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of the land that stretched from
Newark Bay to the
west of
Elizabethtown, while, in January, 1658, otherpurchasers obtained the large grant called
Bergen, where the early station became a permanent settlement.
Before the end of 1664, a few families of Quakers appear also to have found a refuge south of
Raritan Bay.
More than a year earlier,
New England Puritans,
1663 March 26.
Albany Records IV. 415. |
sojourners on
Long Island, solicited of the
Dutch, and, as the records prove, obtained leave to establish on the banks of the
Raritan and the Minnisink, their cherished institutions, and even their criminal jurisprudence.
Soon
after the surrender, a similar petition was renewed to the representative of the duke of
York; and, as the parties, heedless of the former grant to
Herman, succeeded in obtaining from the Indians a deed of an ex-
tensive territory on
Newark Bay,
Nicolls, ignorant as yet of the sale of
New Jersey, and having already granted land on Hackensack Neck, encouraged emi-
gration by ratifying the sale.
The tract afterwards
became known as ‘the Elizabethtown purchase,’ and led to abundant litigation.
In April, 1665, a further
patent was issued, under the same authority, to
William Goulding and others, for the region extending from
Sandy Hook to the mouth of the
Raritan.
For a few months,
East New Jersey bore the name of Albania.
Nicolls could boast that on the new pur-
chases from the Indians, three towns were beginning; and under grants from the
Dutch and from the governor of New York, the coast from the old settlement of
Bergen to
Sandy Hook, along
Newark Bay, at
Middletown, at
Shrewsbury, was enlivened by humble plantations, that were soon to constitute a semicircle of villages.
In August, 1665,
Philip Carteret appeared among the tenants of the scattered cabins, and was quietly received
