New Jersey Historical Law Guide

Contents

Legal Ages at a Glance

General Principles

An English legal system

New Jersey's law came from England. Europeans had traded and built posts along the Delaware from the 1620s under Dutch and then Swedish authority, and Dutch settlers founded Bergen, the first permanent town, about 1660; Dutch law governed until England took the colony in 1664¹. From 1664 English common law — judge-made law, handed down through court decisions rather than written by a legislature — governed. The colony split into East Jersey and West Jersey under the proprietors, reunited as a royal colony in 1702, and became a state in 1776. The new state kept the old law by constitutional provision: English common law, and so much of the statute law as had been used in the colony, stayed in force until the Legislature changed it². The Constitution of 1844 carried that clause forward, and the courts still relied on it in the 1930s³.

The system was English throughout. Property belonged to whichever spouse acquired it, and the estate of each descended separately at death. What a husband could do with his wife's property while the marriage lasted is a separate question, and the answer changed in 1852; both are set out below.

Two consequences are worth knowing at the outset. Probate — the proving of a will in court, and the settling of the estate under the court’s eye — was county business: from 1784 each county had an orphans' court, with the county surrogate as its clerk, who proved wills, granted authority to executors and guardians, took their bonds, and audited their accounts⁴. Wills, inventories, guardianships, and estate accounts therefore sit with county government. Deeds were county records too: a deed was recorded with the clerk of the county where the land lay, and only after the seller acknowledged it before an official or a witness proved it⁵.

A common law steadily rewritten by statute

The Legislature replaced common-law rules with statutes over time, and those dates make useful anchors — each marks a change you will see in the records:

• 1780 — the eldest son's exclusive right to the land ends.
• 1795 — county clerks begin recording marriages.
• 1798 — the colonial slave code of 1713–14 is repealed, and with it the bar on a freed person holding land.
• 1804 — county registration begins for children born to enslaved mothers.
• 1817 — land descends equally to sons and daughters; aliens may buy and hold land.
• 1846 — a general revision of the statutes; slavery replaced with lifetime apprenticeship.
• 1848 — statewide registration of births, marriages, and deaths, from 1 May.
• 1852 — the Married Women's Act.
• 1918 — the tax revision; the poll tax becomes one dollar on every male inhabitant of 21.
• 1928–29 — dower and curtesy (a surviving wife’s or husband’s right to use the other’s land for life) enlarged to one-half.
• 1939 — common-law marriage ends on 1 December.

For any given year, the rule in force is the statute where one had been passed by then, and the common law otherwise.

Legal Age of Adulthood

Majority at twenty-one

Full legal age in New Jersey was 21, for women and men alike, through 1950. No statute set it; the common law did, and the reception clause kept the common law in force⁶. Anyone under 21 was an "infant" in legal language, even a 20-year-old.

The age dropped to 18 in 1972⁷.

A minor's legal capacity

A minor could own property. What the law limited was the power to part with it:

• A minor's contract was voidable — valid until the minor chose to undo it⁸.
• A minor's deed was voidable too, and the time allowed to undo it was long: twenty years after coming of age, unless the minor had already confirmed the sale, and any conduct showing the sale was meant to stand counted as confirmation⁹. A suit in the 1880s over a deed given in the 1850s is a former minor undoing his sale, and the pleadings give his age.
• Where a minor held land only for someone else, as trustee or mortgage holder, the Court of Chancery could order him to hand it over¹⁰.

Ages that did differ by sex

Majority was 21 for both sexes, without variation, through 1950. Where New Jersey did set different ages for men and women, it was never about majority itself:

• Parental consent to marry. The thresholds were 21 for a man and 18 for a woman from 1795 (below). A married 16-year-old was still a minor.
• Capacity to marry at all. The common law allowed a boy to marry at 14 and a girl at 12, and New Jersey never changed those ages before 1950 (below).

Marriage

Who was old enough to marry

The common-law ages governed capacity to marry through 1950: a boy could marry at 14, a girl at 12. New Jersey's marriage statutes dealt with officiants, consent, and recording, and left the marrying ages alone. The courts confirmed this in 1920: the licensing statute set consent ages without changing the common-law rule, so a marriage below those ages was voidable — it stood unless someone went to court to undo it¹¹.

Either party could ask the Court of Chancery to set the marriage aside because he or she was under 18 at the time. The right ended once the marriage was confirmed after 18, and no decree issued where a child had been born or was expected, unless the court found it in the child's interest¹². In practice a teenage marriage stood, and its children were legitimate.

Parental consent

Before 1719 no statute required anyone's consent: a couple old enough to marry at common law could marry without asking a parent, and no consent paper was created. That changed in 1719, and the age was 21 for a man and 21 for a woman alike. No license could be given to marry anyone under 21 until that person had the consent of a parent, guardian, or whoever had care of them, put in writing and signed; the certificate was filed in the Secretary's Office of the Province and entered in a book kept for the purpose¹³. So a consent certificate before 1795 sits with the province, not the county.

The same act produced New Jersey's marriage bonds. An applicant under 21 swore the certificate was genuine and then entered into a bond, with two sureties owning land in the province, in the penal sum of £500 — forfeit if the certificate turned out to be false or if there was an impediment to the marriage. The bond stayed in the Secretary's Office¹⁴. A bond names the groom and two sureties, who are very often his father, her father, or a brother.

From 1795 the rule fell on the officiant instead, and the ages parted. No justice of the peace or minister could marry a male under 21 or a female under 18 unless the parent, guardian, or person having care of the minor attended and consented, or the minor produced a written consent proved by the oath of a witness who had seen it signed¹⁵. An officiant who ignored this forfeited $300, half to the state and half to the parent or guardian¹⁶.

He also had to send that written consent to the county clerk within three months¹⁷. Those consent certificates are filed with the county clerk apart from the marriage books, and each one names a parent or guardian and shows the child was under 21 or under 18 on a known date.

The same ages carried into the licensing era, when the consent had to be certified before two reputable witnesses¹⁸.

How a marriage was recorded

The colonial statute reached minors only. On the better reading of the 1719 act, a person of full age needed neither a license nor any public notice, and the license or posted publication was the machinery by which a minor proved a parent's consent¹⁹. Many New Jersey guides state instead that a license or banns was required of everybody between 1719 and 1795; if you are working from one of those, expect to find adults marrying with no license and no notice, because the statute did not reach them.

Where the marriage went on paper moved several times, and the table below is the practical guide:

One point matters above the rest. Between 1795 and 1939 a resident couple needed no license at all, so an ancestor may be lawfully married with nothing in any license series. The filing office moved twice: the officiant filed with the county clerk from 1795, municipal clerks also reported yearly to the Secretary of State from 1 May 1848, and from 1 June 1878 officiants filed with municipal clerks or assessors instead of the county²⁰. The state return is the one that names parents.

Officiants were broad from the start: every justice of the peace and every ordained minister²¹. Any religious society could also marry its own members by its own rules, provided its clerk kept a register²² — the provision that carries Quaker marriages, where the meeting's own minute book holds the record. From 1856 a marriage recorded by a religious society was lawful even where only one party belonged to it²³.

Marriage without a ceremony

A couple who agreed, then and there, to take each other as husband and wife were married in New Jersey law — with no ceremony, no license, and no record. Living together and being known in the neighborhood as married was how that agreement was proved. This was so until 1 December 1939. The act of that year drew the line: a common-law marriage contracted before that date stays valid, while one contracted on or after it is void unless the parties took out a license and an authorized officiant married them²⁴.

Before December 1939 a couple with no marriage record may be perfectly well married, and their children legitimate and able to inherit. Where the rule applied, no document was created at all.

Restrictions on marriage

Marriage within the forbidden degrees of kinship was barred, and the 1795 act printed the whole list of prohibited relations for each sex, running from mother and daughter out to aunt, niece, and granddaughter²⁵. Close kinship, an existing marriage, incurable impotence, and inability to consent were the four grounds on which a court would set a marriage aside²⁶. Race was never among the bars: New Jersey is one of the small group of states that never enacted a law against interracial marriage, and the list of prohibited relations printed in the 1795 act is a list of blood relatives only²⁷.

Twentieth-century licensing added health grounds. No license could issue where either party had a venereal disease in a catching stage, was drunk or drugged, was of unsound mind, or had been in an asylum or a poorhouse without a proper discharge²⁸; and from 1938 each applicant filed a doctor's certificate of a blood test²⁹, so a license file from that year on names a physician.

Enslaved people and people of color

Marriage in New Jersey ran on one set of rules for everyone. The bars were the ones above — close kinship, an existing marriage, incapacity — and they reached every couple on the same terms, so Black, mixed-race, and interracial couples married under the ordinary law and appear in the ordinary county and church records³⁰.

For people held in slavery, practice diverged from law. A marriage depended on the enslaver's permission, and spouses could be sold apart, so a recorded marriage may describe a household later broken up. Because New Jersey recognized common-law marriage until 1939, formerly enslaved couples who lived together as husband and wife were lawfully married and their children legitimate, and no cohabitation register was created after emancipation.

Property Ownership

Which men could own land

The right to acquire, hold, and convey land belonged to every free man in New Jersey, of any race, at any age³¹. What changed at 21 was the power to sell it himself. Marriage left that power intact, so a married man's deed carries his own signature — and his wife's, for the reason set out below.

Enslaved men had no legal capacity to own property of any kind; anything in their possession belonged in law to the enslaver³².

A foreign-born man's position turned on citizenship. An alien — anyone not a citizen — held land on worse terms than a citizen until the nineteenth century, and the two disabilities lifted at different dates³³.

Buying came first. From 22 January 1817 any alien could purchase and hold land in New Jersey as fully as a natural-born citizen, and purchases already made were confirmed³⁴. Inheriting came later, in the revision of 1846, which let an alien take land by descent or by will and hold it exactly as a citizen could, reaching back to cover everything descended or devised since 22 January 1817³⁵. A claimant could also trace title through an alien ancestor as through any other³⁶, and a widow took dower — the lifetime interest in a third of her husband's land described below — whether alien or not³⁷. So an unnaturalized heir is a sound link in any New Jersey descent after 1817.

Women and land ownership

For a woman, everything turned on whether she was married. A single woman or widow — a feme sole, "woman alone" — could buy, own, sell, mortgage, sue, and be sued exactly as a man could³⁸. A woman transacting on her own in the deed books is almost always unmarried or widowed.

Married women before 1852

A married woman was a feme covert, "covered woman," under coverture — the common-law rule that a wife's legal identity merged into her husband's. He took the income from her land, owned her goods outright, and collected the debts owed to her; her own contracts had no force, and if he outlived her, her bonds and notes were his³⁹. She still owned her land, but selling it took her husband and a ceremony of her own.

Married women after 1852

The Married Women's Act of 1852 gave a wife a separate estate. Property she owned when she married, and the income from it, stopped being subject to her husband's control and stopped being liable for his debts; the same was declared of women already married; and she could from then on receive property by gift, deed, or will and hold it as her own⁴⁰. Before 1852, land coming to a married woman disappears into her husband's dealings; after it, she appears in the deed books and tax lists by name.

The act gave her ownership before it gave her a free hand. She still needed her husband to join in a deed of her own land⁴¹, and from 1857 a wife of full age joining his deed could guarantee the title as if she were single⁴². Full power to contract came in the twentieth century, when she could sign any document affecting her own land without his consent⁴³. Her wages became her own from 4 July 1852⁴⁴.

A deed to a husband and wife together gave each a half interest and gave the whole to whoever outlived the other. After 1852 each took half the income, and only the husband's own half could be seized for his debts⁴⁵.

When a wife had to sign her husband's deed

The rule barely moved for three centuries.

The driver is dower: a widow's life estate — the use of land for the rest of her life, without owning it — in one-third of her husband's land. In New Jersey dower attached to every parcel the husband held at any time during the marriage, unless she had given up the right by deed⁴⁶. A buyer therefore took the land subject to the wife's future claim unless she released it, and she nearly always released. So a married man's deed carries two signatures. Where a man old enough to marry signed alone, stop and take note: he was single or widowed on that date.

The release had its own ceremony. No married woman's interest passed by her deed without a privy examination — the official taking the acknowledgment questioned her apart from her husband, and she declared that she signed freely, without fear or pressure from him. His certificate of that examination is written on the deed⁴⁷, and it names her and shows the marriage was in existence that day.

Two refinements matter. A wife under 21 could not release dower at all⁴⁸, so a valid release is evidence she had reached 21. And the share grew in 1928–29:

The fraction turns on when the land was acquired, not on the date of death⁴⁹, so one estate can carry both.

Until her share was set out, a widow could live in the house and work the farm rent-free⁵⁰. Where a will left her land without saying whether it replaced dower, she lost dower in that land unless she filed a written refusal within six months of probate⁵¹; that refusal sits in the probate file and shows which she took. A spouse who deserted and lived with someone else lost the right entirely⁵².

Which children could own land

A child could own land at any age, taking it by inheritance, gift, devise — a gift of land by will — or purchase, just as an adult did⁵³. Selling it was the constraint, and it went through the orphans' court, so where a deed conveys a child's land the orphans' court file holds the family. Own at any age; sell freely at 21.

Witnessing a deed

A witness of any age could serve, provided he understood an oath and could describe what he had seen: the conveyances act fixes no age for a witness, and competency was the only test⁵⁴. A deed was made ready for recording either by the seller acknowledging it before a judge or other authorized official, or by a witness proving it before one⁵⁵. In practice witnesses were adults, often kin or neighbors of the seller, since a witness might have to appear years later to prove the deed.

Enslaved people and free people of color

A person born free could own, inherit, and convey land in New Jersey on the same terms as anyone else, whatever their color, and did so throughout the period. One set of rules on deeds, descent, and dower governed every owner of that kind alike⁵⁶.

A person freed from slavery was in a different position for most of the eighteenth century. From 1713–14 anyone thereafter made free was barred from holding land in his or her own right: no house, land, or other real estate could be held by such a person in his or her own name outright, and any that came to them escheated — fell in — to the Crown⁵⁷. The bar reached only the manumitted, not the free-born, and it fell with the rest of that act on 14 March 1798⁵⁸. So for land held by a formerly enslaved person between 1714 and 1798, look for the title in someone else's name.

New Jersey was the last northern state to begin dismantling slavery, and it did so in stages. The gradual abolition act freed children born to enslaved mothers after 4 July 1804, but bound them to serve the mother's owner — a male until 25, a female until 21 — while anyone already enslaved stayed enslaved for life⁵⁹.

That act created New Jersey's earliest systematic birth record for anyone. Whoever was entitled to the child's service had to give the county clerk, within nine months, a signed certificate naming himself, the child, and the child's mother, with the child's age and sex, which the clerk entered in a book kept for the purpose⁶⁰. These county registers, running from 1804, name mother and child together.

Freeing a person was regulated from the start, and the rules turned on age. The colonial act of 1713–14 discouraged it by making it expensive, requiring the owner to give security to the Crown and to pay the freed person an annuity for life; where the freedom came by will, the executors had to give the same security when the will was proved, and the manumission failed if they refused⁶¹. That last rule puts a bond in the probate file behind an eighteenth-century manumission by will.

An act of 1786 dropped that security and allowed the freeing of anyone between 21 and 35 who was found of sound mind and able to support himself or herself, on a certificate from two overseers of the poor of the township and two justices of the peace of the county, recorded by the county clerk⁶². The act of 1798 restated the procedure and raised the upper age to 40, the owner freeing the person by writing under hand and seal before at least two witnesses, on the same certificate from two overseers of the poor and two justices, recorded with the county clerk⁶³. An act of 1844 reduced the witnesses to one⁶⁴. A recorded manumission names the person freed and the former owner; the certificate behind it names the officials who examined them.

The act of 1846 abolished slavery and in the same breath made everyone then enslaved an apprentice bound to the same owner until discharged, with their children free from birth. A discharge took a signed document plus a certificate from the township overseers of the poor and two justices of the peace, recorded with the county clerk⁶⁵. Those discharges name both parties. The 1846 apprenticeships ran until the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865.

Inheritance

Two separate systems

A person who died without a will died intestate. New Jersey then divided the estate under two separate systems, and they worked differently:

• Land passed straight to the heirs at the moment of death, and needed no administrator.
• Goods and money passed through an administrator — the person the court appointed to settle an estate that had no will — after debts were paid.

So an estate can leave a full personal file and no land record, or the reverse.

Who inherited the land

The 1780 act describes the old rule in its own preamble: the law of descents worked injustice by giving an ancestor's whole real estate to the male heir at law, shutting out the other children⁶⁶. In its place it put division among the sons, and, where there were daughters too, a division giving each son two shares to each daughter's one; a dead child's share went to that child's own children, and land already given to a child during the parent's life counted against that child's share as an advancement⁶⁷. The equal-shares rule arrived in 1817⁶⁸.

So a lopsided division of New Jersey land in the 1780s or 1790s is correct as it stands, and the arithmetic identifies the sexes of the children even where the document does not name them: a son's share is twice a daughter's.

The orphans' court act of 1784 supplied the machinery. Where someone died intestate leaving two or more children, any of them under age, the court could order a division, with the boundaries of each child's share fixed by three impartial men it appointed, who reported back in writing⁶⁹. That report names every child and describes each share. Division and partition papers are kept by the county clerk in at least some counties rather than by the surrogate, so search the clerk's land records as well as the estate file.

The 1846 revision restated equal shares and set out who inherited when there were no children — brothers and sisters and their issue, then the father, then the mother for life, then half-brothers and half-sisters, then the nearest relatives⁷⁰. A child born after the father's death inherited as if born in his lifetime⁷¹. By the twentieth century a surviving spouse took all the land where the deceased left no children⁷².

Shares of goods and money

The shares are fixed, and they do not change with the number of children. They are the shares of the English Statute of Distributions, which came in with the common law at the reception and which New Jersey then restated in its own acts, so the same fractions govern from the colonial period to the end of this one⁷³:

A child already given a portion during the parent's life brought it into account and took only enough to even the shares⁷⁴. The twentieth-century statutes kept one-third to the surviving spouse where there were children, and the whole where there were none⁷⁵. Because the fraction is fixed, an account showing a widow taking a third tells you children survived, before you have found a single child's name.

From 1851 the family also kept its wearing apparel and $200 of household goods and tradesman's tools against all creditors, as fully after the debtor's death as before it⁷⁶. The twentieth-century statutes carried that reservation into the law of estates, with the widow choosing the items herself from the inventory⁷⁷. Where the choice was written down it names her, and it belongs with the estate papers rather than the will.

Guardians and the age of fourteen

Guardianship was the orphans' court's business, and the surrogate issued the paperwork⁷⁸. Fix one definition first: an "orphan" in New Jersey records is a child whose father has died — the mother could be alive and well, and while the father lived the court had no power to appoint at all⁷⁹.

The age of fourteen splits the practice. A minor of 14 or over chose his own guardian, and the court's authority issued on a petition signed by the minor himself in front of the surrogate⁸⁰. A younger child did not choose: the mother or nearest relative applied, and the court appointed someone to serve until the child turned 14 and named his own⁸¹. So a guardianship petition carrying the minor's own signature puts him just over 14, and a second appointment for the same child marks the fourteenth birthday rather than a death.

Guardianship ended at 21. From 1856 a guardian could avoid a formal accounting by filing with the surrogate a release from the minor, now of full age — or from her and her husband together, if she had married⁸². A release dates the minor's coming of age, and where the minor is a woman it often gives her married surname. Where none was filed, the guardian's final account does the same work.

What the guardian did with the money is worth knowing, because it is what generates the paper. A minor's share did not sit idle: money coming to a child from an estate was to be put out at interest on security of unencumbered real estate, or invested as the court directed, and the guardian answered for it to the orphans' court in periodic accounts that the surrogate audited⁸³. Those accounts name the child, list the estate the share came from, and often run for years, which makes them among the most useful documents in a New Jersey estate file.

A guardian was appointed chiefly because a minor owned property, so where a child inherited nothing, often no guardianship record was created. A father could appoint a guardian himself, by deed in his lifetime or by a will attested by three witnesses, to hold the custody and the profits of the child's land until 21⁸⁴; by the twentieth century either parent could do it, with the other parent's written consent⁸⁵. And where a parent absconded or stayed away two years, leaving children under 21 unprovided for, the court could appoint on the children's own application⁸⁶.

Children born outside marriage

A child born outside marriage inherited from the mother, and she from the child, as if the child had been born in marriage⁸⁷. The mother had the sole right to custody⁸⁸, which is why the child appears in her estate and not the father's. Both parents owed support, enforceable by either parent, by whoever had the child, or by the overseer of the poor⁸⁹.

One caution runs through this section. Because common-law marriage was valid until December 1939, parents living together as husband and wife were married and their children legitimate, with no document anywhere.

Making a will

The age to make a will of land was 21 throughout, and the same section barred married women and anyone of unsound mind⁹⁰. A married woman's will of land before 1852 is void, so where land passes from a wife in that period, look for a trust or a marriage settlement. The Married Women's Act of 1852 gave her the separate estate; the power to dispose of it by will followed, and by the end of the period a married woman above 21 could make a will exactly as a single woman could⁹¹.

The age to make a will of goods changed in 1850, and it turns on the day the will was made:

The 1846 act left wills of goods to the common-law ages⁹², and the 1851 supplement closed the gap: a will of personal estate made after 4 July 1850 by anyone under 21 had no force⁹³. So a will of goods made by a 17-year-old on or before that day stands, whenever it came to be proved. By the twentieth century the rule was one line: a person had to be 21 to make a will at all⁹⁴.

The number of witnesses changed at nearly the same moment, and this rule turns on the date of death instead, which makes the two easy to confuse. A will of land needed three subscribing witnesses — witnesses who signed it — a requirement running back to the colonial act of 1713–14⁹⁵. For anyone dying after 4 July 1850 two were enough, signing in the presence of the testator — the person making the will — after he had signed before them both or acknowledged his signature to them⁹⁶.

A will witness could be of any age, but had to take nothing under the will: a gift to a subscribing witness was void, which left the witness disinterested — having nothing to gain — and so competent⁹⁷. A legatee — someone left goods or money by the will — found among the witnesses means that gift failed.

An executor or executrix had to be of full age. The statutes fix this through the machinery rather than a number: where the named executor was under age, the surrogate appointed someone else to administer the estate durante minore aetate, "during the minority," until he came of age⁹⁸. A change of personal representative a few years after probate is often a young executor turning 21.

A woman could serve. A single woman or widow of 21 took letters like any man, and this is why widows appear as executrix and administratrix throughout the record. A married woman could also serve, but not alone: while coverture lasted her husband had to join in the bond and act with her, so a married executrix's papers carry two names⁹⁹. Reading a married executrix's bond, the husband is there because the law put him there, not because he had any interest in the estate.

Taxation

What was taxed

Two kinds of tax on individuals leave usable records: the poll, head, or capitation tax — a flat charge on a person rather than on property — and the property tax on land and goods. For genealogy the poll tax is the prize, because it lists men who owned nothing at all, which makes early tax lists into census substitutes.

Everything runs through the yearly township list. Between 20 May and 20 August the assessor listed the people, land, goods, and estates taxable that year, and every inhabitant had to give a true account of his name and property; a man who refused, or lied, was taxed double¹⁰⁰. The county's assessors then met in September and swore to abstracts giving the number of taxable inhabitants in each township¹⁰¹.

Colonial and early state ratables

The yearly list was called the ratables — the roll of people and property rated, or assessed, for tax that year. The colonial and early state ratables are itemized, which makes them unusually informative. The assessor returned householders; merchants and shopkeepers; mills, furnaces, and forges; glass houses, stills, and brew houses; houses and improved lots; ferries and boats carrying for hire; every single man who worked for hire; every bought servant and every male slave of sixteen and upwards, except those unable to work; improved land; cattle and horses of two years and upwards; and sheep of one year and upwards¹⁰².

Note where the sixteen falls: it fixes the age for male servants and slaves, and the single man is rated at any age. The state act of 1784 kept the same shape, taxing single men without an age — at one rate if the man kept a horse and a lower one if he did not — and every male slave between sixteen and sixty¹⁰³. The categories survived into the 1820s and had gone by the revision of 1846¹⁰⁴.

The single man's entry is the useful one. A young man with no land appears in his own right, which places him in a named township in a named year, and he leaves that column once he has enough property to be taxed on it instead¹⁰⁵.

Only the person assessed was named. The householder, the landowner, and the single man rated in his own right each got a line of his own; everything charged against him — improved acres, cattle and horses, bought servants, and the enslaved people he held — was a figure in a column beside his name¹⁰⁶. An enslaved person is therefore a digit in the slave column and never a name, and a bought servant is the same. Wives and children do not appear at all, and before 1852 a married woman had no separate estate to be assessed on, so the women found on these lists are widows and single women holding property in their own right¹⁰⁷.

Two consequences matter in practice. A man missing from a list where he ought to be was usually a dependent, a servant, or enslaved, rather than absent from the township. And because land was taxed where it lay, an owner living elsewhere appears on the list for the township his land sat in, which is often the only record placing him there¹⁰⁸. Keep the two levels of record apart as well: the township list names people, while the county abstract sworn each September gives only the number of taxable inhabitants. Coverage is thin — only about a thousand ratables survive, perhaps four percent of those once made, and Sussex County is nearly bare¹⁰⁹.

The poll tax

The first New Jersey head tax with an age attached to it is the act of 1854, which charged fifty cents on every white male inhabitant of the state of the age of twenty-one years and upwards¹¹⁰. It ran from a man's twenty-first birthday for the rest of his life. New Jersey never set an age at which a man aged out of the poll: no statute before 1950 exempted the elderly, so a man of eighty was as liable as a man of twenty-five, and only the classes listed below got him off the roll. Because the charge fell on white men, a free man of color of this period enters the tax books through his property rather than through his poll. Personal tax was assessed where the man lived; land where it lay¹¹¹. A poll entry therefore places a man's residence in a given year even when he owned nothing.

The tax revision of 1918 raised the charge and widened who paid it. From 1 October 1918 the poll was one dollar on every male inhabitant domiciled in the state of the age of twenty-one years or more, except paupers and people found to be of unsound mind, assessed in the taxing district where he lived on the first day of October each year¹¹². The word "white" had gone, so from 1918 a man of color of twenty-one appears on the poll list like anyone else.

The poll tax outlasted 1950. It was still being levied and still being chased in the 1940s: an act of 1946 let a municipality resolve to cancel poll taxes that had stood unpaid for ten years or more, wipe out the interest, and release the collector from having to collect them¹¹³.

Who the tax lists name, and who they merely count, is set out below:

Exemptions

A man could leave the poll list while alive and still resident, and the reasons changed with the century. In the nineteenth, the polls of all Revolutionary soldiers were exempt¹¹⁴, and a militiaman who produced a certificate of service was free of jury duty and poll tax for one year¹¹⁵. By 1918 the exempt classes were firemen — serving and exempt — members of the National Guard, and honorably discharged soldiers and sailors of any war, together with their widows for as long as they stayed widows¹¹⁶. When a man drops off a poll list while still alive elsewhere in the record, one of these is usually the explanation, and each of them is worth following: the exemption was claimed, so it tells you something about him.

Courts

Jury service

Jury qualification in the colonial period was the English common-law rule — a free adult male freeholder of the county — which the constitution of 1776 confirmed along with the rest of the received law, and which the state statutes restated rather than changed¹¹⁷. The statutory qualifications sat in one place and covered grand jurors and trial jurors alike: a citizen of the state, living in the county, above the age of twenty-one and under the age of sixty-five, and holding a freehold — owning land — in the county he was summoned for. A juror short of any of these could be challenged and discharged on his own oath, though no objection was allowed once he was sworn¹¹⁸.

The land requirement covered the whole panel, not merely bystanders summoned to fill a short jury, and it ended in 1851, when the Legislature dropped it and directed that the words requiring it be struck from the writs summoning juries¹¹⁹. So a man on a New Jersey jury panel before 1851 owned land in that county on that date, whether or not you have found the deed.

Those four tests — citizenship, county residence, age, and, until 1851, a freehold — were the whole statutory qualification, and they reached every man on the same terms, so a free man of color who met them was qualified to serve.

Women became eligible for jury service in 1921, and not before. The Nineteenth Amendment did not do it: it conferred the vote and nothing else, and until the Legislature acted neither the constitution nor any statute of New Jersey provided that women should or might be jurors. In 1921 the Legislature amended the act concerning jurors to bring women within the description of persons liable to be summoned as grand and petit jurors. The Court of Errors and Appeals, holding that same year that a defendant could not complain of the exclusion of women from a panel drawn before the change, called the new act remedial rather than declaratory — women had to be qualified by legislative enactment in order to serve¹²⁰. By 1948 women with the same qualifications served as grand or trial jurors, and the excuses from service ran without distinction of sex¹²¹.

Criminal responsibility

The common law fixed the ages, and the courts set them out plainly: under 7, a child was legally incapable of committing a crime; between 7 and 14, the law presumed incapacity, and the State could rebut it by proving the child knew right from wrong and understood the act; from 14, the law presumed capacity¹²².

Statute then moved the line in three steps. County courts for juvenile offenders were created in 1903, made up of the judges of the common pleas¹²³. In 1929 a full revision established the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts in each county and gave them jurisdiction over children under the age of sixteen¹²⁴. Then in 1935 the Legislature provided that any person under the age of sixteen was incapable of committing a crime — felony, high misdemeanor, misdemeanor, or other offense¹²⁵.

So from 1935 the minimum age for a criminal conviction in New Jersey was 16. Whether murder was an exception was argued for twenty years and settled in 1954, when the juvenile court's jurisdiction was held to cover even the most serious charges¹²⁶. From 1946 the juvenile court could send a child of 16 or over to the prosecutor for a serious offense¹²⁷.

The practical effect is to move the records: from 1903, and firmly from 1929, a child under 16 has a juvenile court file with the county court rather than a criminal case file, and those files are typically closed.

Witnesses

New Jersey never fixed a minimum age for a witness. A witness of any age could testify if he or she understood the obligation of an oath and could relate facts, and the trial judge decided that by examining the child personally before allowing the testimony. A very young child's uncorroborated word carried little weight, but that was a question of weight rather than competency¹²⁸.

The disqualifications the statutes named turned on marriage rather than age. No person could be excluded as a witness in any civil or criminal action because of the marital relationship, except as the statutes provided¹²⁹. In a criminal case either spouse could prove the fact of the marriage, and a married woman could testify against her husband where she was the complainant against him; otherwise neither spouse was competent against the other¹³⁰. Neither could be compelled to disclose a confidential communication made during the marriage¹³¹.

Enslaved people as witnesses

One disqualification turned on status. Under the colonial act of 1713–14 an enslaved person could give evidence on the criminal trial of another enslaved person, and those trials were heard outside the ordinary courts: the justice who committed the accused certified the case to the two next justices, who joined him, and the three of them summoned five freeholders, who were sworn to judge according to the evidence and could not be challenged. An owner who asked for one could have a jury returned by the sheriff instead¹³². That separate tribunal ended in 1768, when an act took the trial of slaves out of the colonial scheme¹³³. From 1798 the rule stood in one line: an enslaved person could give evidence only in a criminal case, and only for or against another enslaved person¹³⁴.

Two things follow. The bar ran by status rather than by race, so free people of color were competent witnesses throughout and appear in the ordinary case files. And an enslaved person's testimony before 1768 belongs to the separate slave-trial proceedings held by justices and freeholders; after that date such trials went to the ordinary courts, and the testimony with them. The disqualification itself went with slavery in 1846.

Sources and where to verify

Constitutions

• New Jersey Constitution of 1776. Art. XXII (reception of the common law; trial by jury). Founders' Constitution, University of Chicago Press. https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendVIIs5.html (accessed 27 July 2026).
• New Jersey Constitution of 1844. Art. X (Schedule), § 1 (the reception clause the twentieth-century courts relied on). Full transcription with images of the original. New Jersey State Archives. https://www.nj.gov/state/archives/docconst44.html (accessed 5 August 2026).

Codes and Compilations

• Elmer, Lucius Q. C., and John T. Nixon, comps. A Digest of the Laws of New Jersey. 3rd ed. Bridgeton: Elmer & Nixon; Trenton: Charles Scott, 1861. The essential antebellum volume, digesting the Revision of 1846 with later supplements: apprentices, conveyances, descent, dower, executors and administration, juries, marriages, orphans' courts, slaves, taxes, wills, bastardy, and the Married Women's Act of 1852. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Gifford, Archer. A Digest of the Statutory and Constitutional Constructions Delivered in the Supreme Court, and Court of Errors and Appeals, of the State of New Jersey. Newark, N.J.: Printed at the Newark Daily Advertiser Office, 1852. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/digestofstatutor00giff (accessed 27 July 2026).
• Hood, John, comp. Index of Colonial and State Laws between the Years 1663 and 1877 Inclusive. Trenton, N.J.: J. L. Murphy, printer, 1877. The fastest way to find a New Jersey act by subject across the whole period. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/indexcolonialan00hoodgoog (accessed 27 July 2026).
• Leaming, Aaron, and Jacob Spicer, comps. The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New-Jersey. Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman and Co., 1881. The proprietary constitutions of East and West Jersey. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/grantsconcession00newj (accessed 27 July 2026).
• Nevill, Samuel, comp. The Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of New-Jersey. [N.p.]: printed by William Bradford, printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty for the Province of New-Jersey, 1752. Vol. 2, covering 1753–1761, was printed at Woodbridge by James Parker, 1761. The colonial statutes, including the ratables act and the act for regulating slaves of 1713–14. Digital images. Internet Archive. Vol. 1, https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1752-the-ac_new-jersey_1752; vol. 2, https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1753-1761-t_new-jersey_1761 (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Bush, Bernard, comp. Laws of the Royal Colony of New Jersey. New Jersey Archives, 3rd ser., vols. 2–5. Trenton: New Jersey State Library, Archives and History Bureau, 1977–86. Complete texts of the provincial acts, including those that survive only in manuscript, with section numbers supplied. The route to the colonial ratables and slave acts where Nevill prints them unnumbered.
• Tax Laws of the State of New Jersey: A Compilation of the Statutes Relating to the Assessment and Collection of Taxes (Revision of 1918) and the Taxation of Railroads and Canals, Bank Stock, Corporations and Franchises, with Amendments and Supplements. Trenton, N.J.: State Gazette Publishing Co., printers, 1918. Prints § 201 of the Revision of 1918, the one-dollar poll tax, with the case notes and the exemption classes. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/taxlawsofstateof00newj (accessed 5 August 2026).
• New Jersey State Library. "Historical Compilations of New Jersey Law." A bibliography of every New Jersey compilation from 1709 to 2000, with links to the digitized Revisions of 1846 and 1877, the General Statutes of 1895, and the Compiled Statutes of 1910 — the volumes to search for the later history of the poll tax. https://www.njstatelib.org/research_library/legal_resources/historical_laws/historical-compilations-of-new-jersey-law/ (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Paterson, William, comp. Laws of the State of New-Jersey; Revised and Published under the Authority of the Legislature. Newark: Matthias Day, 1800. Prints § 14 of the 1784 orphans' court act on dividing an intestate's land, the apprentices and servants act of 1798, and the act respecting slaves of 1798. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-of-the-state-of-new_new-jersey_1800 (accessed 27 July 2026).
• Pennington, Aaron S., comp. Laws of the State of New-Jersey. Trenton: J. Justice, 1821. Prints the descent act of 20 January 1817 with the clause repealing the act of 1780, the two-shares proportion in § 14 of the 1784 orphans' court act, and the acts of 1816. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsstatenewjer00penngoog (accessed 27 July 2026).
• Revised Statutes of New Jersey, 1937. 5 vols. Trenton: Soney & Sage, 1937. The statutory code in force through the end of the period covered here, cited throughout in the short form R.S. Most sections cited in this guide survive with the same numbering in the current New Jersey Statutes Annotated and can be read there. https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/ (accessed 10 August 2026).

Session Laws

• Laws of the State of New Jersey. Trenton: Printed by James J. Wilson, 1811. Sometimes cited as Bloomfield's Laws. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/lawsstatenewjer00jersgoog (accessed 27 July 2026).
• New Jersey State Library. Legislative history checklist, age of responsibility for criminal acts. Traces L. 1903, ch. 219 (county juvenile courts); L. 1929, ch. 157 (Juvenile and Domestic Relations Courts, jurisdiction under 16); L. 1935, chs. 284 and 285 (no person under 16 capable of crime); and L. 1946, ch. 77 (referral at 16 and over). https://repo.njstatelib.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6185e463-6af8-49ca-8b06-f4165ba97813/content (accessed 27 July 2026).
• Other acts cited, each to be read in the session volume for its year. New Jersey session laws are cited here as “N.J. Laws [year], p. [page]” where the act is numbered by page, and “L. [year], ch. [number]” for the twentieth-century volumes that number by chapter. The acts are: An Act for Regulating of Slaves, 11 March 1713–14; An act for confirming of conveyances of lands made by wills, 17 March 1713–14; An Act to Prevent Clandestine Marriages, 27 March 1719 (printed in full in Nelson, Marriage Records, below); An Act to regulate the Trial of Slaves for Murder, and other Crimes, 10 May 1768; the act of 2 March 1786 on manumission; the orphans’ court act of 16 December 1784; the act of 1 December 1794 (infants holding land in trust); An Act concerning marriages, 4 March 1795 (N.J. Laws 1795, ch. 526, pp. 1004–07); the acts respecting apprentices and servants and respecting slaves, both 14 March 1798; the gradual abolition act of 15 February 1804 (N.J. Laws 1804, ch. 103, p. 251) and its re-enactment of 24 February 1820; the descent act of 20 January 1817; the alien act of 22 January 1817; the act of 28 February 1844 (manumissions); the Revision of 1846 (acts approved 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18 April 1846); the act of 28 February 1851 abolishing the freehold qualification (N.J. Laws 1851, p. 93); the supplement to the act concerning executions, 14 March 1851 (N.J. Laws 1851, p. 278); the supplement to the act concerning wills, 12 March 1851 (N.J. Laws 1851, p. 218); the Married Women’s Act, 25 March 1852 (N.J. Laws 1852, p. 407); the supplement to the tax act, 3 March 1854 (N.J. Laws 1854, p. 296); the marriage supplement of 4 March 1856 (N.J. Laws 1856, p. 129); the supplement to the orphans’ court act, 6 March 1856 (N.J. Laws 1856, p. 153); the act of 20 March 1857 (N.J. Laws 1857, p. 485); the militia act of 22 March 1860 (N.J. Laws 1860, p. 508); N.J. Laws 1848, pp. 155–58; N.J. Laws 1878, ch. 239; N.J. Laws 1897, ch. 193; N.J. Laws 1910, ch. 274; the jury act of 1921 (N.J. Laws 1921, p. 50); N.J. Laws 1938, ch. 126; and L. 1939, ch. 227, effective 18 July 1939, which ended common-law marriage on 1 December 1939 and is now N.J.S.A. 37:1-10, Justia, https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/title-37/section-37-1-10/ (accessed 10 August 2026).
• Wilson, Peter, comp. Acts of the Council and General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey. Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1784. Prints the act to alter the law directing the descent of real estates, passed 24 May 1780, with the preamble reciting the rule it replaced and the two-shares proportion in § 1, and the state tax acts with the single-man and slave rates. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_acts-of-the-council-and-_new-jersey_1784 (accessed 5 August 2026).

Court Cases

• Bleecker v. Hennion. 23 N.J. Eq. 123 (1872).
• Buttlar v. Rosenblath. 42 N.J. Eq. 651 (1887).
• First National Bank v. Scott. 109 N.J. Eq. 244 (1931).
• Fodor v. Kunie. 92 N.J. Eq. 301 (1920).
• In re Mei. 122 N.J. Eq. 125 (1937).
• State v. Engle. 21 N.J.L. 347 (1848).
• State v. James. 96 N.J.L. 132 (1921).
• Mott v. Iossa. 119 N.J. Eq. 185 (1935).
• Rosa v. Nichols. 92 N.J.L. 375 (1918).
• State v. Monahan. 15 N.J. 34 (1954).
• Zansonico v. Zansonico. 124 N.J. Eq. 477 (1938).

Secondary and Reference Works

• Husted, H. “Using Ratables for New Jersey Genealogy.” New Jersey State Library. Explains what the ratables are, prints the keys to the abbreviations used on the 1773–74, 1778–80, and 1784–86 lists, and gives the survival figures. https://www.njstatelib.org/using-ratables-for-new-jersey-genealogy/ (accessed 11 August 2026).
• New Jersey State Archives. Tax Ratables (Duplicates), 1768–1846. Series SAS00001. Finding aid with scanned images. Lists what survives township by township and county by county, and is the place to check coverage before searching for a name. https://www.nj.gov/state/archives/guides/sas00001Digital.pdf (accessed 11 August 2026).
• “Monmouth County Tax Ratable Lists, 1731–1844.” Record series 3800.40. Monmouth County Clerk, Archives Division. Describes the columns the assessor kept and the searchable name database built from the surviving lists. https://www.monmouthcountyclerk.gov/archives/record-groups/county-clerk-records/monmouth-county-tax-ratable-lists-1731-1844/ (accessed 11 August 2026).
• Axel-Lute, Paul. The Law of Slavery in New Jersey: An Annotated Bibliography. Newark: Rutgers Law Library, 2005. The standard act-by-act guide to the colonial and early state slave laws, keyed to the acts by number. The acts themselves are printed in Nevill and Paterson, above.
• Moran, Rachel F. Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. Pages 17–18 identify New Jersey as one of the states that never enacted a law against interracial marriage, which is why no racial bar appears in the New Jersey marriage statutes digested here.
• Smith, Geneva. "Legislating Slavery in New Jersey." Princeton & Slavery, Princeton University. Act-by-act narrative of the colonial code, the 1713–14 manumission charge, the 1786 and 1798 manumission ages, the 1804 gradual abolition act, and the 1846 abolition act. https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/legislating-slavery-in-new-jersey (accessed 5 August 2026).
• Nelson, William, ed. Marriage Records, 1665–1800. New Jersey Archives, 1st ser., vol. 22. Paterson, N.J.: Press Publishing and Printing, 1900. The historical introduction prints the Marriage Act of 1719 and the Marriage Act of 1795 in full, section by section, and traces the colonial license, bond, and publication practice. Digital images. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/marriagerecords1221newj (accessed 5 August 2026).
• New Jersey State Archives. Collection guides to county clerks' marriage records. Each opens with a legislative history of the 1795, 1848, 1878, 1897, and 1910 recording acts. https://nj.gov/state/archives/catcxxmarri.html (accessed 27 July 2026).
• New Jersey State Archives. "Manumissions of Slaves, 1814–1823." Sussex County, Clerk's Office, series CSUCL004. Collection guide; the legislative history opens with the 1713–14, 1786, 1798, and 1804 manumission and abolition acts, with the ages. https://nj.gov/state/archives/guides/csucl004.pdf (accessed 27 July 2026).
• New Jersey State Archives. "Genealogical Records at the New Jersey State Archives." What survives, and for which years. https://www.nj.gov/state/archives/pdf/GenealogicalRecords.pdf (accessed 27 July 2026).
• "New Jersey Probate Records." FamilySearch Research Wiki. The 1784 transfer of probate to the orphans' courts and the role of the surrogate. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/New_Jersey_Probate_Records (accessed 27 July 2026).
• "New Jersey Vital Records." FamilySearch Research Wiki. The marriage-record chronology, including the 1719–1795 license-or-banns rule and its repeal. https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/New_Jersey_Vital_Records (accessed 27 July 2026).
• U.S. Women's Bureau. The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for New Jersey. Bulletin of the Women's Bureau, No. 157-29 (Revised). Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948. A digest of New Jersey law on majority, minors' contracts, married women's property, dower and curtesy, wills, intestacy, guardianship, marriage, common-law marriage, and jury service, with citations to the Revised Statutes of 1937. FRASER, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/legal-status-women-united-states-america-5430/legal-status-women-united-states-america-january-1-1948-report-new-jersey-539585 (accessed 27 July 2026).
• Caselaw Access Project. Harvard Law School Library. Full text of the New Jersey Law Reports and the other state reporters, by volume. https://static.case.law/njl/ (accessed 5 August 2026).
• "The Woman Juror." Women Lawyers' Journal 15, no. 2 (January 1927). Dates the enactments admitting women to jury service, New Jersey among those of 1921. http://wlh.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/the-woman-juror-15wlj151927.pdf (accessed 27 July 2026).

Citations

1. Bergen, settled about 1660, is generally taken as the first permanent European town in what became New Jersey; Dutch and Swedish posts on the Delaware date from the 1620s and 1630s. For the surviving proprietary charters and constitutions that followed the English conquest, see Aaron Leaming and Jacob Spicer, comps., The Grants, Concessions, and Original Constitutions of the Province of New-Jersey (Somerville, N.J.: Honeyman and Co., 1881); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/grantsconcession00newj : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
2. N.J. Const. of 1776, art. XXII; digital images, Founders' Constitution (https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendVIIs5.html : accessed 27 July 2026) ↩
3. N.J. Const. of 1844, art. X, § 1; applied in U.S. Women's Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), nos. 1, 10; digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/legal-status-women-united-states-america-5430/legal-status-women-united-states-america-january-1-1948-report-new-jersey-539585 : accessed 27 July 2026) ↩
4. An Act respecting the orphans’ court, and the power and authority of surrogates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, §§ 1, 4–5, 16–17; the orphans’ courts were established by the act of 16 December 1784. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 575; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n607/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
5. An Act respecting conveyances, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, §§ 1, 3. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Conveyances", p. 130; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n162/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
6. U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), no. 1, citing N.J. Const., art. X, § 1; digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/legal-status-women-united-states-america-5430/legal-status-women-united-states-america-january-1-1948-report-new-jersey-539585 : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
7. L. 1972, ch. 81, reducing the age of majority to 18, now N.J.S.A. 9:17B-1 to 9:17B-3. Noted here only to warn against reading the modern age back into an earlier record ↩
8. Rosa v. Nichols, 92 N.J.L. 375, 379 (1918); Mott v. Iossa, 119 N.J. Eq. 185, 191 (1935) ↩
9. Mott v. Iossa, 119 N.J. Eq. 185, 192 ↩
10. An Act to enable infants, who are seized or possessed of estates in trust, or by way of mortgage, to make conveyances of the same, passed 1 December 1794; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Conveyances", p. 130; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n162/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
11. Fodor v. Kunie, 92 N.J. Eq. 301, 305 (1920) ↩
12. R.S. 2:50-1, subsecs. 5–6. The Revised Statutes of New Jersey of 1937 are cited throughout in the short form the code itself directs: the abbreviation “R.S.” and the section number, title first, then chapter and section ↩
13. An Act to Prevent Clandestine Marriages, passed 27 March 1719, § 1, requiring that no license issue to marry a person under twenty-one until the consent of a parent, guardian, or person having care is certified in writing, the certificate to be filed in the Secretary’s Office of the Province and registered in a book kept for the purpose; text printed in full in William Nelson, ed., Marriage Records, 1665–1800, New Jersey Archives, 1st ser., vol. 22 (Paterson, N.J.: Press Publishing and Printing, 1900), pp. xcix–cv; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/marriagerecords1221newj/page/n196/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026); repealed by the Act of 1795, § 12 ↩
14. Act of 1719, §§ 3–5, 7, requiring the under-age applicant to swear the certificate genuine and then to enter into bond, with two sureties holding real estate in the province, in the penal sum — the forfeit named in the bond — of £500, void unless the certificate proved fraudulent or a lawful impediment appeared, the bond to remain in the Secretary’s Office; §§ 5 and 7 give the parent or guardian the right to sue on it. William Nelson, ed., Marriage Records, 1665–1800, New Jersey Archives, 1st ser., vol. 22 (Paterson, N.J.: Press Publishing and Printing, 1900), pp. xcix–cv; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/marriagerecords1221newj/page/n198/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
15. An Act concerning marriages, passed 4 March 1795, § 3; N.J. Laws 1795, ch. 526, pp. 1004–07. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Marriages", p. 500; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n532/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
16. Act of 1795, § 5. Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 500; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n532/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
17. Act of 1795, § 4. Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 500; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n532/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
18. R.S. 37:1-6 ↩
19. Act of 1719, §§ 6, 9, giving the minor the alternative of a publication posted by the county clerk in place of a license, and allowing a religious society to marry its own members on the like consent. That the act reached minors only, and that marrying by license nevertheless became general among adults by custom, is Nelson’s reading of the surviving records. William Nelson, ed., Marriage Records, 1665–1800, New Jersey Archives, 1st ser., vol. 22 (Paterson, N.J.: Press Publishing and Printing, 1900), pp. xcix–cv; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/marriagerecords1221newj/page/n208/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
20. An Act relating to the registry and returns of births, marriages, and deaths, approved 5 April 1878, N.J. Laws 1878, ch. 239, effective 1 June 1878; the county and state filing chronology, and the act of 1848 at N.J. Laws 1848, pp. 155–58, are set out in the collection guides to county clerks’ marriage records, New Jersey State Archives (https://nj.gov/state/archives/catcxxmarri.html : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
21. Act of 1795, § 2, and §§ 6–8 for the officiant’s return to the county clerk. Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 500; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n532/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
22. Act of 1795, §§ 9–10. Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 500; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n532/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
23. Supplement approved 4 March 1856, N.J. Laws 1856, p. 129. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Marriages", p. 502; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n534/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
24. R.S. 37:1-10, as amended by L. 1939, ch. 227, p. 624, § 1, effective 18 July 1939; digital images, Justia (https://law.justia.com/codes/new-jersey/title-37/section-37-1-10/ : accessed 5 August 2026) ↩
25. Act of 1795, § 1. Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 500; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n532/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
26. R.S. 2:50-1, subsecs. 1–4 ↩
27. An Act concerning marriages, passed 4 March 1795, § 1, printing the prohibited degrees for each sex without any racial bar; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Marriages", p. 500; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n532/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026). That New Jersey never enacted an anti-miscegenation statute is established in Rachel F. Moran, Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 17–18, which counts New Jersey among the states that never restricted interracial marriage ↩
28. R.S. 37:1-9 ↩
29. P.L. 1938, ch. 126; R.S. Cum. Supp. 1938–1940, §§ 37:1-20 et seq ↩
30. Act of 1795, § 1, and Moran, Interracial Intimacy, 17–18, both cited above. No New Jersey statute in this period conditioned the capacity to marry on race ↩
31. The descent, conveyance, and dower statutes of the 1846 Revision are written of “any person” and impose no racial qualification on ownership: An Act directing the descent of real estates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, §§ 1–6; An Act respecting conveyances, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, §§ 1, 3; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Descent", p. 212; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n244/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026). The one racial bar New Jersey did impose fell on people freed from slavery, and it ended in 1798 (below) ↩
32. The colonial slave code treats the enslaved person as property throughout and gives no capacity to hold: An Act for Regulating of Slaves, passed 11 March 1713–14, in Samuel Nevill, comp., The Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of New-Jersey (1752), p. 18; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1752-the-ac_new-jersey_1752/page/n20/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026). The disability ended with slavery itself in 1846 ↩
33. The disability is stated by the Supreme Court in State v. Engle, 21 N.J.L. 347 (1848), on the escheat of the lands of John G. Leake, who died in 1827 “leaving no heirs capable of inheriting his estate”: a writ of escheat issued, an inquisition of 24 August 1832 so found, and of the alien claimant the court said that the removing act “has removed the disability which then existed,” so that if heir he might pursue “any right to land which would have descended to him, had he been then a natural born citizen of the United States.” The removing provision as printed in the Revision is § 3 of the alien act approved 10 April 1846, which reaches back to 22 January 1817, Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Aliens", p. 6; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n38/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026). The purchase disability is established from the act of 22 January 1817 and its confirming section, and from the private acts that preceded it: the table of private laws in Aaron S. Pennington, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: J. Justice, 1821); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsstatenewjer00penngoog/page/n647/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) carries the heading “Aliens…permitted to hold lands” over acts passed for named individuals ↩
34. An Act to authorize aliens to purchase and hold real estate, in this state, passed 22 January 1817, §§ 1–2; Aaron S. Pennington, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: J. Justice, 1821), p. 604; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsstatenewjer00penngoog/page/n647/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026); re-enacted as An Act to authorize aliens to purchase and hold real estate in this state, Revision, approved 10 April 1846, §§ 1–2, Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Aliens", p. 6; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n38/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
35. Act to authorize aliens to purchase and hold real estate, Revision, approved 10 April 1846, § 3, reaching land descended from any ancestor, alien or not, since 22 January 1817, or devised. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Aliens", p. 6; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n38/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
36. An Act directing the descent of real estates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, § 12, headed “Alienism no bar.” Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Descent", p. 212; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n244/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
37. An Act relative to dower, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, § 1, giving dower to the widow “whether alien or not.” Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Dower", p. 227; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n259/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
38. The disabilities the statutes and digests impose fall on the feme covert alone; the single woman and the widow are dealt with as any other owner. See the privy-examination requirement, which applies only to a married woman: An Act respecting conveyances, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, § 4; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Conveyances", p. 131; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n163/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026). Summarized for the end of the period in U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women…Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (1948), nos. 5–9 ↩
39. Notes to the title “Married Women” collecting the pre-1852 rule. Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 503; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n535/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
40. An Act for the better securing the property of married women, approved 25 March 1852, N.J. Laws 1852, p. 407, §§ 1–3. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Married Women", p. 503; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n535/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
41. An Act respecting conveyances, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, § 4, providing that no estate of a feme covert pass by her deed without her husband joining and a private examination taken; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Conveyances", p. 131; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n163/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
42. An Act to enable married women to warrant the title of real estate conveyed by them, approved 20 March 1857, N.J. Laws 1857, p. 485. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Married Women", p. 503; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n535/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
43. R.S. 37:2-16, 37:2-17; digested in U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), nos. 5–7 ↩
44. R.S. 37:2-13; work done for third persons was on her separate account from 3 April 1928 ↩
45. Buttlar v. Rosenblath, 42 N.J. Eq. 651 (1887); Zansonico v. Zansonico, 124 N.J. Eq. 477, 480 (1938) ↩
46. Act relative to dower, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, § 1. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Dower", p. 227; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n259/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
47. Act respecting conveyances (1846), § 4. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Conveyances", p. 131; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n163/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
48. Act respecting conveyances (1846), § 4, proviso; minor spouses gained power to join an adult spouse in a transfer of realty only by L. 1967, ch. 139, § 1, effective 5 July 1967, now N.J.S.A. 37:2-30 — after the period covered here. Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 131; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n163/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
49. R.S. 3:37-1, 3:37-2, effective 31 December 1928 and 1 January 1929; for the earlier one-third dower see the Act relative to dower (1846), § 1, Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 227; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n259/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026), digested in U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), no. 15 ↩
50. Act relative to dower (1846), § 2; R.S. 3:37-4; Bleecker v. Hennion, 23 N.J. Eq. 123, 125 (1872). Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Dower", p. 227; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n259/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
51. R.S. title 3, ch. 37, on the bar of dower by a devise; the six-month election is digested at U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), no. 15; and see First National Bank v. Scott, 109 N.J. Eq. 244 (1931) ↩
52. R.S. 3:39-2; and R.S. 3:39-4 for bar by jointure ↩
53. The descent act vests the land in the heir at the moment of death without regard to age, and the orphans’ court act supplies the machinery for selling a minor’s land precisely because the minor owns it: Act directing the descent of real estates (1846), § 1, Elmer’s Digest (1861), p. 212; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n244/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026); An Act respecting the orphans’ court, and the power and authority of surrogates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 575; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n607/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
54. An Act respecting conveyances, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, §§ 1, 3, which prescribe acknowledgment by the grantor or proof by a subscribing witness and set no age qualification; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Conveyances", p. 130; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n162/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
55. Act respecting conveyances (1846), § 1. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Conveyances", p. 130; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n162/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
56. The colonial bar of 1713–14 reached only those “hereafter made free,” not the free-born, and the descent, conveyance, and dower acts of the 1846 Revision impose no racial qualification. Act of 1713–14, the escheat clause, in Nevill, Acts (1752); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1752-the-ac_new-jersey_1752/page/n25/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026); and see Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Descent", p. 212; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n244/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
57. An Act for Regulating of Slaves, passed 11 March 1713–14, providing that no person thereafter made free “shall enjoy, hold or possess any House or Houses, Lands, Tenements or Hereditaments, within this Province, in his or her own Right” outright, “but the same shall escheat to her Majesty, her Heirs and Successors.” Samuel Nevill, comp., The Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of New-Jersey (1752), p. 23; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1752-the-ac_new-jersey_1752/page/n25/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
58. An act respecting slaves, passed 14 March 1798, § 30, repealing by name the act for regulating slaves of 11 March 1713–14, the act of 23 October 1751, the act to regulate the trial of slaves for murder and other crimes of 1768, the act of 2 March 1786, and its supplement of 24 November 1788. William Paterson, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Newark: Matthias Day, 1800); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-of-the-state-of-new_new-jersey_1800/page/n307/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
59. An Act for the gradual abolition of slavery, and other purposes respecting slaves, passed 24 February 1820, § 1, re-enacting the rule of the act of 15 February 1804, N.J. Laws 1804, ch. 103, p. 251. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Slaves", p. 801; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n833/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
60. Same act, §§ 2–3; neglect cost $5 and a dollar a month, a false statement of the date of birth $100. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Slaves", p. 801; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n833/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
61. An Act for Regulating of Slaves, passed 11 March 1713–14, the manumission section, requiring the owner to give security to the Crown with two sureties and to pay the freed person an annuity for life, and requiring executors to give the like security on proving a will that freed a slave, the manumission to be void if they refused. Samuel Nevill, comp., The Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of New-Jersey (1752), p. 18; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1752-the-ac_new-jersey_1752/page/n20/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
62. The act passed 2 March 1786, named in the repealing section of the act respecting slaves of 14 March 1798, William Paterson, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Newark: Matthias Day, 1800); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-of-the-state-of-new_new-jersey_1800/page/n307/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026); its terms — manumission of a person between 21 and 35 on certification by two overseers of the poor and two justices of the peace, recorded by the county clerk — are set out in the legislative history prefacing New Jersey State Archives, “Manumissions of Slaves, 1814–1823,” Sussex County, Clerk’s Office, series CSUCL004 (https://nj.gov/state/archives/guides/csucl004.pdf : accessed 10 August 2026), and confirmed independently by Geneva Smith, “Legislating Slavery in New Jersey,” Princeton & Slavery ↩
63. An act respecting slaves, passed 14 March 1798, § 21: manumission by writing under hand and seal before at least two witnesses, the person to be of sound mind, able to obtain a support, not under twenty-one nor above forty, on a certificate first obtained from two overseers of the poor of the township and two justices of the peace of the county, recorded by the county clerk. William Paterson, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Newark: Matthias Day, 1800); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-of-the-state-of-new_new-jersey_1800/page/n311/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
64. An Act to confirm the manumission of certain slaves, passed 28 February 1844, reducing the witnesses required on a deed of manumission from two to one and confirming earlier deeds witnessed by one. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Slaves", p. 801; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n833/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
65. An Act to abolish slavery, Revision, approved 18 April 1846, §§ 1–3. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Slaves", p. 802; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n834/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
66. An Act to alter the law directing the descent of real estates, passed 24 May 1780, preamble, reciting that the law of descents “works Injustice, by vesting the whole Real Estate of an Ancestor” in the male heir at law; Peter Wilson, comp., Acts of the Council and General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1784), p. 125; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_acts-of-the-council-and-_new-jersey_1784/page/n133/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
67. Act of 24 May 1780, § 1 — equal division among the sons; where there was issue of both sexes, two shares to each son for each daughter’s one; a dead child’s issue taking that child’s share; and advancement brought into account. Sections 2 and 3 carry the same proportions to brothers and sisters and to the half blood. Peter Wilson, comp., Acts of the Council and General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1784), p. 125; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_acts-of-the-council-and-_new-jersey_1784/page/n133/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
68. An Act directing the descent of real estates, passed 20 January 1817, § 1; § 8 repeals the act of 24 May 1780, so much of § 14 of the orphans’ court act of 16 December 1784 as gave each male heir two shares to each female heir’s one, and the acts of 5 and 15 February 1816. Aaron S. Pennington, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: J. Justice, 1821), p. 608; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsstatenewjer00penngoog/page/n651/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
69. An act to ascertain the power and authority of the ordinary and his surrogates, to regulate the jurisdiction of the prerogative court, and to establish an orphan’s court in the several counties of this state, passed 16 December 1784, § 14, directing division agreeably to the act of 24 May 1780, the metes and bounds of each child’s share to be ascertained by three indifferent persons appointed by the court, who report in writing to the next orphans’ court. William Paterson, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Newark: Matthias Day, 1800); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-of-the-state-of-new_new-jersey_1800/page/n62/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
70. Act directing the descent of real estates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, §§ 1–6. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Descent", p. 212; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n244/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
71. Same act, §§ 7–8. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Descent", p. 212; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n244/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
72. R.S. 3:3-4, as amended by L. 1941, p. 508 ↩
73. The reception clause carried the English Statute of Distributions (22 & 23 Car. II, c. 10) into New Jersey along with the rest of the common and statute law then in use: N.J. Const. of 1776, art. XXII. The same one-third and one-half shares were restated in An Act concerning executors and the administration and distribution of intestates’ estates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, §§ 12–13; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Executors and Administrators", p. 275; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n307/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026), and carried forward at R.S. 3:5-1 to 3:5-3 ↩
74. An Act concerning executors and the administration and distribution of intestates’ estates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, § 13. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Executors and Administrators", p. 275; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n307/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
75. R.S. 3:5-1, 3:5-2, 3:5-3 ↩
76. Supplement to the act concerning executions, approved 14 March 1851, N.J. Laws 1851, p. 278, § 1, reserving household goods, chattels, and tradesmen’s tools to the value of two hundred dollars, and all wearing apparel, for the family against all creditors, as well after as before the death of the debtor. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Executions", p. 269; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n301/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
77. R.S. 3:9-7, 3:9-8, carrying the reservation of 1851 into the law of estates ↩
78. Orphans’ court act (1846), § 22. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 575; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n607/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
79. Notes to the title “Guardians,” stating that the legal definition of an orphan is a fatherless child and that the orphans’ court has no power to appoint a guardian for a minor during the lifetime of the father. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Guardians", p. 343; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n375/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
80. Orphans’ court act (1846), § 23, on the minor of fourteen or upwards choosing a guardian before the surrogate. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 575; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n607/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
81. Orphans’ court act (1846), § 23, on the appointment for a child under fourteen, to serve until that age and until the child chooses. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 575; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n607/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
82. Supplement to the orphans’ court act, approved 6 March 1856, N.J. Laws 1856, p. 153, § 1, excusing a guardian or trustee who files with the surrogate a release from a minor now of full age — or from a married woman together with her husband — from settling an account. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 590; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n622/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
83. An Act respecting the orphans’ court, and the power and authority of surrogates, Revision, approved 16 April 1846, directing that money in the hands of executors, administrators, trustees, and guardians be put out at interest on sufficient security of unencumbered real estate or invested as the chancellor directs, with the accountant charged for any use he makes of it; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 578; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n610/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026). The duty to account is Elmer’s Digest (1861), supplement approved 6 March 1856, p. 590; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n622/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
84. An Act concerning wills, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, §§ 9–10, empowering the father, by deed in his lifetime or by will signed before three subscribing witnesses, to dispose of the custody and tuition of his children during minority, and giving the person so named the profits of the child’s land until 21. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Wills", p. 913; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n945/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
85. R.S. 3:7-14, 3:7-15, 3:7-16 ↩
86. An Act relative to guardians, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, § 9, on a citizen who absconds or stays out of the state two years leaving children under 21 without competent and suitable provision. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Guardians", p. 341; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n373/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
87. R.S. 3:3-10, 3:5-7 ↩
88. R.S. 9:16-1 ↩
89. R.S. 9:16-2, 9:16-3, 9:16-4 ↩
90. An Act concerning wills, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, § 3. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Wills", p. 913; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n945/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
91. R.S. 3:2-2 (age 21 to make a will) with R.S. 37:2-2, which removes the disability of coverture from a married woman of full age in making a will; digested in U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women…Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (1948), no. 21; digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/legal-status-women-united-states-america-5430/legal-status-women-united-states-america-january-1-1948-report-new-jersey-539585 : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
92. Same act, § 11. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Wills", p. 913; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n945/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
93. A Supplement to the act entitled “An act concerning wills,” approved 12 March 1851, N.J. Laws 1851, p. 218, § 5. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Wills", p. 917; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n949/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
94. R.S. 3:2-2; and R.S. 37:2-2 for a married woman above 21 ↩
95. The three-witness requirement for a devise of land descends from An act for confirming of conveyances of lands made and to be made by wills and powers of attorney, passed 17 March 1713–14, referred to in An Act concerning wills, Revision, approved 15 April 1846, § 1; § 2 of the 1846 act required three or more subscribing witnesses to a written revocation. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Wills", p. 913; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n945/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
96. A Supplement to the act entitled “An act concerning wills,” approved 12 March 1851, N.J. Laws 1851, p. 218, § 1, reaching all wills of persons dying after the act took effect or since 4 July 1850. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Wills", p. 917; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n949/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
97. Act concerning wills (1846), §§ 4, 7. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Wills", p. 913; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n945/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
98. Act concerning executors and the administration and distribution of intestates’ estates (1846), § 11, prescribing bonds for administrators durante minore aetate, durante absentia, pendente lite, and cum testamento annexo. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Executors and Administrators", p. 275; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n307/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
99. Elmer’s notes to the orphans’ court title state the rule plainly: where letters are granted to a married woman, her husband must enter into the bond and act with her. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Orphans' Courts", p. 596; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n628/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026). After the disabilities of coverture were removed, a married woman of full age could act as executrix, administratrix, guardian, or trustee in her own right: R.S. 37:2-1; digested in U.S. Women’s Bureau Bulletin 157-29 (rev. 1948), no. 8 ↩
100. An Act concerning taxes, Revision, approved 14 April 1846, §§ 1–2. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Taxes", p. 842; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n874/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
101. Same act, §§ 3–4. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Taxes", p. 842; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n874/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
102. The colonial ratables act, listing the persons and property the assessor was to return, in Samuel Nevill, comp., The Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of New-Jersey (1752), digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1752-the-ac_new-jersey_1752/page/n20/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
103. The state tax act, rating schedule: “Every single Man, whether he lives with his Parents or otherwise, who keeps a Horse, Mare or Gelding,” and the same words for one who does not, at the lower rate; and “Every Male Slave between the Ages of sixteen and sixty Years,” with a proviso for any slave unable to work. The rates are printed as an unnumbered schedule. Peter Wilson, comp., Acts of the Council and General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1784); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_acts-of-the-council-and-_new-jersey_1784/page/n133/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
104. The same categories appear in the assessors’ abstract in Aaron S. Pennington, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: J. Justice, 1821); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/lawsstatenewjer00penngoog/page/n647/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026); the tax title of the Revision of 1846 carries neither a single-man nor a poll category, the poll returning only with the supplement of 3 March 1854. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Taxes", p. 842; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n874/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
105. The tax act of 1784, proviso to the single-man rates: every single man possessed of a ratable estate whose tax reaches the highest sum he is directed to be rated at “shall be assessed for such Estate only, and not as a single Man.” Peter Wilson, comp., Acts of the Council and General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey (Trenton: Isaac Collins, 1784); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_acts-of-the-council-and-_new-jersey_1784/page/n133/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
106. The ratable is a grid: the taxable person’s name runs down the left-hand column and the assessor’s categories run across the top, each entered against that name as a figure or a coded letter. The published keys to the 1773–74, 1778–80, and 1784–86 lists show the arrangement — hh householder, sm single man, sm&h single man who keeps a horse, s servants or enslaved persons, c cattle, h horses — so that a servant or an enslaved person is recorded only as a number in the column of the man who held him. H. Husted, “Using Ratables for New Jersey Genealogy,” New Jersey State Library (https://www.njstatelib.org/using-ratables-for-new-jersey-genealogy/ : accessed 11 August 2026). The surviving Monmouth County lists carry the same arrangement, with columns for total and improved acreage, slaves, boats, cattle, horses, wagons, sleighs, and dogs, and on some lists a grist mill, saw mill, fulling mill, or tavern. “Monmouth County Tax Ratable Lists, 1731–1844,” record series 3800.40, Monmouth County Clerk, Archives Division (https://www.monmouthcountyclerk.gov/archives/record-groups/county-clerk-records/monmouth-county-tax-ratable-lists-1731-1844/ : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
107. The ratables are lists of heads of household, who were typically men and in some cases widows. H. Husted, “Using Ratables for New Jersey Genealogy,” New Jersey State Library (https://www.njstatelib.org/using-ratables-for-new-jersey-genealogy/ : accessed 11 August 2026). That a wife had no separate estate to be rated on before 1852 follows from the married women’s property rules set out above Property Ownership ↩
108. Personal estate was assessed where the owner lived and land where it lay, so an owner living outside the township is nonetheless returned on the list for the township his land sat in. An Act concerning taxes, Revision, approved 14 April 1846, and the supplement of 3 March 1854, §§ 6–7; Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Taxes", pp. 842, 850; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n874/mode/2up : accessed 11 August 2026) ↩
109. Of the ratables once made only about a thousand survive, roughly four percent of the total, and nearly all of the originals are held by the New Jersey State Archives. H. Husted, “Using Ratables for New Jersey Genealogy,” New Jersey State Library (https://www.njstatelib.org/using-ratables-for-new-jersey-genealogy/ : accessed 11 August 2026). Sussex County is the great gap: the Archives holds only a few lists for eight of the fourteen townships then existing there, and none at all for the other six. New Jersey State Archives, Tax Ratables (Duplicates), 1768–1846, series SAS00001, finding aid with scanned images (https://www.nj.gov/state/archives/guides/sas00001Digital.pdf : accessed 11 August 2026). For the 1773–74 lists in particular, roughly half are extant: Roger D. Joslyn, "New Jersey," in Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources, ed. Alice Eichholz (Provo, Utah: Ancestry, 2004) ↩
110. Supplement to the tax act, approved 3 March 1854, N.J. Laws 1854, p. 296, §§ 1–2: “A poll tax of fifty cents shall be assessed upon every white male inhabitant of this state of the age of twenty-one years and upwards.” Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Taxes", p. 850; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n882/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
111. Same act, §§ 6–7. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Taxes", p. 850; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n882/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
112. An act concerning taxation (Revision of 1918), § 201, approved 4 April 1918, effective 1 October 1918, N.J. Laws 1918, p. 847: “An individual tax of one dollar, to be known as a poll tax, shall be assessed upon every male inhabitant domiciled within this State of the age of twenty-one years or more, except paupers, idiots and insane persons.” Printed with annotations in Tax Laws of the State of New Jersey…(Revision of 1918) (Trenton, N.J.: State Gazette Publishing Co., printers, 1918), § 201 and notes (a)–(b); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/taxlawsofstateof00newj/page/n8/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
113. R.S. 54:4-121.1, headed “Poll tax, cancellation of,” from L. 1946, ch. 40, p. 97, § 1, allowing a municipality to cancel by resolution any poll tax in arrears ten years or more, with the interest and charges, and to release the collector from collecting it ↩
114. Supplement to the tax act of 3 March 1854, N.J. Laws 1854, p. 296, § 5, cl. III, exempting the polls of Revolutionary soldiers. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Taxes", p. 850; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n882/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
115. An Act for the more effectual organization of the militia, approved 22 March 1860, N.J. Laws 1860, p. 508, § 25 (a certificate of service, signed by the company commandant and countersigned by the commandant of the battalion, regiment, or brigade, exempts from jury duty and poll tax for one year), § 26 (seven years’ faithful service earns a discharge carrying exemption from jury duty thereafter), and § 29 (commandants report to the sheriff and the assessor those who become liable again). Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Militia", p. 544; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n576/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
116. The exempt classes are those of § 4 of the general tax act of 1903 as amended by L. 1918, ch. 7, N.J. Laws 1918, p. 62, saved by the proviso to § 201 of the Revision of 1918; set out in Tax Laws of the State of New Jersey (1918), note (b) to § 201, which also reports the Attorney General’s opinion of 23 April 1918 doubting the property half of the same exemption after Tippett v. McGrath, 70 N.J.L. 110, affirmed 71 N.J.L. 338; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/taxlawsofstateof00newj/page/n9/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
117. The reception clause carried the common-law jury with it and confirmed trial by jury as part of the law of the colony: N.J. Const. of 1776, art. XXII; digital images, Founders’ Constitution (https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendVIIs5.html : accessed 10 August 2026). The freehold and residence qualifications restated in the Revision of 1846 are the same tests the colonial courts applied, and the Legislature treated the 1851 act as removing an existing requirement rather than declining to impose a new one ↩
118. An Act relative to juries and verdicts, Revision, approved 17 April 1846, § 2 (grand jurors) and § 7 (petit jurors). Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Juries", p. 410; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n442/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
119. An Act to abolish the freehold qualification, approved 28 February 1851, N.J. Laws 1851, p. 93, § 2, providing that no freehold be necessary to serve on any grand, petit, or other jury, and directing that the writs summoning juries omit the words requiring it. Elmer’s Digest (1861), title "Juries", p. 416; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/digestoflawsofne00elme/page/n448/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
120. State v. James, 96 N.J.L. 132, 114 A. 553, 16 A.L.R. 1141 (Court of Errors and Appeals, 20 June 1921), holding that the Nineteenth Amendment “makes no provision whatever with reference to the qualification of jurors” and confers “alone the right of suffrage,” that “neither by the constitution nor any statute of this state, was it provided that women should or might be jurors,” and that the 1921 amendment — N.J. Laws 1921, p. 50, bringing women within the description of persons liable to be summoned as grand and petit jurors — “is not a declaratory, but a remedial, statute.” New Jersey cites its session laws of this period by page rather than chapter. Full text from the Caselaw Access Project, Harvard Law School Library (https://static.case.law/njl/96/cases/0132-01.json : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
121. The 1921 act is N.J. Laws 1921, p. 50, cited by page in State v. James above, from which its terms are taken. For the position at the end of the period see U.S. Women’s Bureau, The Legal Status of Women in the United States of America: January 1, 1948, Report for New Jersey, Bulletin No. 157-29 (rev.) (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1948), no. 32, citing R.S. 2:86-1 to 2:86-4; digital images, FRASER (https://fraser.stlouisfed.org/title/legal-status-women-united-states-america-5430/legal-status-women-united-states-america-january-1-1948-report-new-jersey-539585 : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
122. State v. Monahan, 15 N.J. 34, 47 (1954) (Heher, J., concurring), stating the common-law rule ↩
123. L. 1903, ch. 219; special juvenile court judges were provided for first-class counties in 1912; traced in the New Jersey State Library legislative history checklist, digital images, New Jersey State Library (https://repo.njstatelib.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/6185e463-6af8-49ca-8b06-f4165ba97813/content : accessed 27 July 2026) ↩
124. L. 1929, ch. 157; R.S. 9:18-1 et seq ↩
125. L. 1935, chs. 284, 285 ↩
126. In re Mei, 122 N.J. Eq. 125 (1937), holding the juvenile court had no jurisdiction over murder, overruled by State v. Monahan, 15 N.J. 34 ↩
127. L. 1946, ch. 77; N.J.S.A. 2A:4-15 ↩
128. The competency chapter of the Revised Statutes sets out the disqualifications by name — interest, marital relation, conviction of crime — and imposes no age qualification: R.S. 2:97-1 et seq. Competency of a child was therefore left to the common-law test of understanding, applied by the trial judge on a preliminary examination; the surviving record of that examination, where there is one, sits in the trial file rather than in the reported opinion ↩
129. R.S. 2:97-1 ↩
130. R.S. 2:97-4 ↩
131. R.S. 2:97-9 ↩
132. Act of 1713–14, §§ 5–6: the committing justice “shall Certify to the two next Justices the said Cause, and to require them … to associate themselves to him,” the three then summoning five freeholders, to whom “no Peremptory Challenge shall be allowed,” the freeholders “being first sworn by the said Justices, to judge according to Evidence”; and a proviso admitting the evidence of enslaved people on the criminal trials of enslaved people. Section 6 let an owner who asked have a jury returned by the sheriff, with the ordinary challenges. Samuel Nevill, comp., The Acts of the General Assembly of the Province of New-Jersey (1752), p. 20; digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-etc-1752-the-ac_new-jersey_1752/page/n22/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
133. An Act to regulate the Trial of Slaves for Murder, and other Crimes, passed 10 May 1768, replacing §§ 4–7 of the act of 11 March 1713–14; the act of 2 March 1786 revised the subject again, and both were repealed by the act respecting slaves of 14 March 1798, § 30; the sequence is traced in Geneva Smith, “Legislating Slavery in New Jersey,” Princeton & Slavery (https://slavery.princeton.edu/stories/legislating-slavery-in-new-jersey : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩
134. An act respecting slaves, passed 14 March 1798, § 2, providing that no slave be admitted a witness against any person in any matter civil or criminal, except for or against another slave. William Paterson, comp., Laws of the State of New-Jersey (Newark: Matthias Day, 1800); digital images, Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_laws-of-the-state-of-new_new-jersey_1800/page/n307/mode/2up : accessed 10 August 2026) ↩

Note: This law guide was created with assistance from multiple AI tools. Though a diligent effort was made to ensure the accuracy of the information provided, there may be unintentional errors. It's important to check the primary sources as needed to ensure accuracy.