Gloucester County, New Jersey Genealogical Records Information

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Gloucester County History and Information

Gloucester County Facts

Gloucester County was created on May 26, 1686 and was formed from province of West Jersey. The County was named for West Jersey Province. The County Seat is Woodbury. The county was re-formed by the union of the third and fourth Tenths of West Jersey on 17 May 1694. Portions of the original Gloucester County became Atlantic (1837) and Camden (1844) counties.

Greenwich Township became the first township. Incorporated on March 1, 1694. The original townships formed at that time were Gloucester, Deptford, Greenwich, Waterford, Newton and Egg Harbor. It included present-day Atlantic County and Camden County. Woodbury is the county seat of Gloucester County. Atlantic County set off in 1837. Camden County set off in 1844. See also County History for more historical details.

Counties adjacent to Gloucester County are Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania (north), Camden County (northeast), Atlantic County (southeast), Cumberland County (south), Salem County (southwest), New Castle County, Delaware (west), Delaware County, Pennsylvania (northwest).

Gloucester County Boroughs Include Clayton, Glassboro, National Park, Newfield, Paulsboro, Pitman, Swedesboro, Wenonah, Westville, Woodbury Heights
City Woodbury. Townships Include Deptford, East Greenwich, Elk, Franklin, Greenwich, Harrison, Logan, Mantua, Monroe, South Harrison, Washington, West Deptford, Woolwich. CDPs and Communities Include Beckett, Bridgeport, Clarksboro, Franklinville, Gibbstown, Malaga, Mickleton, Mount Royal, Mullica Hill, Oak Valley, Thorofare, Turnersville, Victory Lakes, Williamstown.

The Gloucester County Official Government Website
Gloucester County, New Jersey History Books at Amazon.com
Family History Library - The largest collection of free family history, family tree and genealogy records in the world.

There are free downloadable and printable forms to help with your research. These include U.S. Census Extraction Forms, U.K. Census Extraction Forms, Research Calendar, Ancestral Chart, Research Extract, Correspondence Record , Family Group Sheet , Source Summary Form.

Records at the Gloucester 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 Gloucester County Courthouse, I North Broad Street, Woodbury NJ 08096; (856) 853-3200 , unless otherwise noted below. The Official County website is located at http://www.co.gloucester.nj.us/. NOTE: The record dates below are from the earliest date to present time.

Gloucester County Clerk has Land Records & Marriage Records from 1766/1785* and is located at the address above. Phone Number: 856-853-3237 Fax 856-853-3327. County clerks were required by law to file copies of deeds beginning in 1785 and mortgages beginning in 1766.
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.

Gloucester County Surrogate Court / Orphan's Court has Probate Records from 1785/1804** and is located at the courthouse. Phone Number: (856) 853-3282 Fax: (856) 853-3311. Recording of wills and estate inventories at the county level began in 1804. Orphans Courts were established in 1785.
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 Gloucester County Court Records. Email us with websites containing Gloucester 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)
Gloucester 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.

Gloucester 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 Gloucester County Tax Records. Email us with websites containing Gloucester County Tax Records by clicking the link below:

Gloucester County, New Jersey Tax Books at Amazon.com

Gloucester 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 Gloucester County Genealogical Addresses. Email us with websites containing Gloucester County Genealogical Addresses by clicking the link below:

The Gloucester County Historical Society, 17 Hunter Street, P.O. Box 409, Woodbury, NJ 08096-0409
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

Gloucester 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 Gloucester County. Some transcriptions are online. A great site is the Gloucester 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 Gloucester County Cemetery & Church Records. Email us with websites containing Gloucester County Cemetery & Church Records by clicking the link below:

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 Gloucester County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Gloucester County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:

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Sites on USGenweb: [ Gloucester County ] [ New Jersey ] [ Main Page ]
Gloucester County NJGenWeb Archives
[GenForum Message Boards] [Rootsweb Message Boards]
Genealogy Encyclopedia: General Abbreviations, Early Illnesses, Nickname Meanings, Worldwide Epidemics, Early Occupations, Common Terms, Censuses Explained, Free Genealogical Forms
Nichols and Related Families of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virgina.
The New Jersey Family Group Sheet Project
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New Jersey Family & Local History Records - The Family & Local Histories Collection lets you read journals, memoirs, and other first-hand historical narratives right on your computer. Gathered from some of the world's finest libraries, these materials may provide hard-to-find town, county, and state information; tax records and wills; military, church, and court records; as well as photographs, stories, and maps.
Genealogical Document Search and Retrieval Service
Gloucester County, New Jersey Family Books at Amazon.com

County History

Original Claims to New Jersey included those made by the British beginning in 1497. Dutch claims began with the voyages and settlements of Henry Hudson who entered the Delaware Bay on August 28, 1609. The first Dutch settlers were apparently all massacred by the Indians, and was followed by another settlement (of Dutch immigrants) who arrived in 1631. The Swedish settlements in Southern New Jersey followed soon after the arrival of the Dutch in 1638. These Swedes landed first at Inlopen (also called Hindlopen) on the western side of the Bay. They told the Dutch that there were merely stopping there on their way to the West Indies, but they took possession and founded a settlement called "Christina" in honor of the Queen. The Swedes began fortifying their claims by purchasing land from the Indians. In the course of a few years they had bought from the Indian tribes, and paid for, all the land from Cape May to Raccoon Creek.

The total number of Swedish settlers in Southern Jersey is not known, but in 1693, long after the Swedes ceased to exercise any control over the country, it was reported by Peter Stuyvesant that there were 1,000 Swedes in the territory who retained their Swedish language and customs.

In 1651 the Dutch built Fort Casimer on the site of New Castle. In 1653 John Rysing, who was deputized by the Swedish Government, demanded the surrender, and took possession of this fortification for the Swedes. Governor Stuyvesant of New Netherland dispatched a force of 7 vessels and 600 men who brought about the complete surrender and subjugation of New Sweden.

The subjugation of New Netherland in America by the British took place in August of 1664, transferring sovereignty over the territory of South Jersey from the Dutch Crown to the British Crown. Although this sovereignty was interrupted twice for brief periods of time, it was finally restored to the British Crown by the Treaty of February 9, 1674, and New Jersey continued as British until the American Revolution of 1775.

Original Condition of the County
The descriptions by early historians what the first settlers found here are magnificent and startling. From Raccoon Creek to "Makles" Creek, now known as Mantua Creek--which is the land in this precise area--we are told that tobacco grew luxuriously. There were great quantities of walnuts, chestnuts, peaches, cypresses, mulberries, fish trees, and many other rare trees to which Campanius the historian says "No names can be given as they are not found anywhere else except on this river." He also said that the Delaware was alive with whales, sharks and sea spiders, and that its shores were infested "with a large horrible serpent which is called a rattlesnake which has a head like that of a dog and can bite off a man's leg as clean as if it had been hewn down with an axe."
The aborigines of this region were called the "Lenni-Lenape" or the "first people." The Indian name for the Delaware River was "Lannape-Whittuck," or "Stream of the Lennape." The particular tribe of Indians who lived along Raccoon Creek which flows through Swedesboro were known as the Naraticons. Those who lived along Mantua Creek were the Manateses. The Lenni-Lenapes were a vigorous but peaceful tribe. They had been demilitarized, so to speak under a treaty with the Iroquois. Many relics of the Indian settlements along those creeks, including cooking utensils, arrow heads and other weapons may still be found by anyone possessing sufficient curiosity and diligence.

Tangle of Early Titles
The ten years which followed the restoration of New Jersey to the British in 1674 were disturbed by many conflicting claims of title. Although the British Crown grants of 1606 had already disposed of most or all of the territory of New Jersey to the Virginia Company and the Plymouth Company, nevertheless Charles II, upon his restoration, granted all of both New York and New Jersey to his brother the Duke of York, who sold his rights in the territory of New Jersey to Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret. Carteret was appointed Governor of New Jersey and came over with settlers in August 1665 landing at Elizabeth. They found already here another British Governor, Colonel Nichols, who had not been told by the Duke of York of his sale of New Jersey to Berkeley and Cataret. Nichols called New Jersey "Albania." He thought highly of it and protested the sale in no uncertain terms, but without avail. Conflicting claims of titles to lands arose by reason of grants which had been made by Col. Nichols and also through purchases from the Indians and the old titles acquired under Dutch and Swedish rule. Berkeley became alarmed regarding his investment and sold out his entire interest in March 1673 to John Fenwick and Edward Byllinge, two Quakers living in England for 1,000 pounds cash.

The Division of East and West Jersey
The half of New Jersey which the two Quakers Fenwick and Byllinge had bought from Lord Berkeley was an undivided interest, but after 1673-74, Cateret obtained a new grant which divided the State geographically and gave him the northern portion of the State. A disagreement arose between Fenwick and Byllinge which was eventually resolved by William Penn who arbitrated the matter. Byllinge became financially embarrassed and assigned the property to trustees who included William Penn. Out of all of this arose a new settlement, and a new division of territory on July 1, 1676 into "East" and "West" Jersey. The new line ran from Little Egg Harbor to a point in the Delaware River in 41 degrees of north latitude.

John Fenwick and Early Quaker Settlers
All of this division of land took place while most of the grantees were still in England. John Fenwick, however, left England in 1675 before the division of East and West Jersey occurred, sailing on the ship Griffith with a group of Quakers who settled at Salem. William Penn did not leave England until seven years later.
In 1677 and 1678 five other vessels with 800 emigrants, mostly Quakers, arrived. A large number disembarked at Raccoon Creek near Swedesboro and others proceeded farther north and settled at Burlington, originally called Beverly, then Budlington, and finally Burlington. Friends Meetings were held in Burlington in 1677 in tents. A Quaker Meeting House was built in Salem in 1680, and in Burlington in 1682. At this point proprietary interests in West Jersey were to a large extent in Quaker hands.
The type of government which developed in all of New Jersey was extremely liberal. In fact it was considered later by the Crown of England to be revolutionary. The capital of West Jersey was fixed at Burlington, and an Assembly was convened there in 1681. These early New Jersey colonial governments, asserted, 100 years before the American Revolution, substantially the same principle of sovereignty of the people themselves, which was later set forth in the Declaration of Independence.

The Origin of Gloucester County
It was during this period of relatively independent existence from about 1680 to about 1702 that the local units of government in Gloucester County were created. The County is the only one of the State, and is among few in the entire United States, which originated directly in action of its own freeholders and inhabitants -- it was not created by the provisional government of West Jersey.
Gloucester County began its existence on May 28, 1686 with a meeting of its proprietors, freeholders and inhabitants who formally decided to organize a government and to establish a "Constitution of Gloucester County." The colonial legislature which had been meeting at Burlington was not in session at the time and did nothing whatever either to authorize the creation of the County or to interfere with its existence after it was organized. In 1692 the legislature recognized formally the existence of Gloucester County as a separate entity.
The County seat was at the City of Gloucester until moved to Woodbury during or about the time of the Revolutionary War. The first court was held in Hugg's Tavern in Gloucester. Betsy Ross was later married in that Tavern. The building stood in Gloucester County until about 1933. [The fireplace of that tavern, can be found at the Gloucester County Historical Society].
Gloucester County for many years extended entirely across the State and included all of Atlantic County and all of Camden County. The territory now in Atlantic County was not separated from Gloucester County until 1837 which was 151 years after the founding of Gloucester County. Camden County was not created until 1844.

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