-- Real Estate - History and Development

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 --Dutch settlement
       
       New Jersey's early settlement was primarily a real estate venture. During the period of Dutch governance, the Dutch West India Company offered conditional grants of land with administrative rights to wealthy "patroons," who were required to attract fifty permanent settlers to their holdings ("patroonships") within four years or be forced to sell the land back to the company. Michael Pauw, one of the directors of the Company and a city official of Amsterdam, obtained the right to settle the west bank of the Noord  (North, later Hudson) River, and proceeded to purchase the land, as the Dutch required, from the Lenni Lenape tribe of Native Americans. In  1634, a homestead was built on the New Jersey side of what would become known as the Hudson River at Ahasimus for Cornelis Hendriksen Van Voorst (or Vorst). Van Voorst's descendants played prominent roles in the development of Jersey City, including one who would serve two hundred years later as mayor during the Civil War. 

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--British control and grant to Berkeley and Carteret

       In 1664, the Dutch ceded control of the colony of New Netherland (Nieuw Nederland) to the British without resistance (later recapturing it in 1673 and again giving up control to the British in the next year). Soon after the British took control in 1664, James, the Duke of York and brother of King Charles II, granted lands he had been given by his brother making up New Jersey to John, Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret after he also had made a similar grant to them in the Carolinas. 

​       The grant to Berkeley and Carteret came only four years after the monarchy had been restored after the English Civil War and recognized the loyalty of both men in their defense of the Royal family. Berkeley was a noble who became a leading commander of the Royalist forces of King Charles I in the English Civil War against the Parliamentary army led by Oliver Cromwell. Carteret, a naval officer and privateer, offered refuge to Royalists in exile while Carteret was serving as the bailiiff, or governor, of his native Isle of Jersey off the British mainland. Those under Carteret's protection included Prince Charles, the son of Charles I, who stayed on the island in 1646 and again in 1649-1650. After the execution in 1649 of King Charles I, the Prince's father, Carteret also proclaimed the younger Charles as the new king, making Jersey the first of the British realms to recognize his claim to the throne as King Charles II. Upon the restoration of his brother to the throne, the Duke of York named the former Dutch lands he gave to Berkeley and Carteret as New Jersey, commemorating the role of the Isle for serving as a sanctuary for the Royal family.

      
--The Nicolls grants  

        Before granting the rights to New Jersey to Berkeley and Carteret, the Duke of York had named Richard Nicolls, who had been a cavalry commander of Royalist troops during the Civil War,  as the first Royal governor of both New York and New Jersey.  Without knowledge of the grant issued a few months earlier to Berkeley and Carteret, Nicolls had signed an agreement with settlers on Long Island, who had previously attempted to relocate to the west side of the Hudson when it was under Dutch control, to authorize their purchase of land west of Staten Island from the Native Americans residing in the area. These purchases were purportedly authorized by a prior agreement Nicolls had signed with Native Americans in which they agreed to accept 120 feet of trading cloth, 2 coats, 2 guns, 2 kettles, 10 bars of lead,  and an amount of white wampum (beads made from seashells valued in current dollars at about $29,700) for a tract of land of 500,000 acres between the Raritan River and the Passaic River comprising all of current Union County and much of present-day Morris and Somerset Counties.  It remains unclear, however, if the Native Americans, who lacked any concept of the ownership of land, fully understood the transaction or rather believed it only allowed the concurrent use of the property. Nonetheless, according to the document recording the exchange, they agreed to accept 120 feet of trading cloth, 2 coats, 2 guns, 2 kettles, 10 bars of lead,  and an amount of white wampum (beads made from seashells valued in current dollars at about $29,700) for a tract of land of 500,000 acres between the Raritan River and the Passaic River comprising all of current Union County and much of present-day Morris and Somerset Counties.

       The center of the settlement was the village of Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), whose first residents arrived in November 1664, building homes over the following months at the end of the Elizabeth River at a site with a waterfall suitable for erecting water driven mills.The initial settlers, with most relocating from Long Island and Connecticut, were stockholders in the venture entitled to a full share in the division of the land and drew lots for their own town plots.To encourage settlement, Nicolls also granted the settlers the rights to freedom of religion and the right to vote for officers for the town government, as well as agreeing not to tax any property for five years. One of the most significant actions taken by Nicolls was his issuance to settlers in April 1665 of the  Monmouth Patent, for lands which includes what is now Monmouth County and parts of Ocean and Middlesex Counties. Shortly after the Patent was signed, settlements at Shrewsbury and Middletown were founded.


​       Meanwhile, in 1665 in their own attempt to promote settlement, Berkeley and Carteret signed the Concession and Agreement, a proclamation for the structure of the government for the Province of New Jersey. Among the incentives offered in the document were relatively liberal guarantees of self-government and freedom of religion compared to the other colonies.
​*  The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New Jersey, to and With All and Every the Adventurers and All Such as Shall Settle or Plant There - 1664, Avalon Project, Yale Law School
​​*  Historical Timeline of Early New Jersey, Descendants of Founders of New Jersey 
​​*  Richard Nicolls, Encyclopedia Britannica

​-- Title Disputes and Arrival of Governor Philip Carteret

       The confusion generated by the conflicting grants by the Duke of York to Berkeley and Carteret and by Governor Nicolls would lead to years of litigation to settle titles to land in the region.  In August 1665, Philip Carteret, a cousin of George Carteret, arrived from Britain to assume the position of governor of the province after being appointed by his cousin and Lord Berkeley. Governor Carteret's authority to govern, however, was challenged by those claiming their property from the Nicolls grants. Many of the existing Dutch and English Puritan settlers also resisted governance by one representing grantees from the British crown. 

       Governor Carteret attempted to negotiate agreements with those who had purchased tracts from Nicolls, confirming their land rights in return for oaths of loyalty to the Berkeley and Carteret proprietors. In 1668, however, when Carteret attempted to convene an assembly and also sought to collect quitrent payments, he faced protests from some purchasers that ultimately led to the outbreak of violence in 1670. The conflict grew worse through the meddling of James Carteret, the son of Sir George Carteret, who appeared in the colony in 1672; James Carteret successfully appealed to the settlers opposing Philip Carteret to convene an assembly at which he was elected “president” of the province.     

       The Duke of York repudiated the validity of the Nicolls grants, but subsequent court decisions into the next century reached conflicting results. The contrasting positions later led to occasional violence, as sheriffs tried to enforce orders to evict those occupying properties not obtained from the proprietors or jailed those using proprietary land. Additional confusion in land titles came after the provincial assembly passed legislation invalidating the ownership of land of purchasers who had bought directly from the Native Americans without first obtaining approval from the proprietors. 

       Following Berkeley's sale of his share of the colony in 1674, the area was divided in 1676 into two separate provinces, West Jersey and East Jersey. Each was governed by its own board of proprietors. The two boards of proprietors sold land to individuals through proprietary deeds. Each board kept separate records of these sales. The records include surveys, deeds, and minutes. These are records of the original sales of the land. Subsequent exchanges were recorded by the secretary of state until 1785 or by the county clerk, primarily since 1785 (see below). 

-- Local property tax

       The local property tax can first be traced to 1670, when a levy of one half penny per acre of land was imposed for the support of the colonial government. Until the middle of the 19th Century, property taxes were levied on real estate and certain personal property at arbitrary rates within certain limits, referred to as “certainties.”

       The Public Laws of 1851 sought to implement a more uniform system of assessments  based on actual value and a general property tax, with all property classes treated the same for the purpose of taxation. In 1875 the concept of uniform assessments was incorporated in the State Constitution, but subsequent judicial decisions held that the amendment, however, permitted the classification of property for tax purpose and the exemption of certain property classes from taxation. These court rulings led to a period of the erosion of the “general property tax” concept. In 1884, a State Board of Assessors was created to assess the value of railroad and canal property. The State, thereby, inserted itself into the local property tax assessment process.

-- Suburban development

       With the proliferation of the automobile in the 1920s, New Jersey's population quickly decentralized into suburbs along main highways. 
The Garden State Parkway was constructed between 1946 and 1957 to connect suburban northern New Jersey with resort areas along the coast and alleviate traffic on traditional north–south routes. The New Jersey Turnpike opened in 1952, spurring development from the Meadowlands at Exits 15, 15A and 16, to Port Newark/ Elizabeth between Exits 10 and 15, to Central New Jersey at Exits 8A, 8, 7A and 7. The Atlantic City Expressway, which was planned as a parkway in 1930s to connect Philadelphia with Atlantic City, but did not see substantial progress until the enactment in in 1962 of the New Jersey Expressway Authority Act creating a state agency to issue bonds, with construction in phases completed in the middle of the decade. In 1991, the South Jersey Transportation Authority was established to coordinate the different transportation modes by operating the Atlantic City Expressway, the Atlantic City International Airport, and rail and bus service.

       These developments, along with the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1960s and 1970s, supported development s in commercial real estate. The typical office was freed from partitions, and management was no longer ensconced in executive suites. Hartz Mountain ventured beyond its successful pet care business into real estate development with the building of a large speculative industrial distribution facility in Bayonne. The Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission was created in 1969. Manufacturing and industrial jobs began to decline, and state government agencies began leasing office space in Trenton and the surrounding suburbs. Cali Associates (destined to become Mack-Cali) built its first office building in Cranford.

  
*  New Jersey Land and Property >> FamilySearch.org

*  Table of Equalized Valuations by County 1998-2014 >> NJ Division of Taxation

*  Public Access in New Jersey: The Public Trust Doctrine and Practical Steps to Enhance Public Access >> NJ Department of Environmental Protection