New Jersey Proprietors Sell off Land on Monmouth Shore

From its founding as a British colony, vacant lands in New Jersey were under the supervision of a Board of Proprietors. There were Boards for the counties of East New Jersey and West New Jersey respectively. Monmouth County was part of East New Jersey and its Board typically met at Perth Amboy to consider selling or granting vacant land.

By the time of the Revolution, the majority of New Jersey was carved up into family farmsteads. In Monmouth County, it appears that the last swaths of vacant land were along shore and nearby pinelands ill-suited for farming. As noted in prior articles, the British blockaded the American coast in 1776 and dozens of New Jerseyans (and some Pennsylvanians)—deprived of imported salt—went to the shore to begin salt works in New Jersey’s shallow bays. Salt works consumed enormous amounts of wood, as fires were needed to boil salt brine into usable salt. The vacant lands of the proprietors were inevitably trespassed by salt-makers in need of new sources of wood.

The Board of Proprietors for East New Jersey considered this problem on July 15, 1778, at an exceptional meeting held in Freehold. The Board met there to discuss "a number of persons in Monmouth County having erected works and made use of wood from vacant lands… for carrying on said salt works." The Board’s concerns were almost certainly valid. Months earlier, salt work laborers—including Continental troops under Colonel David Forman—were found trespassing and harvesting wood from the land of Trevor Newland near Barnegat. This and other controversies forced George Washington to strip Forman of command of the Additional Regiment he had raised a year earlier.

The Board’s Freehold meeting was attended by two of Monmouth County’s leading citizens—Colonel David Forman (who co-owned two salt works) and his cousin, Colonel Samuel Forman (the militia colonel for Dover and Stafford townships). Colonel John Neilson of Middlesex County also attended, as did Colonel John Cox of Burlington County, owner of the Batsto Iron Works. Neilson and Cox had invested in salt works and privateering ventures on the shore. Presumably, these leaders lobbied the Board to sell off its shore lands; the Board resolved to do so.

A notice was promptly posted in the New Jersey Gazette: "The General Proprietors of the Eastern Division of New Jersey, will attend at the Court House in Freehold, in the County of Monmouth, on Wednesday, the 12th day of August, to dispose of rights to locate vacant lands adjacent to the Salt work in said County." A follow up notice appeared on August 5: ”A number of persons in the County of Monmouth have erected a salt works on Barnegat Bay… and make use of the wood on adjacent lands of the Genl. Proprietors for carrying on said Salt works." These persons "have declared their intentions to purchase the rights to said land."

The East Jersey Board of Proprietors met again in Freehold, at the home of James Wall, on August 11 and held a three-day session there. James Parker, President of the Board, recorded:

We received information that a certain number of persons who have engaged in salt works near the shore of Monmouth County are cutting and carrying away timber and wood on vacant lands [of the Proprietors]... some of them spoke to said Proprietors and expressed an inclination to purchase a right to cover said lands.

The Board approved a plan to sell the lands in question near Barnegat as "great waste is made of common lands by the owners of said salt works and that great advantage must accrue by making the sale of vacant lands convenient to said works." Samuel Forman and Kenneth Hankinson, a militia captain from Freehold and one of the township’s largest land holders, appeared and heard the Board’s offer to sell the land "most convenient to their salt works." However, the Board’s price "appearing very high to said Forman and Hankinson, they desired to leave and consider it till the next day." Forman and Hankinson reappeared the next day and an agreement was reached to buy 800 acres from the Board for a total of £75 (less than the cost of four good horses). That same day, the Board sold 77 additional acres to John Covenhoven of Freehold at 40 shillings an acre "for land near his works."

Proprietors Protect Remaining Land

With these lands sold, the Board moved to take a hard line on future trespassers. On August 14, it resolved:

The Proprietors, taking into consideration the great waste and depredations committed by divers[e] persons on the common lands near the sea shore in the County of Monmouth -- Mr. Stevens, one of the trustees for take care of the same, is requested to discover such transgressors and bring action against as many of them as he shall think proper.

The Board further resolved:

The meeting, resuming consideration of preserving the timber, appointed John A. Johnston and John L. Johnston a committee to be assisted by David Knott, to go to the salt works and land adjacent to acquaint the concerned... that the Proprietors will hereafter direct the Attorney General to bring actions against trespassers on the common lands.

The selection of Knott and the Johnstons is noteworthy. Knott was a prominent Shrewsbury Township resident who was serving as the township’s Surveyor of Highways at the time that the Board hired him. But his commitment to the Continental cause was an open question—he had supported Samuel Wright’s Loyalist association in late 1776 and would be arrested for misdemeanor (probably illegally trading with Loyalists in New York) in 1781.

John Johnston was likely the John Johnston who signed a petition supporting Peter Schenck, a magistrate who ran afoul of the Forman family as political factions formed in the county between moderate and radical Revolutionaries. Johnston was also an adversary of David Forman in trespass litigation in 1782. The second John Johnston was likely a younger kinsman of the first. As such, it appears that the Board (probably deliberately) selected men who had frosty relationships with the Formans and Hankinson.

It is also noteworthy that the Board sought to prosecute trespassers through the New Jersey attorney general rather than Monmouth County’s magistrates and courts; it made no mention of seeking to work with local authorities. This is likely a reflection of the Board having little confidence that local peace officers would be responsive to their concerns. It is not known based on surviving documentation whether any trespassers on the Board’s remaining shorelands were arrested and prosecuted.

As for Forman, Hankinson, and Covenhoven, while the Board sold them land at a very low price, there is no reason to think that they profited greatly from the purchases. With the British naval blockade weakening, imported salt returned to American ports and salt prices fell. As noted in other articles, a number of Jersey shore smaller salt works continued producing salt throughout the war, but the larger salt works did not survive. They continually lacked laborers and resources, and Loyalist raiders levelled them with impunity. Investors like Neilson and Cox soon found that privateering required less of their time and, though risky, had the potential for far greater profits.

Related Historic Site: The Proprietary House

Sources: East New Jersey Board of Proprietors, Arthur Pierce, Smugglers' Woods, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1960) p 230; East New Jersey Board of Proprietors, New York Historical Society, http://dlib.nyu.edu/maassimages/amrev/jpg/n001136s.jpg; Library of Congress, Early American Newspaper, New Jersey Gazette, reel 1930; Minutes of the Board of Proprietors of the Eastern Division of New Jersey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 1960) pp. 250-4; Minutes of the Board of Proprietors of the Eastern Division of New Jersey (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 1960) pp. 250-4; Information on Knott and the Johnston’s in Michael Adelberg, Biographical File, in the collection of the Monmouth County of Historical Association.