Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: New Jersey, United States

Descriptions with photos and links about the current and past divisions of New Jersey into regions. Includes maps and links to information about borders of colonial East Jersey and West Jersey Provinces. UNDER CONSTRUCTION!

Contents 1 NEW JERSEY REGIONS 1.1 North Jersey 1.1.1 Counties: 1.2 Central Jersey 1.2.1 Counties: 1.3 South Jersey 1.3.1 Counties: 2 CHANGING BORDERS 2.1 Online Resources 2.2 1676-1688 2.3 1688-1702 2.4 Boundary Disputes 2.5 1710 2.6 1714-1775

NEW JERSEY REGIONS

Three Regions of New Jersey.

While NJ has traditionally been divided between North Jersey and South Jersey(or East and West Jersey in Colonial times) it is now more useful to include a central Jersey region. Here is a simple map showing the divisions of counties into North, Central and South Jersey regions.

People in New Jersey have debated endlessly since before New Jersey even existed. over where the precise borders should be. But this is the currently accepted (more or less) division.

(Please. Let’s not go there :-)

North Jersey

North Jersey

Counties:

• Sussex
• Passaic
• Bergen
• Warren
• Morris
• Essex
• Hudson
• Union

Central Jersey

Central Jersey

Counties:

• • • Hunterdon
    • Somerset
    • Middlesex
    • Mercer
    • Monmouth
    • Ocean

South Jersey

South Jersey

Counties:

• Burlington
• Camden
• Gloucester
• Atlantic
• Salem
• Cumberland
• Atlantic
• Cape May

CHANGING BORDERS

While the current disputes over where the regions should be divided is mostly in fun, it wasn’t always that way. In Colonial times, there was much dispute and violence over the borders between the separate East Jersey Province and West Jersey Province that led to the East and West Jersey Proprietors surrendering their governance rights to Queen Anne in 1702, but retaining their land rights. Land disputes continued into the 1740s, even leading to the “Land Riots” in the late 1740s.

It is helpful to know when you are trying to place something in New Jersey at a certain time, where the boundaries were at different times. The county boundaries and names continued to shift through the 1700s and into the 1900s. You may see a family lived in three different counties, but never moved. The names just changed! The maps below should help you place people and events in the correct general area of New Jersey at different points in time. I am developing a guide to the counties of NJ and how they were established and changed over time as well. I will link to it here when it is complete.

Today, the boundaries that divided the provinces into East and west, roughly divide the Philadelphia sports teams’ fans from New York’s fans.

Online Resources

The maps of the changing land boundaries are from “New Jersey at 350 — A Short History of Colonial New Jersey Land Records”, by Michelle D. Novak, published by the Genealogical Society of Bergen County. The article can be found here: https://www.njgsbc.org/nj-colonial-land-records/ Links to other useful resources are available in this article as well.

You can download a copy of John P. Snyder's, The Story of New Jersey’s Civil Boundaries, 1606–1968, from the New Jersey State Archives. This book was commissioned by the state and is made freely available. It is an indispensable resource for early NJ records and contains a gazetteer of NJ towns—tracing each town's evolution and name changes. http://www.state.nj.us/dep/njgs/enviroed/oldpubs/bulletin67.pdf

Also, A Guide to Using the Records of the East and West Jersey Proprietors (2017) by Joseph R. Klett from the New Jersey Archives is a helpful resource when researching land records. IT includes a very useful timeline of important events in New Jersey’s proprietary history. http://www.state.nj.us/state/archives/pdf/proprietors.pdf

UNDER CONSTRUCTION_ - I'm awaiting permission to use existing images for the below topics.

1676-1688

1688-1702

Boundary Disputes

1710

1714-1775