$\"\"$ <\/a><\/div>\n

As you can see, East New Jersey has all of the northern half and a little of the southern half. (The mapmaker seems to have known nothing about Sussex County in the northwest.) West New Jersey has all of the southern half, including the Pine Barrens. So even though it looked as if the division was more than equitable for West\/South Jersey, it was not, since East\/North Jersey got the best land. This probably helps to explain why over the years West\/South Jersey has been considered a poor cousin to East\/North Jersey. Also, there is the difference between New York and Philadelphia as magnets for population growth.<\/p>\n

The whole subject can be a prickly one, especially if you\u201a\u00c4\u00f4re from West\/South Jersey, and concerned about getting the short end of political and economic sticks. There was a discussion of this not long ago on the H-NEW-JERSEY List [H-NEW-JERSEY@h-net.msu.edu, Subject: “Query: North Vs South”].<\/p>\n

As for the original dividing line between the two halves of New Jersey, once the two provinces were united as a royal colony in 1702, the only purpose for the old line was to separate the Proprietors of East Jersey from the Proprietors of West Jersey. They were owners of all land in the two sections that had not yet been sold, and maintained the separation in order to maintain their own continuing existence. I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4ve never read of anyone proposing to combine the two organizations, but that probably never happened because it would have been a book-keeping nightmare.<\/p>\n

Functionally, however, the dividing line has shifted to the \u201a\u00c4\u00f2waist\u201a\u00c4\u00f4 of the state, that middle section where the distance between the Delaware and Raritan Bay is the shortest. This was the route of the earliest main road in the state, linking New York with Philadelphia, and there isn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t a single early traveler\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s account that doesn\u201a\u00c4\u00f4t include taking this road, except I suppose for George Fox, who traveled through the woods across New Jersey in 1671.<\/p>\n

Geology also divides the state this way, with the hilly Piedmont separating from the flat Coastal Plain at just about the same place as the route from Trenton to New Brunswick. If global warming gets really serious, we may lose much of West\/South Jersey, since it is so much closer to sea level than East\/North Jersey. I hope that never happens because, being a resident of Hunterdon County, I think old West Jersey is a wonderful place to visit, and I\u201a\u00c4\u00f4m sure it\u201a\u00c4\u00f4s a wonderful place to live.<\/p>\n

* Correction (7.21.10):\u00ac\u2020 The date of the map must be much later than 1675, since it shows property surveyed to Daniel Coxe. Rutgers dates the map as 1700. It is known as the John Worlidge Map, published in London. Regrettably there is no date on the map.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u00ac\u2020 way it was settled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[21,16,17,19],"class_list":["post-102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-west-new-jersey","tag-early-settlers","tag-land-titles","tag-proprietors","tag-surveying","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102\/revisions\/237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/goodspeedhistories.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}