Cape May County, New Jersey Genealogical Records Information

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Cape May County History and Information

Cape May County Facts

Cape May County was created on 1692 and was formed from West Jersey Province. The County was named for Cape May, Capt. Cornelius Jacobsen Mey. The County Seat is Cape May. See also County History for more historical details.

Counties adjacent to Cape May County are Atlantic County (north), Cumberland County (northwest).

Cape May County Boroughs Include Avalon, Cape May Point, Stone Harbor, West Cape May, West Wildwood, Wildwood Crest, Woodbine. Cities Include Cape May, North Wildwood, Ocean City, Sea Isle City, Wildwood. Townships Include Dennis Township, Lower Township, Middle Township, Upper Township. CDPs and Communities Include Cape May Court House, Dennisville, Diamond Beach, Erma, Marmora, North Cape May, Strathmere, Tuckahoe, Rio Grande, Villas, Whitesboro-Burleigh.

The Cape May County Official Government Website
Cape May County, New Jersey History Books at Amazon.com
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Records at the Cape May County Courthouse

See Also New Jersey Land Records, Marriage Records, Court & Probate Records

PLEASE READ!! Please call the clerk's department to confirm hours, mailing address, fees and other specifics before visiting or requesting information because of sometimes changing contact information.
* The date the earliest land deed was recorded appears in the second column. Where two years appear, the first refers to mortgages, the second to deeds.
** Where two years are given, the first is the date when orphans' court minutes begin, the second when surrogates' records and files begin

All Departments below are in the Cape May County Courthouse, 9 North Main Street, Cape May Court House, NJ 08210; (609) 465-1000, unless otherwise noted below. The Official County website is located at http://www.co.cape-may.nj.us/. NOTE: The record dates below are from the earliest date to present time.

Cape May County Clerk has Land Records & Marriage Records from 1770/1785* and is located at 7 N. Main Street DN 109, PO Box 5000; Cape May Court House NJ 08210-5000; 609-465-1010 phone
New Jersey county clerks are responsible for land records, including deeds and mortgages, naturalizations, marriages (usually 1795-1840s), and various county court records. A few original county justice of the peace dockets are at the New Jersey State Archives. Estate matters are handled in the surrogate's and orphans' courts.

Cape May County Surrogate Court / Orphan's Court has Probate Records from 1786/1804** and is located at the courthouse. Mailing Address: 4 Moore Road, Dept. 207, Cape May Court House, NJ 08210; ph: (609) 463-6666
By virtue of laws enacted since 1844, the responsibilities of the County Surrogate have been expanded. The County Surrogate now has two major functions:

As Judge and Clerk of the County Surrogate's Court, the Surrogate is responsible for settling the estate of every county resident who dies individually owning any assets in New Jersey--whether or not that resident dies leaving a will. Therefore, the Surrogate reviews and probates wills and appoints Executors, Administrators and guardians of minors. In addition, the Surrogate administers and invests monies (now more than $30 million in Bergen County) primarily for minor children who receive judgments in the courts in Bergen County; and
As Deputy Clerk of the Superior Court, Chancery Division, Probate Part, the Surrogate dockets, reviews and schedules all actions pertaining to will contests, estate matters, accountings, mental incompetencies, guardianships of incompetents and all adoptions occurring in Bergen County. In addition, all documents involved in all County Surrogate Court matters are recorded, stored and maintained by the County Surrogate's Court.

Click Here to Search New Jersey Court, Land, Wills & Financial Records! - Researchers often overlook the importance of court records, probate records, and land records as a source of family history information.

Below is a list of online resources for Cape May County Court Records. Email us with websites containing Cape May County Court Records by clicking the link below:

Index to Marriage Records, 1666-1799
Index to Supreme Court Cases, 1704-1844
Index to Marriage Records, 1848-1867
Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
Cape May County, New Jersey Court Books at Amazon.com
New Jersey Immigration & Emigration Records - Immigration records help the family historian to understand the movements of their ancestry as they relocated to different parts of the world.

Cape May County Vital Records

See Also Research In Tax Records

Because New Jersey's pre-1830 federal censuses have not survived, tax records are quite an important substitute for placing persons and families prior to that time. Tax lists arranged by township are available for 1773-1822. The originals, at the New Jersey State Archives, show heads of households, landowners, and single adult males, with information about their property that was taxable, including land, horses, cattle, slaves, and mills. Only about half of the 1773-4 lists are extant, and for some places, such as Sussex County, coverage is very slight. Microfilms of these records are at the state archives, the New Jersey Historical Society, Rutgers University, and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. The 1784 tax lists for thirty-eight municipalities (predominantly in southern New Jersey) are the only ones to indicate the size of a household, with a column for number of whites and a column for number of slaves.

Later tax records are found in the counties starting about 1869-70. Tax lists for some extinct New Jersey municipalities are at the state archives.

Below is a list of online resources for Cape May County Tax Records. Email us with websites containing Cape May County Tax Records by clicking the link below:

Cape May County, New Jersey Tax Books at Amazon.com

Cape May County Genealogical Addresses

See Also Other New Jersey Genealogical Addresses

The Repositories in this section are Archives, Libraries, Museums, Genealogical and Historical Societies. Many County Historical and Genealogical Societies publish magazines and/or news letters on a monthly, quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis. Contacting the local societies should not be over looked. State Archives and Societies are usually much larger and better organized with much larger archived materials than their smaller county cousins but they can be more generalized and over look the smaller details that local societies tend to have. Libraries can also be a good place to look for local information. Some libraries have a genealogy section and may have some resources that are not located at archives or societies. Also, take a special look at any museums in the area. They sometimes have photos and items from years gone by as well as information of a genealogical interest. All these places are vitally important to the family genealogist and must not be passed over.

Below is a list of online resources for Cape May County Genealogical Addresses. Email us with websites containing Cape May County Genealogical Addresses by clicking the link below:

Cape May Historical & Genealogical Society, Rt 9, Cape May Court House, NJ 08210; (609) 465-3535
Local New Jersey Researchers, Find a local researcher or become a local researcher.
Department of State Division of Archives and Records Management
Bureau of Archives and Records Preservation State Library Bldg, 185 West State Street, CN-307, Trenton, NJ 08625-0307
The New Jersey State Archives has many of the basic research materials for the state, such as federal and state census records; probate, land, and court records; newspapers; and vital records.
New Jersey State Library, State Library Building, 185 West State Street, CN-520, Trenton, NJ 08625-0520
Genealogical Society of New Jersey, PO Box 1476, Trenton NJ 08607-1476
The Genealogical Society of New Jersey has published The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey since 1925. The society houses its collection of genealogical materials, including cemetery transcriptions, family Bibles (over 4,800), military records, notes of genealogists, and so forth, in the A. S. Alexander Library at Rutgers University.
The New Jersey Historical Society, 52 Park Pl., Newark, NJ 07102; 973-596-8500 ext 248 or 249
New Jersey Newspapers & Periodicals Records - Newspapers and periodicals are the diaries of local communities. They are excellent sources of family history details - often recorded nowhere else. Look for obituaries, marriages, legal notices, and more found in our Historical Newspaper Archives.
New Jersey Genealogical Society Books at Amazon.com

Cape May County Church & Cemeteries

Click Here to Search New Jersey Obituary Records! - This database is a compilation of obituaries published in U.S. newspapers, collected from various online sources. Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as names, dates, places of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships.

There are many churches and cemeteries in Cape May County. Some transcriptions are online. A great site is the Cape May County Tombstone Transcription Project.

Many New Jersey church records have been published in state historical and genealogical journals, such as The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. Original and transcribed material is to be found at the New Jersey Historical Society (including the DAR collection), Rutgers, the Glouster County Historical Society, and elsewhere, and in New York, Delaware, and Pennsylvania sources and libraries, particularly in the Collections of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania.

The important work of grave marker transcribing has been the goal of the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, which was originally formed by "Tombstone Hounds." Their core collection is at Rutgers University, where there is a card index by county and name of the cemetery as well as a "master index" arranged alphabetically by surname but only for selected cemeteries. Many of the society's transcriptions have been published in their journal, The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. Another large collection of cemetery records is that gathered by the New Jersey DAR chapters, with copies deposited at the New Jersey State Library and the New Jersey Historical Society. Both these places have other cemetery records, as do the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and the New York Public Library. Some individual books of cemetery inscriptions have been published, and some are found in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record.

Below is a list of online resources for Cape May County Cemetery & Church Records. Email us with websites containing Cape May County Cemetery & Church Records by clicking the link below:

Find Obituaries in The World's Largest Newspaper Archive at NewpaperArchive.com! - Find thousands of New Jersey obituaries to help you research your family history. Search for a New Jersey newspaper obituary about your ancestor or a celebrity. Begin your search today and find death notices and funeral announcements printed in newspapers from Indiana.
Cape May County, New Jersey Cemetery Books at Amazon.com
Cape May County, New Jersey Church Books at Amazon.com

Family Trees & Genealogy Tidbits

Click Here to Search New Jersey Family Tree Records! - The use of published genealogies, electronic files containing genealogical lineage, and other compiled sources can be of tremendous value to a researcher.

When view family trees online or not, be sure to only take the info at face value and always follow up with your own sources or verify the ones they provide. Below is a list of online resources for Cape May County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Cape May County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Cape May County, New Jersey Family Books at Amazon.com

County History

In August 28, 1609 Henry Hudson, aboard the yacht Half Moon, was the first recorded European to see the Jersey Cape. Sailing for the Dutch East India Company, he was searching for a northwest passage to the Orient. He explored several miles of shoreline along the Delaware Bay before his 122-ton vessel struck bottom. They anchored for the night.

In the morning a northwest gale forced him to turn back, round the Cape and continue north along the coast of South Jersey. There is no record that he or his crew ever set foot ashore during their brief excursion.

Shortly after Hudson explored the Cape, English navigator Samuel Argall entered the bay. Assuming it was the northern boundary of the Virginia Patent, he named the bay after that colony's governor, Lord De La Warre. But it was the Dutch that first exploited the bay.

Cornelius Jacobsen Mey, after whom the Cape May peninsula is named, explored the area between 1616 and 1624. Captain Mey and other Dutch navigators were exploring the area for trading potential for Dutch merchants. For the next 40 years the Dutch would dominate the Delaware Valley. They built a fort at Swanendael on Lewis Creek across the bay from the Jersey Cape.

The Dutch, however, were not interested in farming. Their focus was on the trading potential of fur trapping, fishing, trade and bartering. It was their lack of permanent settlements, however, that forced them to cede control to the Swedes and the English.

Before that was to happen, however, Samuel Godyn, for the Dutch West India Company, built a whaling factory at Swanendael that functioned between 1630 and 1631. They planned a whaling factory on the Jersey side of South (Delaware) Bay and bought land from the natives. In 1631 Peter Minuit, director-general of New Netherlands confirmed the first recorded patent for European ownership of Jersey Cape Property. The factory never happened.

The period between 1631 and the arrival of offshore whalers from Long Island in the 1680s is almost a blank page. There is myth and folklore, but little solid evidence. By 1685, however, the English had settled permanently on the Cape.

There is a theory that the English began settling Portsmouth on the Cape in the 1640s. This is based upon a scheme that New Haven voted to approved a plan to settle and farm in the Dutch-controlled Delaware Valley. Fifty settlers went to Varens Kill (Salem Creek), 70-miles north of the Cape. Although they planted tobacco, most returned to New Haven, probably because of New Jersey's high cigarette tax. Subsequent attempts in the 1650s were thwarted by New Netherlands governor Peter Stuyvesant.

So, where's the Cape May connection? Folklore has it that some of the New Haven settlers at Varens Kill hadn't returned to Connecticut, but relocated on the undeveloped Jersey Cape in which the Dutch seemed to have lost interest. The earliest recorded Cape May names in the 1680s and 1690s are identical to those of the families that appeared in the New Haven town records in the 1640s: Osborne, Mason, Badcock and Godfrey among others. These are also among the same families that were involved in the aborted Varen Kill settlement.

Despite the lack of records on the Cape during that period, the above concept is not unrealistic. This is further supported by the early whaling expeditions from the Hamptons in Long Island. Offshore whalers would arrive in December and stay until the migrating right whales left the bay in February. It was the South and East Hampton offshore whalers who made mass relocations to the Cape in the 1680s and 1690s. I suppose they could no longer afford the Hamptons—that's where the money meets the Atlantic.

Further, there were strong ties between New Haven and Long Island. Long Island, it should be remembered, was part of Connecticut then, not Dutch-controlled New Netherlands (New York). The same family names that can be found in New Haven can also be found in the Hamptons. Could the transient whalers have had family members already settled on the Cape in the 1640s? There is no proof, but the speculation level runs high.

It should be noted that offshore whaling in the 1640s is not what first comes to mind at the mention of whaling. Whaling, as we have come to picture it, consists of three- to five-year voyages aboard large whaling ships that pursued the right and sperm whales in all the oceans. Offshore whaling, as the name suggests, is done from 20-foot whale boats launched from the beach.

When a whale was spotted in the bay, the boats would be launched and the sails raised. When the crew neared the whale, the sail was lowered and a crew of eight rowed close to the whale. Offshore whaling now becomes similar to blue-water whaling. The captain harpooned the whale and the whale boat was towed by the whale until it tired. The crew would move the boat close to the whale, and the captain would drive a lance into the whale, trying to strike a vital organ. The angered whale would make another run until it tired again, spouted blood—pillars of fire—and died. The whale would be towed back to the beach where the blubber and baleen were processed.

The primary whale Long Islanders sought was the right whale, so named because it floated after it died. Tragically, partly because of offshore whaling, but mostly from blue-water whaling the right whale is now among the most endangered of the cetaceans. There aren't many left, particularly in the Atlantic.

Another distinction between blue-water whaling and offshore whaling is that blue-water whalers were exclusively whalers. Offshore whalers, when there were no local whales, held two other jobs: farming and whatever craft or skill they had. Offshore whalers couldn't quit their day job. This concludes the background on the Long Islanders that may have settled Portsmouth on the Jersey Cape between the 1640s through the 1690s.
The Long Island whalers who settled New England Town, formerly Portsmouth, in the 1680s had completed a three-leg odyssey. It began in England. From there they sailed to New England, moved to Long Island and finally relocated on the Jersey Cape in West Jersey. They settled north of New England Creek where they moored their boats.

One factor that greatly influenced settling the Cape was the restoration of Charles II to the throne. Chuck #2 promoted colonialization and expansionism including seizure of New Netherlands from the Dutch. He gave his brother James, Duke of York a patent to the former Dutch territories between the Hudson and Delaware rivers. Duke Jimmy rewarded his allies James Carteret and John Berkley with a patent for land that included the Cape.

Carteret name the province New Jersey after the Isle of Jersey where he had provided refuge for the exiled Stuarts during the English civil war. New Jersey was divided into East Jersey and West Jersey. The line separating the two ran northwest from about Tuckerton to Sussex County. The primary focus was encouraging relocation of the English population from New England and Long Island.

Disputes and tension developed among the different settlers in East Jersey resulting in a subsequent relocation to the Cape. East Jersey families involved in offshore whaling were among the first recorded settlers to move to the Cape in West Jersey. These families include Hewitt, Leonard, Edwards, Davis, Spicer, Leaming, Townsend, Whitlock, Richardson, Crawford, Dennis, Stillwell and Taylor. The same families can be traced earlier to the Hamptons. Some of their descendants are still living on the Cape.

Not satisfied with the profits in West Jersey, Carteret and Berkley sold their rights to two Quakers, John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge. Fenwick and Byllynge had a falling out, possibly because Fenwick couldn't pronounce Byllynge. Fenwick almost lost his financial interest. William Penn and other Quakers intervened to protect Fenwick's interests and promote new enterprises in West Jersey and provide religious refuges.

William Penn contributed to "The Laws, Concessions and Agreements of 1677". This document provided West Jersey with one of the most liberal constitutions in the British Empire. It guaranteed religious freedom, trial by jury, elected government and rights and privileges for freeholders. A freeholder is one who held office or landed estate free from any limitations as to inheritance rights or social class.

In 1681 Burlington, 100-miles north of the Cape, became the administrative and judicial center for West Jersey. A court, dominated by Quakers, passed local laws, dispensed justice, and provided moral and economic guidance. Burlington court records document that there was a community and government on the Cape between 1685 and 1688.

In 1687 Dr. Daniel Coxe acquired 22 shares in West Jersey. He offered freeholders a lease of 100 acres with the option in three years to buy the tract in fee simple acquiring absolute ownership of the land.

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