Quieter times followed, and in 1738 New Jersey had the satisfaction of obtaining a governor all her own.The New York Governor had always neglected Jersey affairs, was difficult of access, made appointments and administered justice in the interests of New York, and forced Jersey vessels to pay registration fees to New York.Amid great rejoicing over the change, the Crown appointed the popular leader, Lewis Morris, as governor.But by a strange turn of fate, when once secure in power, he became a most obstinate upholder of royal prerogative, worried the assembly with adjournments, and, after Cornbury, was the most obnoxious of all the royal governors.
The governors now usually made Burlington their capital and it became, on that account, a place of much show and interest.The last colonial governor was William Franklin, an illegitimate son of Benjamin Franklin, and he would probably have made a success of the office if the Revolution had not stopped him.He had plenty of ability, affable manners, and was full of humor and anecdote like his father, whom he is said to have somewhat resembled.He had combined in youth a fondness for books with a fondness for adventure, was comptroller of the colonial post office and clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly, served a couple of campaigns in the French and Indian Wars, went to England with his father in 1757, was admitted to the English Bar, attained some intimacy with the Earl of Bute and Lord Fairfax, and through the latter obtained the governorship of New Jersey in 1762.
The people were at first much displeased at his appointment and never entirely got over his illegitimate birth and his turning from Whig to Tory as soon as his appointment was secured.But he advanced the interests of the colony with the home government and favored beneficial legislation.He had an attractive wife, and they entertained, it is said, with viceregal elegance, and started a fine model farm or country place on the north shore of the Rancocas not far from the capital at Burlington.Franklin was drawing the province together and building it up as a community, but his extreme loyalist principles in the Revolution destroyed his chance for popularity and have obscured his reputation.
Though the population of New Jersey was a mixed one, judged by the very distinct religious differences of colonial times, yet racially it was thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and a good stock to build upon.At the time of the Revolution in 1776 the people numbered only about 120,000, indicating a slow growth; but when the first census of the United States was taken, in 1790, they numbered 184,139.
The natural division of the State into North and South Jersey is marked by a line from Trenton to Jersey City.The people of these two divisions were quite as distinct in early times as striking differences in environment and religion could make them.Even in the inevitable merging of modern life the two regions are still distinct socially, economically, and intellectually.Along the dividing line the two types of the population, of course, merged and here was produced and is still to be found the Jerseyman of the composite type.
Trenton, the capital of the State, is very properly in the dividing belt.It was named after William Trent, a Philadelphia merchant who had been speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly and who became chief justice of New Jersey.Long ages before white men came Trenton seems to have been a meeting place and residence of the Indians or preceding races of stone age men.Antiquarians have estimated that fifty thousand stone implements have been found in it.As it was at the head of tidewater, at the so-called Falls of the Delaware, it was apparently a center of travel and traffic from other regions.From the top of the bluff below the modern city of Trenton there was easy access to forests of chestnut, oak, and pine, with their supplies of game, while the river and its tributary creeks were full of fish.It was a pleasant and convenient place where the people of prehistoric times apparently met and lingered during many centuries without necessarily having a large resident population at any one time.
Trenton was so obviously convenient and central in colonial times that it was seriously proposed as a site for the national capital.
Princeton University, though originating, as we have seen, among the Presbyterians of North Jersey, seems as a higher educational institution for the whole State to belong naturally in the dividing belt, the meeting place of the two divisions of the colony.The college began its existence at Elizabeth, was then moved to Newark, both in the strongly Presbyterian region, and finally, in 1757, was established at Princeton, a more suitable place, it was thought, because far removed from the dissipation and temptation of towns, and because it was in the center of the colony on the post road between Philadelphia and New York.
Though chartered as the College of New Jersey, it was often called Nassau Hall at Princeton or simply "Princeton." In 1896it became known officially as Princeton University.It was a hard struggle to found the college with lotteries and petty subscriptions here and there.But Presbyterians in New York and other provinces gave aid.Substantial assistance was also obtained from the Presbyterians of England and Scotland.In the old pamphlets of the time which have been preserved the founders of the college argued that higher education was needed not only for ministers of religion, but for the bench, the bar, and the legislature.The two New England colleges, Harvard and Yale, on the north, and the Virginia College of William and Mary on the south, were too far away.There must be a college close at hand.
At first most of the graduates entered the Presbyterian ministry.
But soon in the short time before the Revolution there were produced statesmen such as Richard Stockton of New Jersey, who signed the Declaration of Independence; physicians such as Dr.
