New Jersey

C

Judicial

All judges in the state are appointed by the governor with the approval of the state senate, except municipal judges, who are appointed by the municipal governments. The state supreme court consists of a chief justice and six associate justices, all of whom serve seven-year terms. The supreme court hears appeals. Below the supreme court are a superior court, county courts, and inferior courts with limited jurisdiction.

D

Local Government

The counties are governed by bodies of officials known as freeholders, who are elected for three-year terms and are responsible for the maintenance of county properties and institutions. The term freeholder originated in colonial times when only property owners, or freeholders, could hold office.

The smaller municipalities are called cities, towns, boroughs, townships, or villages, depending on their form of government. Most have a mayor and a city council, but some have city managers or commissions. Smaller municipalities usually have a mayor-committee or mayor-council form of government.

E

National Representation

New Jersey elects two U.S. senators and 13 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The state casts 15 electoral votes.

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VIII

History

A

Early Inhabitants

The first human settlement of the area that is now New Jersey probably occurred about 10,500 bc, after glaciers that had covered the region retreated. The first culture, the Paleo-Indians, hunted mammoths and other prehistoric animals. They were followed in about 7000 bc by the Archaic culture; these people lived in the developing forests and depended on hunting deer and birds and gathering plants. As the regionally distinctive Northeast culture developed, agriculture became important as a source of food.

When Europeans first came to the New Jersey area, they encountered the Delaware people, who called themselves the Lenni Lenape, meaning “original people.” These peaceful tribes, who spoke Algonquian languages, numbered about 10,000 people at the time of European contact. Primarily farmers, the Delaware supplemented their major crops of corn, squash, and beans with fish, wild game, berries, nuts, herbs, and roots. They made an important advance in agriculture by learning to use ashes from burned trees as fertilizer.

The coming of Europeans began the rapid decline of these native inhabitants. Many died of diseases introduced by whites. The remainder were forced from their ancestral homes by the white settlers’ quest for land. However, treatment of the Native Americans was relatively more humane in New Jersey than in other parts of America. Little violence occurred, and the white settlers acquired native land peaceably, by treaty. As their land holdings shrank, different groups of Delaware migrated west, eventually settling in several sites from southern Ontario, Canada, to Oklahoma. Although an attempt was made in 1758 to provide the remnants of the Delaware with a reservation at Brotherton, now Indian Mills, New Jersey, most of the remaining Delaware left New Jersey around 1800.

B

Exploration and Settlement

Italian explorer John Cabot saw the New Jersey coast in 1498, but the Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to explore and chart it, in 1524. The first Europeans to set foot in New Jersey were sailors from the Dutch-owned ship Half Moon, commanded by English explorer Henry Hudson, in 1609. Dutch adventurers, fur trappers, and traders followed, and about 1620 a trading post was established at Bergen, now part of Jersey City. Other Dutch settlers established Fort Nassau on the Delaware River in 1623 and Jersey City at the mouth of the Hudson River in the early 1630s. Small Swedish settlements were planted in southern New Jersey, beginning with Fort Elfsborg in 1638. The Dutch West India Company claimed the areas of New Jersey and New York as the colony of New Netherland, and in 1655 the colonial governor, Peter Stuyvesant, expelled the Swedish.

The English had never recognized either Dutch or Swedish claims to New Jersey. England based its claim to New Jersey on Cabot’s voyage and on the power of its navy. In 1664 the Dutch surrendered New Netherland to the English, who renamed the area west of the Hudson River New Jersey, for the island of Jersey in the English Channel.