If ever there was a case where armchair research fails to deliver, this must be it. To properly understand who Dr. Daniel Coxe was, I need to go to London. But that isn’t going to happen any time soon. I must make do with what I can get my hands on, and believe me, it is not enough. Not even Samuel Pepys can help me, for he was no longer writing his diary by this time.Continue reading »
West New Jersey
Articles related to West New Jersey History and Genealogy
The Carolina Constitutions
It has been some time since my last post, so it might help to skim over the previous post before continuing with this one.
The Carolina Constitution of 1669 came out four years after the Concessions and Agreements of the Proprietors of East New Jersey. Undoubtedly, Shaftesbury and Locke were acquainted with it. But when Berkeley and Carteret became the first proprietors of New Jersey in 1664, they probably studied the first Carolina Constitution of 1663 before publishing their Concessions and Agreements. Berkeley and Carteret knew what was happening in Carolina because they were among the eight Lords Proprietors of the colony, so we can assume there was a lot of cross-pollination.Continue reading »
Coxe and the Colonies, Part One
As part of the 17th-century appetite for discovery and learning, attention was turned to the blank spaces on the maps of the world, and the opportunities they offered for increased knowledge, as well as increased riches. The New World colonies caught the attention of Daniel Coxe well before he invested in West New Jersey.Continue reading »
The Radical Daniel Coxe
After a few years spent mixing with the virtuosi in London and playing with volatile salts in his laboratory, Daniel Coxe bethought himself to get a wife. He married Rebecca Coldham, the daughter of John Coldham, Esq. of Tooting Graveney, London. I’m not kidding; Tooting Graveney, actually has its own page in Wikipedia. It is considered a suburb of London, on the south side of the Thames, and was probably quite rural in the 1670s. John Coldham was an Alderman of London and warden of the Grocers Company, from which I conclude that he was a successful merchant with political connections, an ideal father-in-law for an ambitious man.Continue reading »
“The Learned and Intelligent Dr. Daniel Coxe”
A treatise published in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions by Georgii Wedelii on Volatile Salts in 1673 was followed by a notice from the editor, which read:
“So much of this Author; whose way not being here made out and declared, we hope, a Learned and very known Member of the R. Society, Doctor Daniel Coxe, will shortly supply the world with that defect, he being certainly and experimentally master of a sure and easy way of extracting the volatile Salt out of all sorts of Plants.”Continue reading »
The “Inquisitive” Dr. Coxe
That is how Dr. Daniel Coxe was described in 1670 by Christopher Merrett in a pamphlet on the “Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries.”
It appears I have gotten my chronology wrong. The last post on Dr. Daniel Coxe concerned his early medical career, which began in 1669, when he was licensed at Cambridge to practice medicine. It had been my impression that Coxe was a medical man first, and a scientist second. But I now realize that his scientific experiments pre-dated his medical profession.Continue reading »
Daniel Coxe, Physician
All right. Here’s the problem with history research. The more you learn, the more questions you have. If you’re not a curious person, it’s no problem. But if you are, then you are headed down unknown highways and even roads less traveled. I have always skimmed over the statement that Daniel Coxe was a physician to Charles II and Queen Anne. But, as it turns out, that is a road worth taking.Continue reading »
Daniel Coxe, Scientist & Politician
While reading an article about the ‘Monster’ Petition of 1680 by Mark Knights, I came across a reference to Daniel Coxe. He was a signer of the ‘Monster’ Petition, which meant he objected to the decision by Charles II to dissolve Parliament just before it was set to pass the Exclusion Act, which would have barred James Duke of York from becoming king, or anyone else belonging to the Catholic religion. This seems like a risky thing to do for someone who was “on the make,” as most historians describe Dr. Coxe.Continue reading »
East New Jersey, West New Jersey
or North New Jersey, South New Jersey
Grace wondered about the distinction between East-West v. North-South New Jersey. This all goes back to the state’s geography and the way it was settled.Continue reading »
Daniel Coxe, Part 1
I’ve been absent for 3 months. (I left off with West New Jersey in 1687.)
Perhaps one reason I stopped blogging is the work it takes to write about a whole year in one post. My daughter-in-law (who has a new blog about gardening that I highly recommend) suggested breaking things down into smaller posts. That’s what I thought I was doing when I decided to take one year at a time. But it turns out that so much happened in these years, one year has become too big a unit of measurement.Continue reading »