insisting that

them good

title.

35

by the divergent understanding of property

rights ex-

New Jersey and seriously disrupted British authority in the

countryside. Colonial governments watched in horror as insurgents claimed

hundreds of thousands of acres in defiance of established authorities. In what

became Maine, lution,

and in

squatters resisted distant proprietors' claims before the

its

wake continued

to resist these claims

by invoking

Revo-

a labor

theory of value and ownership. These agrarian dissidents justified their actions

by invoking the "celebrated Lock," who

improvements on land in pretended purchaser." ically

asked

why

36

a State

he

who makes any it

than any

Vermonters applauded Ethan Allen when he rhetor-

Yorkers imagined themselves the owners of "towns,

and houses, that they build not"

in the

Englanders pushed aggressively into the

Hudson,

"says, that

of Nature has a better claim to

fields

37

Green Mountains. As other New New York landlords' patents east of

spokesmen challenged the Crown's ownership via right of discovery by declaring himself "confident that no Englishman or Dutch man would have judged it right or been satisfied had the Americans the

a sympathetic

The Problem with

.

.

.

first

Property

775

discovered England or Holland that the Sovereignty or Soil should

thereby be

deemed

lost."

38

Laws passed

failed as Scotch-Irish settlers

and

to control squatting in Pennsylvania

New Englanders took up tens of thousands

of acres without the Penn family's permission. In Maryland, farmers refused

pay quitrents to their proprietors, and in North Carolina, open revolt

to

broke out against lawyers and corrupt

officials

trying to assert,

among

other

39

backcountrymen. Herman Husband, a North Carolina Regulators, maintained that "peaceable Possession, especially of back waste vacant lands, is a Kind of Right." 40 Across a wide area of British North America, people gave voice to the idea things,

to the property of

title

spokesman

for the

and improvement established property

that possession

To

argument over property

see the

would be

a mistake.

New

colony's political culture tain borders,

Jersey's

as a

rights.

product of frontier settlement

persistent land problems shaped the

from the 1660s onward. Overlapping claims, uncer-

and ethnic/religious groups with perceptions of property

dis-

tinct from that of English common law tradition abounded in British North America. Clearly, those who arrived on the frontier carried with them cultural

baggage that encouraged them to take up property without the approval

of distant authorities. Colonial society's inability to reach a consensus about property formed part of the Revolution's subterranean foundations.

the agrarian radicals' message in his

Americans, declaring "fictious [the] principle that to the king."

41

Packet that "the

the

first

Thomas Jefferson echoed

Summary View of the all

Rights of British

lands belong originally

In February 1776, "Demophilus" wrote to the Pennsylvania most just and solid foundation of social hapiness was laid in

settlement of the Continent, the cultivation of the earth for the sub-

Here was no feudal tenure from some military Lord; every cultivator being the lord of his own soil." 42 It was this reality, already half myth in the 1740s, that those in the countryside fought for and sistence of

its

proprietor.

that they attempted to secure for their posterity as part of the Revolution's

settlement.

The problem with property continued into the nineteenth century as the new nation tried to come to grips with the conflict that had played so central a role in destroying the old order. The Homestead Act (1862) finally brought an answer of sorts, but sporadic conflicts continued. These struggles became em-

bedded

in our national consciousness (or perhaps subconscious), finding a

medium of weak

expression in stories of frontier individualism. Great distances,

central authority,

and ethnic differences

fuel conflicts

of the same sort

today in Brazil, where squatters, miners, rubber tappers, native Indian groups,

ij6

Conflict

cattlemen, and politicians struggle to define the origins of property rights in

Amazonian interior, and through economy of the entire nation. the vast

that struggle, to define the political

Historians endlessly debate whether ideas or impersonal sociological forces cause change.

Examining agrarian unrest

view that

is

this debate

largely miscast. In

of the government and the social origins of property

and

authority,

elite

in

grew out of

which

America

New Jersey,

in turn

reinforces the

the yeomen's defiance

differing notions of the

were spun together,

like the

threads of a rope, with the cultural and physical experiences of the agrarian dissidents.

The

disaffected did not perceive themselves as acting

(Lockean or otherwise) or on protect their

homes from

social issues.

a gentry bent

They saw themselves

on

ideas

as acting to

on forming an estate-dominated

soci-

ety and explained their actions using the political languages available to

them. In the eighteenth-century, agreement over the origins of property fractured.

The

resulting conflicts

pared the way for

undermined the provincial

social order

and pre-

new conceptions of authority and property to emerge.

CHAPTER NINE

Deference and Defiance:

A Tale ofTwo Men

{{^T TT Te

% l\

I

are informed," reported the Pennsylvania Journal in late

1748, "that

V

one of the heads of the

freed from the

Newark jail.

rioters"

had recently been

A small mob "came to the gaol at

early candle light," assaulted the sheriff, locked his wife in her kitchen,

crowd leader

liberated the imprisoned

Amos

and

Roberts. 1 It was indeed appro-

priate that this incident occurred at "early candle light," since the province

had entered a strange

The

struggle

political twilight that

continued well into the 1750s.

between the government and the coalition continued, but

lective violence

became more

diffuse,

and the

defined the period between 1745 and early 1748 havior of gentlefolk and

commonfolk

large

came

alike in this

col-

crowd actions that

to a halt.

The

erratic be-

long shadowy period ex-

pressed the profound sense of disorder that had overtaken

New Jersey by late

1748. After the intense confrontations of 1747, the coalition and the govern-

ment

recoiled

them.

The

that

from each

and uncertainty ruled

other,

in the gulf

between

violence had transformed the social and rhetorical conventions

had given

Two men

their lives

of

New

meaning and

order.

England descent influenced

period to an unusual degree.

pointed royal governor of

One was

New Jersey

collective behavior in this

a gentleman,

in 1747.

He

Jonathan Belcher, ap-

offered the moderate ele-

ments among the disaffected hope that they might peacefully escape the hangman's noose and

still

retain their

was grounded

in his identity as a

The

man was Amos

rian.

propelled

other

him

homes. Popular confidence in Belcher

New Englander and a New Light Presbyte-

Roberts, a disaffected plebeian

to the coalition's leadership.

the clubmen in his

politicized aspects of the

win adherents and in the process reown plebeian image. His very success contributed

colony's developing popular culture to

made

He

whose daring

777

ij8

to the coalition's

undoing

Conflict

as local leaders fled the antiproprietor

movement

out of fear of his growing power.

Reality and Counterreality: Riots, Rumors,

and the Ambiguity of Conflict, 1748-1752

The shock

created by the incidents that had occurred between 1745 and

early 1748 shaped attitudes across

New Jersey

tained violence had changed the social

ensured that the perception of

crisis

for years afterward.

The

sus-

meaning of language conventions and would continue long after the mass

crowd actions had ceased. Unrest continued

after 1748,

and four more

jail-

breaks occurred. But the coalition gradually weakened and the scale of violence decreased.

The

realization that the

character of the coalition

And when

it

their behavior

that freed

from the

the three-hundred-man

The

Amos

Roberts from the

mob

that

and dispersed quickly

entirely

They

commented it

The

Newark

seems they have got a

juxtaposing of the

with the

after the

later,

erratic

of local

earlier, quite

Jerseymen.

all

it.

jail differed in

ten times smaller than

two

The

in January

operated in

three subsequent

North

in 1752, involved small crowds;

two

James Alexander percep1749 that "their coming in

at night.

jailbreak in

little

men and

displayed none of their symbolic

after the incident.

of the three incidents occurred in Newark

Disguise,

to

had burst open the Newark jail

1748 crowd was composed

Jersey jailbreaks, one in late 1749 and

tively

behavior and the

Newark

The crowd was

earlier rioters.

"early candle light" to avoid detection. regalia

rioters'

came, they were hard pressed to understand

The yeomen

1746.

yeomen

had changed came very slowly

more Fear

.

.

.

than they used

to."

2

The

public daytime actions between 1745 and 1747

covert ones clearly indicates a shift in popular attitudes.

behavior of two imprisoned Newarkers in the late

summer of

1749 demonstrates the yeomanry's growing ambivalence over continuing the collective violence.

Theophilus Burwell and Aaron Ball had been imprisoned

November

for their part in the

rope

if convicted,

the two

1748

men

Newark jailbreak. Facing

even the proprietor-dominated courts for a "their long

test trial. Finally believing that

confinement [was] being prejudicial to them and their families," 3

they agreed to be broken from the

having blackened faces set them

unopposed

the hangman's

petitioned the governor, the assembly, and

success,

jail.

A small crowd wearing straw wigs and

at liberty

one evening. 4 Despite the crowd's

Burwell and Ball turned themselves in shortly

jailbreak, "convinced

of the

illegality

after the

5

of their proceedings." Their ambiguous

behavior reflected a broader feeling in the township; David

Ogden

reported

Deference and Defiance

ijy

same year that the use of guns and arson by Horseneck rioters dispossessing a gentry tenant "seems to Shock the More thinking part of the Riot-

in the

ers."

6

To many, such

militancy seemed inappropriate in an already

damaged

society.

The

intense uncertainty of this long twilight

Newark. Somerset County blacksmith John Davis,

was hardly confined

to

jailed for trespassing

on

Andrew Johnstons land at Peapack, reported that two men asked him through the jails window if he would "come out if we open the Doors, 7 to which the Depon't made answer he would not." This almost comical enproprietor

counter suggests the blurring boundaries between power and persuasion in Somerset. the

The men who approached Davis knew

that they could break

open

but they were uncertain whether the prisoner wished to be liberated.

jail,

Much

of the disorder in

way rumors and threats are

mented

by

this later period

and

they changed from

mouth

to

in the

Rumors and

threats functioned in this fractured society.

their nature uncontrollable

reality as

grew from rapid changes

in this society further frag-

mouth and day

to day.

A 1750

how uncontrolled linguistic conventions maintained of disorder. The incident revolved around a struggle for rioter

incident demonstrates the perception

Hendrick Hooglandt 's homestead. At the prompting of proprietor Lewis Johnston, Middlesex Sheriff John Deare served Hooglandt a writ of eject-

ment.

The yeoman responded by

finally

overwhelmed by the

Hooglandt, and in so doing he that revealed not only to

which

social reality

and

set in

how much

his deputies.

motion

soon

after

Deare then arrested

a series of social interactions

the violence had ebbed but also the degree

had been fractured by the

gentry's decision-making process.

A rumor circulated

attacking Deare with an axe, only to be

sheriff

injection of rumors into the

8

Hooglandt 's

arrest that rioters

intended to

kidnap proprietors Lewis Johnston and Philip Kearney to win the impris-

oned mans

release.

try's collective

just

The rumor

created a temporary counterreality in the gen-

consciousness in which a large

mob was

continually gathering

beyond the boundaries of Perth Amboy. James Alexander advised Kearhis wife to New York and to prepare to flee himself. The Board's

ney to send

leader begged

members of the Johnston family

tempered Lewis Johnston not to defend

his

to

encourage the hot-

home by force of arms when

the

mob attacked. Viewing the world through the prism of a string of unstoppable crowd actions, the great gentry readily believed that a large crowd was on the way

The

to kidnap the

9 gentlemen and smash the royal jail.

disaffected, however,

Board members prepared

responded to

this

new

to flee the capital, coalition leaders

Trenton-New Brunswick Road

advised Hooglandt

Even as meeting on the

crisis peacefully.

s

family to seek legal re-

180

Conflict

dress. Elizabeth Waller, the wife

of the Somerset

Hooglandts brother advised

imprisoned sibling to seek release

his

keeper, reported that

jail

"She understood," her deposition maintained, "they [the

would they

assault the royal

jail.

10

The

first

to

no longer understood the inten-

powers of their opponents.

Some among

the disaffected understood the period of flux as an opportu-

nity rather than as a crisis.

proposed

(in secret)

As

the coalition weakened,

These negotiations came even

royal government.

11

Magdelena Valleau

an agreement with the "scheming" James Alexander that

would have secured her personal property ants.

were

if that failed

unrest had fragmented social percep-

tions to such a degree that the combatants tions or

rioters]

Governor" to gain Hooglandts freedom. Only

petition the

legally.

as she

rights at the expense of her ten-

was denouncing Alexander

She did not go through with

this deal,

to the

but after 1748 she

ceased to participate directly in the unrest. Other coalition leaders also cut deals with the Board.

John

Low and Michael Vreelandt of Newark Township

accepted a secret bribe of approximately £500 proclamation

Robert Hunter Morris and James Alexander. 12 Shortly ried the niece of Josiah

party established

when

Ogden, reinforcing kinship

his brother

money from

thereafter,

ties to

Low

mar-

the proprietary

married the daughter of proprietor James

Hude. 13 In

1749, Newark's Anglican minister Reverend Isaac Browne reported to the SPG of "people of a good Character being daily added to it [the

church],"

14

including

1747, neither

man

members of

to the

Boards

Low

families.

15

After

ever again played a major role in the coalition, although

Low, needing popular support be a political

the Vreelandt and

to maintain his elected positions, continued to

irritant to the proprietors despite his financial clients.

and kinship

ties

16

In July 1747, rioters from across the colony boldly marched on the East Jersey capital. Yet by the end of 1748 their coalition began to unravel terminally

even

as low-level violence

continued for another fifteen years.

Why had

this

change occurred? The reasons were, of course, immensely complex, and thus it is

important to understand them in

human

terms.

The

lives

of two sons of

the Puritan migration, Governor Jonathan Belcher and rioter captain

Roberts, intersected in this

moment of crisis. Each

Amos

played a pivotal role in

bringing the unrest to an end.

Ethnodeference Restored: Governor Jonathan Belcher and the Decline of Collective Violence In 1747, a report reached the proprietors of a conversation between one of their agents and a Morris County rioter. "When this Informant," wrote Solo-

Deference and Defiance

mon

181

Boyle to James Alexander, "asked said Beadle

why they could

not be easy? as the

much

they gave out, he was very

[a

Morris County

New Governor was

rioter],

soon expected, and,

and so might expect to

their Friend,

as

settle

things to their Liking." But, Boyle sensed, the rioters were not at ease: "But

Deponent perhaps

says this

mind him when he comes,

they'l not

Way of thinking from

be a different

won't, nor even the king himself."

them? No, reply 'd

17

if he

should

said Beadle, that they

This rioters words suggest the nearly

impossible situation into which the imperial authorities thrust Jonathan

Appointed

Belcher.

New Jersey's

royal governor at the

mid- 1747, Belcher moved the colony toward peace and three years of upheaval. His ethnic and

moment of crisis

in

decade of violence

after a

and

religious identity

his consid-

erable political skills help explain his success, since ethnodeference encour-

aged

many of

had become

the disaffected to trust the

New

their governor. Belcher felt this

Light

bond

New

Englander

as well

who

and kept the

from the hangman's noose.

disaffected

Jonathan Belcher came from a prominent Massachusetts family and was very

much

a

of that place and time. 18 From an early age he expressed a

man

loyalty to the region

Mary said

once Queen find

of his birth so deep that he could of Calais-if they imbowel

New England written

ligious piety

common

George Whitefield

me good prayers"

luck...

when

he was a

man

my Death they will

after

man

to

ties in

real

of his

station.

had embraced him, "wept, wished and people to

ministers,

the Great Evangelist visited Boston in 1740.

ambition or wider vision.

As

20

a

This

is

my

not to say

youth Belcher had

Europe and shrewdly visited the Elector of Hanover in become king of England. In 1730, Belcher used his growing

London

to secure the governorship of his beloved

Bay and thus achieve an honor

Belcher's identity as a rial

me

Belcher also demonstrated the re-

to the region, but unusual for a

recalled that Belcher

without

Germany, soon chusetts

my heart." 19

and recommended himself,

traveled widely in

patronage

on

may say as

later write, "I

rarely gained

New Englander

shaped his

Massa-

by provincials. career.

In his

first

impe-

governorship, Belcher found himself mired in the intractable issue of pa-

per currency, and his

ties to

Massachusetts betrayed him.

landers expected him, as one of them, to restrictions

on the paper money

supply.

Many New Eng-

somehow circumvent

His

efforts to

the imperial

compromise alienated

both the local population and the British government. 21 Forced from he traveled to London and remained

office,

at court for three years trying to secure

new post in the imperial bureaucracy. Early in 1747 he learned that he had been named governor of chaotic New Jersey, the government of which was known to be in a state of virtual collapse. 22 Little did he know that his luck a

had

just

changed and that he would

imperial governor.

live

out what remained of his

life as

an

/&

Jonathan

Belcher.

in mid-1747. etors,

Conflict

This son of Massachusetts became governor of chaotic

A New Light New Englander unsympathetic to the

New Jersey

East Jersey Propri-

he helped restore popular confidence in the royal government. Princeton UniGift of Professor George Musgrave Giger, Class of 1841. Reproduced with

versity.

permission. 1997 Trustees of Princeton University. Princeton, N.J.

versity,

The Art Museum,

Princeton Uni-

Deference and Defiance

background and

Belcher's regional

i8j

religious convictions

seemingly herculean task of restoring order to

set in the

became

a vital as-

New Jersey. The new

governors cultural identity recommended him to a frightened population desperate to close the perceived gap between higher and

common

law.

Ethnodeference, refined to account for religious identification, helps explain the rioters' willingness to embrace Belcher.

At

the time of his arrival, the Es-

Gods

sex disaffected expressed confidence that Belcher, as a "student of

Law," would act only in a way that would be "pleasing to God, in Making 6c

Laws

Establishing

Judgements were

now

for

.

.

Such

.

and as

who

Laws of Men

in Executing the

only too ready to acknowledge that the "alwise

orders of Superiority and inferiority

among men, and

The Newark committee was quick to Name ... of a Good Ruler ... we Accept

.

.

.

the

Majesties Royal favour to us." 23 In Belcher's "mixture of Justice

him

honor

to be

assure Belcher that it

as a

Mark

of his

ElizabethTown leaders declared that

1751,

and Levity.

.

.

have

.

orders, that... so long disturbed this Province."

gave

God

disaffected

hath ordained

requires an

paid accordingly."

he "hath

will not give

Commandments of God." The

Cross the

.

.

24

instant credibility with the coalition's

heal[ed] the

unhappy Dis-

Belcher's cultural identity

most powerful ethnic

ele-

ment.

Others among the disaffected shared the Essexmen's confidence in the

minded governor. The Committee of the Disaffected sent a "Wee the Committee ... humbly Crave leave to... Congradulating your Excellency's Safe arrival and accession into our Gov-

evangelically

warm

greeting to him:

ernment, with our Gratulations to heaven." 25 squatters

begged "that your Excellency

Great Wisdom."

26

The

troubled Great Tract

will afford us

...

Relief ... in your

Belcher set to work using this goodwill to restore the

royal government's authority.

Like any

civil

magistrate, Belcher feared disorder, but unlike

the gentry, he wanted the violence to letter to his

nephew, he explained

come

some among

to a peaceful end. In a revealing

his biblically

based principles for dealing

with the insurgency. "Soft words," he wrote, "turn away wrath but the wringing of the nose brings forth Blood." 27 Belcher quickly warned the disaffected that "breakers of the public peace"

would

feel the "lash

of the Law." However,

he also reassured them that "they should have my. .protection in .

consistent with

cause he

Reason and

knew he

Justice."

In

part,

he followed

all

things

this strategy be-

lacked the physical power to compel obedience, but also in

part because he felt a cultural particularly

28

drawn

tie

to the disaffected. Belcher found himself

to the descendents of

He became

New

Englanders living in Essex

some of the ElizabethTown Associates and 29 the family of Newark's Presbyterian minister, Aaron Burr Sr. County.

close to

to

184

Conflict

Belcher eventually issued a pardon as means of bringing the violence to an end. Proclaimed

on February

of time for those indicted for In

November

1747/48, the

17,

riot

1748, the leaders

and treason

pardon stipulated a

set

amount

to swear allegiance to the king.

of the Maidenhead

rioters accepted the par-

don, and at Newark, fourteen took the pardon while two hundred others

were apparently ready to do so backed out

at the last

who

minute under the

Amos

influence of the impassioned rhetoric of crowd leader

Roberts. 30

Belcher was disappointed that more did not accept the pardon, and at one point he unsuccessfully sought additional legislation to help subdue the unrest.

But other changes he

would proceed unabated.

initiated

would

assure that the coalition's decline

31

In mid-1748, Belcher began using patronage appointments to relegitimate the legal system in popular eyes. society

was

He realized that the only way to

disaffected. In short,

stabilize the

more sympathetic

to appoint officials perceived to be

to the

he sought to institutionalize ethnodeference. In one

telling report, the council

complained

bitterly that Belcher ignored their ad-

and instead sought

vice concerning judiciary patronage appointments

troduce the Friends of the Rioters into the Magistracy." In

to "in-

December

1751,

a

disgusted James Alexander wrote to Robert Hunter Morris that "the two

ElizabethTown Ambassodors petition to

England

in 1744],

.

.

.

[men who had

ElizabethTown

carried an

Stephen Crain and Mathias Hatfield

Magistrates of Essex, Crain a Judge and Hatfield Sheriff."

32

are

made

Such judicial

re-

configurations restored the yeomanry's hopes for a favorable legal solution to

the property conflicts. 33

Nothing enraged the great gentry more than their

clients

disaffected. In

Belcher's denying

patronage positions in favor of those sympathetic to the

one

case,

Belcher refused to appoint a

etary Dunstar family as a magistrate because the

who was

them and

member of the

man

lived with a

propri-

woman

not his wife. 34 Actions like this led the gentry to complain publicly

and privately that the governor was

in secret league

men," the council wrote to Belcher in

1748,

with the

rioters.

"When

"who your Excellency know stood

indicted of high treason were admitted into private Conference with your Excellency, and suffered, unmolested, to Depart, it is not to be wondered, That they think they have right to appear any where." 35 The proprietors

never ceased to resent Belcher for these transgressions of genteel behavior.

Robert Hunter Morris eventually tried to have Belcher removed from imagining himself appointed governor in Belcher's stead. But

office,

like his father

during the Zenger Crisis, Morris discovered that his royally appointed oppo-

nent had stronger imperial influence than he did; the

London

authorities re-

Deference and Defiance

185

36 Morris would have to wait for a colony to govern, and fused to cooperate.

when he

received

it,

he found that in colonial

politics things

were

easier said

than done. Years of service in the

honed Belchers

first

mandarin bureaucracy had

British empire's

and he eventually used patronage

political skills,

to split the

37 ranks of the Eastern Board. This son of Massachusetts understood that he

could divide the great gentry by playing on their deep craving for political honors.

He

focused his efforts on Samuel Nevill, perhaps because Nevill, un-

other leading Board members, had no

like the

ties to

Scotland, or perhaps

because he had realized the depths of NevuTs craving for position.

The

gov-

ernor offered the proprietor the position of second judge of the circuit (sessions) court if Nevill

Belchers

NevuTs etors,

would break with the other Board members and support end the property conflicts peacefully.

initiatives to flirtation

who saw

it

James Alexander,

as

with Belcher predictably angered the Scottish proprian assault on

a frustrated

all

had worked

that they

In a

for.

letter to

Robert Hunter Morris reported that "Dr.

Johnston spoke very severly to Nevill and told him he was going to act a part that for

none of His friends would approve." Morris himself condemned Nevill

becoming

to Justify the

on the

fault

ward

a "tool in the

Assembly

officers

Hands of a

in not

crafty manager,

and Courts of Justice."

gaged to act a part in such schemes, but

ently,

He

intentions were

office, a

waywould knowingly have en-

verbally confronted the

proprietor, saying, "I could not believe he

esteem his acceptance of that

whose

doing anything against the Rioters to Lay the

now he was

declaring himself

told of

my

it;

I

should

enemy." Appar-

being an enemy of the hot-tempered Morris did not weigh heavily on

NevuTs mind,

for

Morris reported that

but saw nothing of him." 38

The

him ... we ought

undone and

will serve

Clamour 6c Mr. Belcher was their control over

ability to prosecute their

town two days afterwards

no further dependance on that "we think the Nomination of

to have

council complained bitterly

Mr. Nevill to be one of the Judges, groundless

"I stay cl in

.

.

.

the Rioters to Support their

so informed."

appointments temporarily

property claims diminished.

39

With

lost,

By

their unity

the proprietors'

1750,

Belchers re-

markably deft use of patronage had allowed him to establish the foundation of a

new

Other

social peace.

40

factors helped to encourage this

new

peace, particularly the trajec-

tory of imperial politics. Jerseymen's fear of the French and Native

cans was high and growing during Belchers term as governor. still

needed

Britain's protection; the disaffected

The

Ameri-

colonists

had never forgotten that the

imperial armies were their trump card against their external enemies. In

1753,

186

William Allen, owner of a

Conflict

mine on the Great Tract in Hunterdon reported that the works manager "now [has] these very people [the rioting squatters]

.

.

.

quite under his influence

upon them

calls

Much

large iron

and marches with him whenever he French and Native Americans]." 41

for assistance [against the

of the willingness to seek peace after 1750 grew from the

still

potent

of the empire's foreign enemies. 42

fears

Governor Belcher and some among the likely

were

disaffected leadership

also

aware that the imperial authorities' benign neglect of the situation in

come to an end. In late 1749, after years of letters London authorities begging for help, the great gentry

the colony threatened to

and reports finally sent

to the

Robert Hunter Morris to England to ask for imperial assistance

to restore order in the province.

Amid broader debate among British

authori-

Morris recalled being presented "to Lord Halifax[es]," by Thomas Penn.

ties,

Halifax informed Morris that he "had

Long looked on them

of consequence that threatened the Loss of that Colony

riots as a

matter

at least, if

not of

more." Morris begged Lord Halifax to send "a military force to strengthen the Civill Authority," and Halifax asked whether a regiment would do the job.

43

Although these troops were never

high-level rumors that soldiers were

sent, after 1750 there

on the way

were

persistent,

to the troubled colony.

Gov-

ernor and disaffected alike sought to avoid military repression of the disorder,

each for their

own

reasons.

Jonathan Belcher's career

American

not particularly well

is

historians. Studies

known among

early

of colonial governors are not in vogue, lan-

guishing in the intellectual shadows as monographs about very different sues take pride of place. life

just as

it

But the

tide

is-

of change careened through Belcher's

did the lives of the disaffected and the proprietors, and like

them, he struggled with the consequences of these changes. His career intersected with four of the eighteenth century's tions: the creation erty;

most momentous transforma-

of inflated economies; disputes over the origins of prop-

the Great Awakening; and the establishment of religiously based

institutes

of higher education

(in his case the

College of

New

Jersey).

44

Belcher tried to resolve the localized crises caused by these changes in a peaceful manner. His willingness to compromise, his tolerant Presbyterianism, and his unfailing support of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) suggest that

when

scholarly attention again turns to the colonial period's "great"

men, Jonathan Belcher

will

be reassessed in a positive

assessment occurs, emphasis will be placed on identities

light.

And when

his ethnic

and

this

religious

helped shape peoples' responses to him in different contexts.

Belcher's origins

hope

how

and

beliefs allowed

some of the

disaffected the luxury of

for a peaceful solution to the property conflicts.

Deference and Defiance

Amos

Roberts,

The

i8y

Rise of the Captains,

and the Plebeianization of the Clubmen's Movement Not

all

Jersey

yeomen grasped

the olive branch Belcher extended. These

most

militants unintentionally helped Belcher restore order in the empire's

disorderly colony. In mid-1747, a daring group of plebeian captains seized

control of the coalition and remade

it

in their

own

image.

A widespread per-

ception developed that these popular leaders were undermining

all

forms of

deference, thus threatening to break the link between the social

and

political

structures. Fear

of these captains motivated

accommodation with the new governor

win property and power ended only

many

leading local

after 1747.

The

men

to seek

captains' efforts to

after their followers' will collapsed in the

early 1750s.

The

under riotous paramilitary

and 1747 as royal authority staggered Unlike some committeemen, the captains, as their

began between

captains' rise

assaults.

title

1745

suggests, did not shy

away from leading mobs against

royal

Their willingness to engage in direct action recommended them to a

jails.

population anxious for deliverance from the great gentry's lawsuits. the captains would be headed by Newark's

mon Wyckoff of Somerset,

Amos

A

of

list

Roberts, and include Si-

Nathaniel Davis of Turkey, Andrian

Hegeman of

Middlesex, perhaps Peter Freseneu of Bergen County, and Joseph Smith of the Great Tract in Hunterdon.

Most of

these

men

are historically invisible before

Amos

with the exception of

knowledged

and

leader,

his

and

after the riots,

Roberts. Roberts served as the captains' aclife

story exemplifies

how

the eighteenth-

century's changes produced, for lack of a better term, plebeian democratic

people, less deferential than those

from

New

England

to

who came

Newark with

before them. His family

came

the original settlers in 1666, but the

Roberts never enjoyed prominence and were initially assigned the westernmost homelot, the position furthest from the center of power. 45 Amos Roberts was born in the

and he apparently spent 1740s,

Newark his

interior at the seventeenth century's close,

whole

life

away from the town

By

the

he was a propertyholder, but not surprisingly, Newark freeholders

failed to elect

him

to

any position in the town government. 46 Those posts

were the preserve of prominent townsmen, not of outlivers 1744, the

town meeting assigned him

cerned with property

title,

to a temporary

the issue that propelled

Perhaps those around him already sensed that this that

itself.

would allow him

great gentry.

to distinguish himself in the

like Roberts.

In

town committee con-

him

to popular power.

man had ongoing

47

special qualities conflict

with the

188

The

Conflict

of the Enlightenment's

reality

early 1740s as family

first

and friends faced

with decades of labor.

offensive impacted Roberts in the

from homesteads won

legal ejectment

A particularly egregious lawsuit forged in him a bitter

hatred toward the great gentry and their

Newark

clients, the

Ogden

family.

Colonel Josiah Ogden, the founder of Trinity Anglican Church and the

fa-

David Ogden, earned Roberts's enduring enmity when he laid claim to the property of the late George Day. Day had been both a friend and kinsman by marriage to Roberts and had named Roberts ther of proprietor lawyer

Ogden sold the land "to the No small Damage of the fatherless," as the Newark captain angrily remem48 bered. This particular episode enraged Roberts and set him on a course that brought him into confrontation with the gentry. The Roberts family's relationship with the Newark town meeting was the guardian of his children. After a legal battle,

scarcely better than their relationship with the proprietary interest.

helps explain his lack of regard for the leading local

Throughout the eighteenth

trolled the committees.

men who

This

originally con-

century, a heated dispute

over property boundaries alienated the Roberts family from the town govern-

ment. According to the town, the Roberts had repeatedly encroached on

common While

land; according to the Roberts, they

New

bitter.

life,

this particular

50

Roberts's family history, the various disputes

Roberts's

the disputed lands. 49

England towns knew many such disagreements,

one was especially durable and

The

owned

which buffeted

Amos

and the quirks of his own personality combined to create an

es-

became obvious at the January 1746 riot at Newark. When the crowd of three hundred wavered in the face of the armed militia surrounding the jail, it was Amos Roberts who "mounted his horse hollowed out, Those who are upon my List, follow me," and stormed through the militia lines to free the two imprisoned men. 51 He may

pecially effective

.

.

crowd

leader.

meetings of 1744, but

effort to

abilities

.

have been elected to authority

may have

His

among

we have no

the disaffected in one of the popular

record of

it.

The Newark committeemen

given authority to Roberts to control the crowds, perhaps in an

co-opt a dangerous

institutions. If this

was the

man by giving him

case, they

a place within their extralegal

soon had good reason to question their

decision.

The

rendering of the social order in the wake of the January 1746 action

encouraged

Amos

moved among

the

the threatened

yeomen

tact

Throughout 1746, Roberts denouncing the Board and urging

Roberts's rapid rise to power.

North Jersey

disaffected

to join the

Newark-led

coalition.

with the Harrison Tract's Simon Wyckoff and others

He

established con-

who would become

Deference and Defiance

captains in their respective communities.

189

At some point

he was

in 1746,

ei-

ther appointed or took control of the coalition's striking arm.

In 1747, Roberts and the other captains simultaneously seized power in the coalition

led the

When

and challenged the royal government.

crowd of two hundred against Perth Amboy,

it

Roberts and WyckorT

was obvious

to

all

that

the captains had superseded the committees. After the incident, the council

declared that tains over tain.

.

"it

appears that the Rioters of Particular Places, have got Cap-

them ... 6c that

.in this Province."

the said

52

To

Amos

Roberts seems to be the Chief Cap-

men seemed

a threatened population, these

to

be the only hope in the face of the great gentry's lawsuits. That some were not even locally prominent before the unrest seemed in that

moment of crisis

to be irrelevant.

In a world

enamored of the

still

fiction

of social immobility, Roberts and

the other captains had risen too high too fast even in the eyes of their allies.

As

early as

May

1747,

Newark committeeman John Low

he and "many more of my Friends" were concerned about those

them

[the riots] to that Height, that

ready

come

to fear this militant

in a petition to

King George

may be

it

or our Committee, to Quell them." 53

difficult

Low knew

made

who

for the

"carry 'd

H—

Roberts well and had

yeoman. Middlesex

II,

Even

rioter

to ruin the

whole country.

the coalition as the committeepeople

se,

al-

Dollens Hegeman,

a thinly veiled reference to Roberts

and Simon Wyckoff when he declared that he had been encouraged by others who sought

own

declared that

came

54

to riot

Divisions appeared within

to understand that these daring

captains threatened the social order as well. Faced with a challenge from be-

low

as well as above,

it is little

wonder

that the leading

members of the com-

mittees saw Jonathan Belcher's arrival as almost an act of divine providence.

A

1749 confrontation between Roberts

John Heard

New

reveals the character

Jersey's

and Woodbridge assemblyman

of the tensions between the captains and

leading local families. 55 Roberts and his followers sought

Heard's support because he was a leading local the proprietors. Nonetheless,

man known

Heard rebuffed Roberts,

hands with the Said Roberts," and wondered him." Heard and Roberts argued even

as

to be hostile to

"refused to shake

"at the great

members of

impudence of

Roberts's party "in-

Heard in a very gross manner." As the angry group spilled outside Heard's home, the rioter captain declared "that he had as good a Cane as Capt. Heard, with as good a silver head, and made of as good stuff." Stressing what he felt was his natural social superiority, Heard called

sulted the said Capt.

Roberts "a poor Roberts replied,

man not worth taking notice of." An extremely upset am as good a man as you are John Heard, you are a Capt.

silly

"I

s

igo

Conflict

of not above a hundred men, and I have three hundred men '

::_*r.

P^r-errs

e

5

carry

~s.tr. cler arced

cutsuul*

Roberts's inststrnre that the anrlaim of his

ar.c:

still

him the equal of Heard rndiratrs that the origins

my call at

at

anv

fv-tirinz.

numerous supporters made of

the origins of

sta tus, like

propeity, had become contested Roberts believed that his followers' consent

mzt

uce social euual. if

rurr.

w: -uli

rrri

rus

strr.rr.Ti.ir.

::r.e ir rut

v.-

3t:::e

ike

::

r.

:

Heard.

super.::. :f

:

eralirarlar.

clue

:"::

rev: lute

re crrereu the as-

cr.

::.

rrarre:? that

the Arr.erlcuc: ar.i French revolutions, the shak-

ing of hands was mhiatrd by a social equal or a superior. Heard s rude tion of Roberts s

hand grew from

his perception that the plebe

rejec-

had elevated

himself above Ins station.57 Heard was a duty elected assemblyman and mili'.tut:

t.i v.

r:n

i

•.veH-estarlishti farruy. .vhile Roberts

h: rai srrrg-arrreu has

also visibly become the

The Heard- Roberts

way

vitas

a rude upstart

rover The problem with property had

t:

problem with social authority. confrontation also hints at the consumer revolution

role in eroding deference in eighteenth-century America. Roberts seized has silver- headed rare

—

a

material symbol :f status

—

on

to assert his equality

to Heard. As access to material status symbols was popularized, the positions

of

elites

—

local, regional,

or intercolonial

— became

more

precarious. In

and his own abilities made him as good a man as assemblyman John Heard. That Roberts aspired to a kind of gentility only reinforces the view of him as a man of the eighteenth cenrurv. Fear of the captains as much as Governor Belchers arrival encouraged the coalitions moderate dements to seel< peaceful :e cress. At the end of 1748, Newarkers petitioned the assembly to resolve the property question. - The Roberts's eyes, Ins silver-headed cane

petition assured the assembly that the rioters tices [rioting] are illegal. . .ocby no

e:oec

tree

means

perrtr. rut Mire Newarkeri

:

now

believed that "such prac-

to be persisted in." The council re-

tuoueo

::

search

:":: 1

legal solu-

tion to the ptopaty conflicts, even after the Board rejected a proposal for a 59

In some desperation, the Newark committee drew up a petition to the king, and at the end of 1749 John C ondi t and young Daniel Lamson carried it to London.60 The document contained a loud reaffirmation of "their loyalty to Your Majesty'" and asked for royal assistance test trial (by jury) in 1749-

in ending the disputes harmoniouslyi**

Even

as

members of the committees

petitioned the royal authorities,

Roberts took the lead in binding the militants into a

new

coalition.

In

late

&

.November 174S, Roberts "inert with Several People beyond Brunswick some from Feapack" at the Widow Hamptons tavern in Rahway. "Of those meti," recorded one witness, "he heard one calTd Hegeman, another tavemgoer claimed "he saw one of them WvckofE, another Joseph Smith."

A

Deference and Defiance

Writeing he thinks

it

191

was Joseph Smith ... heard some of them Say

New Articles They were Going

to

Enter

into."

62

new

In these

Comtee." 63 the

new

Two months

later,

need

The

arose.

Money for

Officers

...

to be a

Roberts drew the Great Tract squatters into

agreements, and some months later

offered assistance to the Native dlesex.

Wards 6c appointing

was

agreements,

the rioter militants agreed to "standing by one another 6c levying their defense, 6c for dividing into

it

Americans

militants constructed their

Simon Wyckoff

living

own jail

reportedly

on contested lands

in

gentlemen

to imprison

Midif

the

64

The new coalition was a kind of political hybrid because it was led by men from far down the social order who, despite their militancy, still conceived their political universe in the familial language used to describe every rela-

tionship in this provincial world.

the

Rahway meeting

A witness

heard

Amos

"that these People mett were

all

Roberts declare at

his children 6c

one

family 6c seemed mighty Loveing 6c united one towards Another." 65 Roberts's choice of

mon man who movement

Amos and

words was noteworthy because they came from

that threatened the gentry's

Roberts's

power

dominance

of authority.

By October

committee's membership was being influenced by Roberts.

him

and Stephen Morris, another left

relative

of Roberts.

to place kin

Newark Among the com-

1749, the

mitteemen were Amos's son Joseph, Joseph Day (Roberts's riage),

com-

in the society.

in the second coalition allowed

political allies in positions

Joseph Roberts

a

conceived of himself as the political father of a colony-wide

relative

66

The

by mar-

next year

67 So the committee, but Roberts's other kin remained.

strong was Roberts's influence that he was able to get "the Rioters in Hunter-

don

.

.

.

[to]

add two

men

to their committee, to witt,

Burbridge [Bainbridge?]." 68

By

John Bolleau and John

1748, then, Roberts's political reach spanned

the colony, and the coalition began to reflect his plebeian values.

The

weakened the antiproprietor movement, and the captains began manipulating popular customs to maintain and gather support. British North America had richer popular cultures than many historians have suspected. While several scholars have begun to examdefection of

ine Pope's

Day and

community

leaders

other urban customs, the contours of the countryside's

69 Chief popular cultures have yet to be deeply explored.

used by the captains to garner support was the

lowed young and old to

socialize freely

well as the great gentry saw

frolic,

and often

frolicking as a

among

the customs

a large party that al-

wildly.

70

Local leaders

symptom of disorder. In

as

1739, the

Presbyterian Reverend Jonathan Dickinson expressed his Calvinist-shaped

Assemblyman Jacob Spicer complained about Cape May County. 71

disdain for frolics, and in 1756 disorderly frolics in isolated

i

Brierly,

New Jersey produce,

92, 216

85

Bellomont, Governor, 60

Brazil,

208

in other colonies, 195

Carribean, as market for

200, 207, 219, 248

Belleville,

132, 139, 140, 203,

captains, 187^196

Belcher, Jonathan,

Tom,

Nathaniel,

Camp family, 72, 95, 208 Cape May County, 191

226

bathing, 228

Bell,

Index

112,

124

family, 141

copper mine, 98-102 Cornbury, Lord (Governor of New Jersey and

New York),

26, 60, 71, 125

Cosby, William (Governor), 30,

31, 37,

167

Council (of New Jersey assembly), 109-110, 159

Calvin, John,

53,

120

Calvinist theology mentioned, 68, 71

Camp, Joseph, 203-204

counterfeiting, 151-152

Country ideology, 29-30,

37, 114, 154, 167,

232-237, 242, 244, 245, 258n

115,

Index

courts, 116-118,

zyon

chancery,

120

117,

common

jij

Dodd Town, 91 Dod family, 208 Dunn, Samuel,

pleas, 116

131

Exchequer, 116

Dunstar, Charles, 96,

oyer and terminer, 117

Durland, Garrett, 134 Dutch, xii, 4, 5, 12-13,

quarter sessions, 116

Queens Bench, 116 Supreme Court, 116,

124-129, 140,

91,

dialect, 63

23,

funerals, 63

40, 59, 122

Coxe, John, 134

inheritance, 126-127

family, 23, 40, 59, 81, 119, 122, 155

marriage customs, 62, 125-126

Dutch Reformed Church, 49, 62, Dutch West Indies Company, 61

Cranbury, 66 Crane, Caleb,

58-64, 65,

18, 47> 48,

193

zone defined, 58

culture

covetousness, 87^88

Coxe

184

assimilation, 126

123

at taverns, 243

Coxe, Daniel, Jr.,

155,

151,

115

67, 80, 86

Crane, John, 203 Crane, Stephen, 184

East Jersey,

Crane, William, 194, 240

East Jersey Proprietors,

Crane

et al. vs. the

Crown, 248

31,

Crane family ElizabethTown,

at

Newark,

15, 72,

14,

140

40,

51, 59,

66, 67, 73, 92, 95

xi, 11, 19-21, 23, 28, 30,

40, 41, 45, 60, 85, 88, 90, 97, 101, 109,

no,

at

xi, 18,

114, 115, 123, 124, 127, 132, 135, 141, 142,

156, 163, 164, 185, 188, 194, 203, 214-217, 237,

250,

76, 95, 115

26m

Cranetown, 91 Cromwell, Oliver, 68

compared

to

Cross, John (Reverend), 76, 80, 82, 83, 86,

compared

to Virginia gentry, 196

creation of the

end

120-121, 160, 192 as

crowd

crowd

1,

in

79, 82

13, 18, 24,

39, 40, 51, 67, 69, 73,

74, 80, 81, 99, 102, 115, 134, 144, 154, 183,

194, 198, 207, 215, 246, 247,

Tract, 13-14, 91, 102, 120, 145,

ElizabethTown Associates,

Deare, John, 179 death, 54-55

262n 151,

194, 232

14, 25, 38, 73, 97,

119, 124, 135, 138, 140, 144, 174, 183, 184, 214,

deer parks, 42, 99, 100, 223, 226 3-4, 48,

democratized,

Deism,

South Carolina, 206

ElizabethTown,

Davis, Nathaniel, 187, 192, 193 Davis, Thomas, 76, 94

2,

211

elections, 202-206, 242-243

162

Dalrymple, Joseph, 159-160

deference,

254

Edwards, Jonathan (Reverend), 80,

121, 122-123,

Davenport, James,

activities,

ejectments, 119, 122

26, 109, 166, 171

customary law,

21

Easter, 62

leader, 149

actions, 107

crown,

Board of Proprietors,

New York gentry, 196

215,

138,

247

Scots among, 140

268n-26gn

ElizabethTown Bill in Chancery, 119-120,

203-204

29, 35

124,

145

Delancey family, 41 Demophilus, 175

England, 4 English Civil War,

Depeyster family, 32 Dickinson, Jonathan,

English Proprietors,

18, 22, 26,

Enlightenment,

28-31, 34, 37, 114, 209, 242,

74, 76, 79, 81, 85, 191

compared

to Virginia

Dod, David, 241 Dod, John, 99

2, 3,

60, 125,

133, 135

263-264

pictured, 77

Dividing Line, 18-20, 40, 59

Dockwra's 2000,

29, 36

97, 135

boundary

entreprenurial activity, 96 disputes, 19

envy, 98

Essex County,

25, 39, 61, 91, 95, 123, 154, 160,

162, 193, 230, 239

ethnodeference,

3,

47-50, 180-186, 269n-27on

ji4

Index

guns, 179

factors, 93

compared

to those in Virginia, 93

Farrand family, 208

Halsted, John, 140

Fauconier. Peter, 60, 125

Hamilton, Andrew, n,

Fauconier s Company. 60-61, 124-129

Hampton, James, 160, 163 Hampton, Jonathan, 73 as Deputy Surveyor, na

Fenix. John, 163

*Fifteen-Mile Purchase,* 78 Filmex. Sir Robert, 165

David Hackett,

Fischer,

Form an, John,

as

Harrington, James, 37 259, 283, 287

•

Board agent, 97, no, 128

Forman, Jonathan, na

Harriman, John,

Harrison family,

foxhunting, 228, 229, 230, 231-232

Harrison Tract,

Franklin, Benjamin, 35, 44, 90, 100

Hartshorne

William (Governor),

41, 234, 235,

131, 141,

144

139

96, 140

15, 95,

40, 59, 80, 141, 145

19,

farriiry; 113

Hatfield, Mathias, 184

Hatfield family, 14

240,244 Francisco,

-

committeeman,

as a

26

67, 73

Harrison, Joseph, 59 Harrison, Samuel, 95,

Form an, Samuel, na Forman family, 141

Franklin.

22,

Abraham,

Heard, John, 189—190

134

Francisco, Barow, 134

Heathcote family, 41

Fransisco, Hendrick, 131

Hedden ramify; 208 Hegeman. Andrian, 187, 190 Hegeman. DoUens, 140, 141, 189

Freehold, 69 treeholders, 113

Freeman

Hegeman family, 209

208

family.

na

freemasons, 229

hereditary- privilege,

Frelinghuysen, Fredrick, 253

Hetrield, Cornelius, 140

Frelinghuysen, Theodoras, 79, 80, 83

Hetfield, Mathias, 207, 208

French Huguenots,

hierarchy, 108

church

of, in

61, 124-129

New York, 125-126

Holmes, Jonathan, 53, 54, 55, n8 Holmes, Josiah,

Freseneu, Peter, 187, 194 frolics, as political events,

Holmes

191-192

home

231

family; 53,

113-^, 205

design, 223-228

and landscape, 226

gardens, 99, 226, 238-239

gender

at Stirling's estate,

238-239

Homestead Act, 175

influenced by ethnicity, 124-129 in the Netherlands, 125-129

Hooglandt, Hendrick,

and property, 196

Hooglandt (Hoagland), John, 205 Hooglandt family, 133, 180, 208-209

genrrification, 98, 99, 223—232 gentry.

New Jersey s compared to Virginia's, 2, 27

George

Hooper, Robert Lettice, 206 Hopewell,

I, r8i

George H, 76, 124, 142, 159, 171, 172, and popular royalism, 217-220

189,

190

George HI, 229 Germans, 49, 61,

179, 192, 197

D9,

xii, 22,

12i, 122,

40, 51-52, 55, 69, 80,

140, 145.

Horseneck, Newark Tract, 64,

Horton

godparents. o>

Hude, James, 180 Hunterdon County, xii,

Gordon.

:o.

;:.

;;

Graham, Isabella, 36

91, 141, 179,

vs. Ball,

housing

207

styles, 56,

63

19, 38, 91, 99, 117, 121,

145, 160, 162, 195, 226,

250-255

Husband, Herman, 175

Great Awakening, 79-89, 211—214, 277n-a88n

Great Tract, xii,

19, 23, 38, 40, 44, 64, 65, 102,

121, 132, 141, 142, 144, 145, 174, 186, 193, 194,

192

horse races, 229-230

64, 65 Glorious Revolution, 29, 68

Gould, Steven Jay; 45

81, 93,

H9

Indian Purchasers, no,

259n-26on inheritance, 55

117, 134, 170, 243,

Index

Livingston family,

iron ore, 99

bog

iron,

j/j

21, 34, 41, 43,

ironworks, 36, 43

loan offices, 113-114

itinerant ministers, Anglicans, 69

localism,

as

II, 58, 59,

68

cited in

Duke of York,

Jefferson,

175

Jenkins, Griffin, 87-88, 170, 172, 208, 218

Johnson, James, 76

Maine, 174

161, 163, 194, 197, 198,

169

3,

Logan, James, 134 Low, John, no, 154, as a

Johnston, Andrew, 100,

29, 167, 168, 169, 172

Second Treatise,

12, i4-I 5> 2 5

Thomas,

144-156, 161, 253

2, 4, 15,

Locke, John,

James

196

Livingston Manor, 42

99

180, 248

committeeman,

140, 142

Lutherans, as rioters, 87

199, 248

Johnston, John,

32, 38, 40,

Macwhorter, Alexander (Reverend), 72 Madagascar, 26

204

Johnston, Lewis, 179, 197

Johnston family, 38-39, 44, juries, 118-119, 248-249

and jury

selection,

65, 100, 135, 179, 184

Maidenhead,

206-209

xii, 22,

Maine, violence

and kinship, 120

40,

51,

80-81, 93, 119, 140,

160

145, 149,

manners, 190,

in, 2,

174

223, 227

marriage, 54

Kalm,

Massachusetts Bay,

Peter, 93

compared

Kearney, Philip, 179 Keith,

George (Reverend), 69

Mathers

to

181

New Jersey,

27

family, as writers, 169

McClean, Andrew, 197

King-in-Council, 174

Kings Pleasure, 109 Kings Proclamation Against Rioting,

Middlesex County, 158

19, 25, 40, 62, 66, 80, 91,

121, 123, 131, 132

King's Writ, 157

Middletown,

kinship, 112-115, 119, 154, 180, 191

migration, relationship to property disputes,

and home design, 226

militia, 53,

motivation to

riot, 133,

24, 56, 62, 114

134

and juries, 120 as

15,

109

attempts to use against crowds, 158

149

model

strain, 214-217

as

violation of norms, 197

seized by insurgency,

for rioters, in, 161, 193 151

Millstone, 61

Lamson, Daniel, 190

monarchical

language, 149

Monmouth

and

cultural manipulation, 155-156

rumors and Latin, used

114,

threats, 158, 161, 162, 178-180, 193

by rioter spokesmen,

society, 167

County,

25, 36, 50-51, 66, 99, 112,

239

supplying timber to

Monmouth Patent, 13,

172

New York, 95 15,

17-18, 25

Laurence, Robert, 234-235

Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat,

Lawrence, Robert, 114

More, Jeremiah, 199-200

Lawrence, Thomas,

Lawrence

and

131

lawyers, 116-118, 214-217, 302n to, 235-237, 239,

242-243

Morris, Lewis, n, 24, 26, 30, 31-32,

Legrange, Bernardus, 236 Leislers Rebellion, 58, 59, 62, 154, 292n

15,

29on

chancery judge, 120

Morris, Lewis, Jr.,

65, 132, 251

Morris, Robert Hunter, 32,

Lewis, Washaway, 146

35, 43, 66, 72, 85,

86, 98, 100, 102, 112, 119, 120, 130, 131, 135,

146, 155, 184, 185, 186, 204, 248

liberty, 2, 3, 239, 242, 243

Livingston, William, 196

36-38,

109, 154, 155, 157, 159, 165, 166, 203 as

56, 66, 78, 94, 146, 148, 155,

166, 167, 168, 169, 185, 191, 193, 219,

35,

40, 65, 67, 72, 92, 93, 94, 95, 98, 99, 100,

leisure activities, 55

Lenni Lenape,

199-200

Morgan, Joseph, 102 Morgans Mine, 214-217, 247-248

family, 113

popular hostility

family,

37, 43

as

ChiefJustice,

132

ji6

Morris County,

91, 121, 123, 139, 146, 149, 152,

162, 163, 219

Index

Ogden, Robert, 207, 248 and David Ogden, 214-217

Morrisiana, 37

Ogden, Uzal

Morristown, 99, 152 Mott, James, 234

Ogden

76, 86, 91, 124, 131, 141, 144

mum-culture

1,

compared

Navesink Patent,

neighborliness, as motivation to riot, 133

Nevill, Samuel, 39, 59, 161-162, 165, 166, 167,

1, 15,

pardon, 184

51,

108-109, 219

and paternalism, 197

94

17-18, 44, 51, 52-58, 64, 74, 80, 81, x °2> 112, 115,

142, 144, 145, 154,

patronage, 111-116

Paxton Boys, 49, 158 Peapack Tract, 19, 23,

209-214, 226, 232, 239-245

and glebe lands, 230-231

Penn, William,

and

pennants,

tradition, 243

New-Barbadoes Neck (Bergen),

New Brittian, 22, 38, 43 New Englanders, xii, 4, 5, 21, 24, 91, 95, 151, 174, 183,

Penn

223

27, 47,

50-58,

family, 41, 95-96, 134, 186 18, 22, 41

collective violence in,

2,

49, 158, 195

squatting, 175

244

Pennsylvania Journal, 177 Pennsylvania Packet, 15, 17, 118

New Year's celebration, among the Dutch, 62 New York, 41, 242 compared to New Jersey, 27 as market for New Jersey produce, 92-93

175

peppercorn, as symbolic rent, 127 Persian letters, 43

Perth

Amboy,

21, 22, 24, 38, 39, 68,

as

East Jersey port, 95 Amboy group, 233

Philadelphia, 92-93

2, 158

philosophes, 29

Weekly Journal, 31 Weekly Post Boy,

155,

223

Nicolls, Richard, 13-15, 18, 22

Nicolls Patents,

17,

Northampton, Mass.,

Pietism, 62

in, 2, 175

Piscataway, 25-26, 69-71 political

Oblong Patent, 36, 37 Ogden, Abraham, 253 Ogden, David, 34, 35, 43,

79, 83

pirates, 11-12, 25

211

North Carolina, violence

Pierson, Daniel (Justice), 207

among Germans,

20,26

poor

economy, 92

relief,

56

popular royalism, 217^220 71, 97, 112, 115, 120,

130-131, 132, 134, 135, 141, 178, 188, 192,

214-217, 233, 241, 244, 253

69, 78, 96,

100, 110, 114, 161, 162, 163, 173, 193, 219, 229

Perth

tenancy, 22

violence in,

18, 73

158, 241

Pennsylvania,

Newark, 144

on committees, 139 New Haven Colony, 13,

New York New York

38, 39, 40, 44, 64, 100,

102, 145, 162, 167, 198-199, 233

Pendergrast, William, 244-245

committees, 138

assisting

232-237, 239-245,

and Abraham Clark, 245-250 and courts, 235

patriarchy,

159, 160, 163, 164, 167, 168, 169, 171, 177, 187, 188, 203,

152, 181,

Parker, James, 199, 250-255

209

Laws, 39

94, 95> 99,

65

257n

Nevill, John, 132

New Amsterdam,

Maine and Connecticut,

to

paper money, no, in,

13

185, 207, 208,

145

pact-signing ceremonies, 144-145, 190-191

58

natural law, 164, 170-171

Newark,

209-214

field system, 17

outlivers, 65, 187

on the Ramapo Tract, 128-129

Nevill's

Open

Orange County, N.Y.,

in the Netherlands, 128

Native Americans,

115, 141, 158, 188,

208, 214-217, 230-231

women of,

Mott family, 114 Mountain Society,

207

(Justice),

family, 14, 52, 71-72, 76,

and "Patriot Kings," 217^218 population, 90-92, 233

and tenancy,

233

Index

and voting,

Schuyler family,

233

Portland Point,

15,

in the Connecticut Colony,

Shrove Tuesday, 62

50, 54, 86, 87,

Shippen family, 42 Sidney, Algernon, 29, 37 Skinner, William (Reverend), 78-79,

15,

Smith, Joseph,

209-214

and glebe lands, 230-231

Newark,

and

politics,

209-214

and Esther Burr, 209-214

67, 72, 74

27m Newark property disputes,

social contract theory, 171-174

21,

relationship to

83, 85, 91

190

Smith, William, 35

revival, 214

Synod of Philadelphia, primogeniture,

187,

sociability

136

and Princeton

99-100, 223-224

18

209

Presbyterians, 74-79

at

41,

Shrewsbury, 56, 69, 231

18

Portland Point "General Court," Post, Elizabeth,

jij

78

social mobility, 103-104

procession and royal power, 228-230

social structure, 108

property,

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in

1,

Provoost,

2-3, 123, 164-173

Mary

pulpits, left

Foreign Parts (SPG), 68-73,

Spraat, 32, 41

unmanned by dissenters, 69

Somerset County,

160, 162, 163, 226

131, 134, 145,

Quakers,

xii, 14, 18, 22,

quitrents,

13, 32,

34,

36, 48, 50, 56, 147, 150

courthouse

Sonmans,

258n-259n

Ramapo Tract,

22, 39, 40, 60, 102, 120, 124-129,

and

145, 159, i97» 233

Peter, 22, 26, 39,

gentry

28, 30,

market for

158-159, 161, 171, 177, 178, 180,

200-201, 208, 219

15, 187, 188,

192,

208

and the Newark Committee,

Rocky

Hill,

New Jersey's,

191

Maine, 174

Stockton, Richard, 253

Stamp Act

Crisis, 231, 233, 235, 239, 242,

Rowland, John (Reverend),

81, 85,

86

marriage into the Anderson family, 76

Stone House Plain, 91

Styles,

John,

supreme

133,

134

court, judges,

no

Rush, Hendrick, 130

surveying, as provocation, 121-124

Ryerson, George, 199-200

Sussex County, 99, 146

Saint Nicholas Day, 62

Tacitus, 37

28m

Schemerhorne, Caroline, 149 Schemerhorne, John, 149 schools,

and the gentry, 227-228

Scotland, 4

taxation

and property ownership, 205 by the coalition, 151, 191

seized

as

on East Jersey

Proprietors, 20-22,

41,130

land tenure system described, 20-21, 32 Scottish Proprietors, 18-22, 24, 27, 28, 48, 60,

107

Talbot, John (Reverend), 69, 72

Taylor, Daniel (Reverend), 76, 80, 144, 149

Scotch-Irish, 49, 91

influence

249

Steele, Sir Richard, 29, 31

Stuarts, 3

69

sawmills, 36, 94-98, 102,

2

250-255 in

184, 187-196,

to

Spicer, Jacob, 191

New Jersey pro-

duce, 92

Roberts family,

compared

squatters, 23, 65, 117, 132, 142, 144, 145, 191, 194,

3i, 35, 37» 38, 255

Amos,

of,

violence in, 2

republicanism (republican government),

Roberts,

Vermont and North Carolina,

South Carolina

Raway, 69 Read, Charles, 96-97

Island, as

rioters in

60

239, 240, 242, 244

245

Rattlesnake Plain, 91

Rhode

206-207

in,

Sons of Liberty,

78, 85

19, 35, 39, 42, 61, 62, 64, 123,

sympathizer with the proprietors' opponents, 78

Taylor,

Edward,

tenants,

121,

compared

ii4-II 5

174 to those in

sylvania, 21-^22

New York and Penn-

Index

tenants (continued) at

Waller, Elizabeth, 180

Wars of religion,

Peapack, 145

on the Ramapo Tract, 124-129 Tennent, Gilbert,

79,

Tennent, William,

Watesson, 91 Weber, Max,

80

28

71

Western Proprietors,

79, 85-86

Thompson, Thomas (Reverend), 72, Throckmorton family, 112-114, 141

78

40, 59, 65, 251,

51, 59, 95,

Wheat

timber (exploitation), 94-98, 194 compared to timber loss in the

Wheeler, Nathaniel, 139

Amazon,

94,

export, 92-93

Whig Club, 35, 43 Whitaker, Jonathan, 96

98

Whitefield, George,

destruction, 97, 102

Tinton Manor,

36, 37,

map of activities,

44

79, 81-82, 83, 85, 181

5,

84

Tomkins, Samuel, n8

Whitehead, Timothy, 207 Whitsunday, 62

town meeting system, 52-53

William and Mary, 59

family, 198-199

Willings family, 42

transition to capitalism, 103

treason

trial at

Trenchard, 29,

Newark

(1755),

Willocks, George, 24, 72

208

witchcraft, 209

31, 35

women,

Trenton, 144 Trinity

145

Wetherill, John, 204

Tilton family, 114

Todd

35, 38,

26m

West Jersey, xi, xii,

throwing the stocking, 54 Tichenor family, 15, 208

18-20, 22, 32,

xi,

96, 100, 121, 122, 163, 203,

81,

Church (Anglican),

55-56

Woodbridge, 24-26,

73

Turkey (ElizabethTown Tract),

91, 119, 145,

wooden

71,

Turner, Joseph, 100, 194

Woodruff, John, 52 Woodruff, Joseph, 73,

twig and earth, to transfer property, 120-121

Woodruff, Samuel, 207

Valleau, Josias, 129

Wortman, Andries, 194 Wortman, Bout, 131-132

151

Valleau,

Magdalena, 124-129, 140,

145, 147,

Valleau, Peter, 125

180

99

horse, 240

Wyckoff, Simon,

117

141, 161, 187, 189, 190, 191, 193,

219

Valleau, Sias, 129

Van Cortland family, 41 Van Giesen family, 194, 208 Van Rensslear family, 21 Vaughn, Edward (Reverend), Vermont, violence

yeomen,

1-2, 23-25, 47, 66, 67, 79, 87, 90, 99, 85,

116, 124, 130, 141, 157, 162, 168, 169, 176, 187,

239, 240, 242 73, 117

yeomen

loggers, 94-95

in, 2, 174

Vreelandt, George, 140

Vreelandt, Michael, 140, 154,

Zenger, Peter, 31 155,

180

Zenger

Crisis, 30-31, 35, 37, 43, 65, 114, 184