Origin of Gloucester County in New Jersey

By Dr. Carlos E. Godfrey
Director Public Records Office of New Jersey
 

"Head before the Society November 21, 1922
 

5^
 

When and how was Gloucester County organized? In seeking
this information I find that the Secretary of State in 1905 officially
announced that the counties of Burlington, Gloucester and Salem
were "originally constituted" on May 17, 1694, quoting Learning
and Spicer's "Grants and Concessions" as his authority. ^'^ This
statement is erroneous, as will appear by reference to pages 507,
513, 514, and 529 of the last mentioned publication, which shows
that these particular "counties" lawfully existed at an earlier date.

In continuing my investigation, I was again surprised to find in
such standard histories as Mickle's "Reminiscences of Old
Gloucester," Mulford's "Civil and Political History of New Jersey,"
Tanner's "Province of New Jersey," and Gushing and Sheppard's
"History of the Counties of Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland,'"
that no legislative sessions were held in the Province of West New
Jersey between November 25, 1685, and November 3, 1692; and that
by reason of this circumstance and other political disturbances in
the provincial government, the People of the third and fourth tenths
"seized upon the first opportunity" of organizing the County of
Gloucester. This was alleged to have been done in the convention
which assembled at Arwames [Gloucester] on the twenty-sixth day
of May in 1686. Two days later, after mature deliberation, the con¬
vention promulgated an instrument which has become locallv
famous as the COUNTY CONSTITUTION. This, according to
such historians as Mickle, Gordon and Lee, is "the only county in
New Jersey that can deduce its existence from a direct and positive
compact between her inhabitants," who "deemed themselves a body
politic, a democratic commonwealth, with full powers of legisla¬
tion." (-)

This document was immediately recorded in the court minutes
of Gloucester County, and is in the following text: ^3)

Gloucester ye 28th May 1686
By the Proprietors Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Third

and fourth Tenths   (alias  County of Gloucester)   then Agreed  as

followeth

Imprims   That a Court be held for the Jurisdiction and Limitts

of the aforesaid Tenths or County, one Tyme at Axwamus alias

Gloucester and another tyme at Red Bank