Excerpt from History and Government of New Jersey

The Dutch settlers were very slow to take up a residence in New Jersey. By 1664 they had small settlements at Paulus Hook and Bergen (both within the present limits of Jersey City), and also at Hoboken, Pavonia, and Weehawken. A few settlers had built themselves homes on Newark Bay, but the actual settlement had progressed so slowly that when the Dutch were forced to give up New Netherlands, few traces of their occupation remained.

They were interested enough in maintaining their claims to this region to oppose the efforts of the Swedish government to plant a settlement on the Delaware. King Gustavus Adolphus, a farsighted man, sought to secure for Sweden a foothold on the Atlantic coast and sent out a colony which made a settlement on the present site of the city of Wilmington. Although this colony was within the state of Delaware, the region claimed as New Sweden took in the eastern bank of the Delaware, or a part of South Jersey. As early as 1623 they had attempted to settle at Gloucester, but were driven away. The Dutch finally sent out an expedition under Peter Stuyvesant in 1655, and put an end to any possibility of New Jersey or Delaware becoming a dependency, or colony, of Sweden.

Changing Masters. Meanwhile, the English had watched with a jealous eye the progress of the Dutch colonies in New Netherlands, and when war broke out in Europe in 1664 between the English and the Dutch, Charles II sent an expedition under Colonel Nicolls to seize New Netherlands. The Dutch made but little resistance and New York and New Jersey came under the English flag.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.