New Jersey Granted to Royal Favorites

When the Dutch at Fort Nassau, fifteen miles further up the river heard of this intrusion, they went down to inquire what it meant. Minuit gave them evasive answers at first, but finally told them that he intended to plant a settlement in the country, and build a fort there. "The Queen of Sweden," he said, "has as good a right to build a fort here as the Dutch West India Company." A messenger to tell the news was at once sent to Manhattan. Kieft, the newly-arrived governor, sent an officer to Minuit at Christina to protest against the movement. The warning was unheeded. Then Kieft issued a proclamation saying that he was persuaded that the Queen of Sweden had not authorized the building of forts within the domain of New Netherland, and that while he would not be responsible "for any mishap, bloodshed, trouble and disaster" which Minuit and his people might suffer thereafter, he was resolved to defend the rights of the West India Company as he should deem proper.

Minuit paid no attention to this proclamation, but built Fort Christina on the site of Wilmington, and erected posts with the royal initials and the crown of Sweden carved on them. Well acquainted with the Indian traffic, from long experience at Manhattan, he soon drew to Christina a profitable fur-trade; and at midsummer he sent the vessels back to Sweden with cargoes of peltry and other products of the land. The fort was well garrisoned and provisioned, and the settlers there planted and reaped. So was established the first permanent settlement on that soil, and there and then was planted the fruitful seed of the commonwealth of Delaware.

Eastward of the Delaware Bay and River (so called in honor of Lord De la Warr, Governor of Virginia,) lies New Jersey. Its domain was included in the New Netherland charter. So early as 1622, transient trading settlements were made on its soil at Bergen and on the banks of the Delaware. The following year, as we have observed, Director May, moved by the attempt of a French sea-captain to set up the arms of France on the Delaware, built a redoubt called Fort Nassau at the mouth of Timmer Kill or Timber Creek, a few miles below Camden, and settled some young Walloons near it. The most southern headland of New Jersey and now popular summer resort, Cape May, received its name from the first director-general of New Netherland, who gave it, also, to several other places.

The Walloons--young couples who had been married on shipboard--settled on the site of Gloucester. This was the first settlement on the soil of New Jersey that lived long; but it, too, withered away in time. It was seven years later when Michael Pauw made his purchase of the Indians extending from Hoboken to the Raritan River, and latinizing his name, called it Pavonia. In this purchase was included the settlement of some Dutch at Bergen. Other settlements were attempted, but none became permanent until about forty years afterward. Cape May, which Captain Heyes bought of the Indians--a territory sixteen miles square--remained an uncultivated wilderness all that time yielding the products of its salt meadows to the browsing deer.

We must now run ahead of our story, as we have, a little, at other times, in coming to the period when the foundations of a colony were actually laid, and glance at an important event in the political history of New Netherland. Charles the Second, King of England, granted a greater portion of the claimed territory of New Netherland to his brother, the Duke of York, then Lord High Admiral of the realm. The duke sent a fleet and army to take possession of his domain. This armament, stronger than any in New Netherland, found the task an easy one, and early in the autumn of 1664, the province passed into the hands of the English. Soon after that armament sailed, and while it was yet on the bosom of the Atlantic, the duke conveyed to two of his favorites all the territory between the Hudson and Delaware rivers from Cape May north to the latitude of forty degrees and forty minutes. These favorites were Lord Berkeley, brother of the governor of Virginia and the duke's own governor in his youth, and Sir George Carteret, then the treasurer of the Admiralty, who had been governor of the island of Jersey, which he had gallantly defended against the forces of Cromwell. In the charter this province was named "Nova Caesarea or New Jersey," in commemoration of Carteret's loyalty and gallant deeds while he was governor of the island of Jersey. Colonel Richard Nicolls, the commander of the expedition to seize New Netherland, and deputy-governor of the province, changed the name of New York; and, ignorant of the charter given to Berkeley and Carteret, he called the territory west of the Hudson Albania, so honoring his employer, who bore the title of Duke of York and Albany.