West New Jersey

W ZEST NEW JERSEY was a singularly homogeneous province and despite the fact that it was reunited with East Jersey in I702 to form a royal province after a quarter century of proprietary independence it retained all the characteristics of a socio-physical unit until the Revolution. In fact, after nearly three centuries it harbors vestiges of its earliest heritage. This province was a Quaker settlement and was deliberately planned as a haven for persecuted Friends some years before the possibility of the Pennsylvania experiment was revealed. The Society of Friends, shortly after the fortuitous purchase of West Jersey from Lord John Berkeley by John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge in i673 and the subsequent bankruptcy of Byllynge, determined to enlist the support of its most substantial members in Great Britain and Ireland in sponsoring a settlement on the Delaware. Byllynge's trustees, William Penn, Gawen Lawrie and Nicholas Lucas, were Quakers, and with Byllynge's consent and cooperation they undertook to dispose of his West Jersey interest by selling ioo shares or proprieties to' influential Friends. Fenwick retained control of ten shares and although he pursued a somewhat wayward course for nearly a decade he, too, was a Quaker, and his interest was eventually purchased by William Penn in i683. Of the remaining ninety shares twenty, perhaps, were transferred to Byllynge's creditors, and the rest were sold to Friends interested in the experiment. Thus, the whole province, during the years i676-i685, fell into the hands of approximately i20 purchasers all of whom save the noteworthy Dr. Daniel Coxe, court physician and promoter extraordinary, were Quakers. These entrepreneurs were well-scattered among the Quaker strongholds in Great Britain and Ireland. John Fenwick's own colonists were principally London folk and they settled at Salem in November, i675, almost two years in advance of the Society's planned undertaking at Burlington. Yet the Quakers of Salem were well-known to those who

Archaeology · Political science · History · Religion, Gender, and Enlightenment

• Timbuctoo and the First Emancipation of the Early-Nineteenth Century

  Open Access•Guy Weston•New Jersey Studies An Interdiscipli…•2022

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