Our Library Collections: New Jersey

One in a series by CGS member Chris Pattillo highlighting some of our holdings at the Library in Oakland. For a fuller listing of our books, journals, and more, consult the CGS Library catalog in WorldCat.

A portion of the New Jersey Archives in our library

Our collection of books for New Jersey occupies nine shelves. Many more resources (572) are listed on our library catalog on our website. Our books begin with sixteen volumes of the New Jersey Archives, First Series, a collection of records first published by the New Jersey Historical Society in 1901. Volume I has abstracts of wills from 1670 – 1730. “For an intimate revelation of social conditions in New Jersey during the first sixty-five years of English supremacy it would be difficult to image a volume richer in material than this,” the preface states. Chapter One, "Early Will-Making in New Jersey," provides a comprehensive explanation of the evolution of wills in colonial times.

We hold a complete set of New Jersey Genealogical Magazine that begins in 1925 and continues to the current issues. Most of these have been bound. We also have a large collection of quarterly magazines from the New Jersey Historical Society dating from 1848 to 1933.

Engraving from Genealogical History
of New Jersey

Our shelves offer multiple biographical source books, including four volumes of Genealogical History of New Jersey, compiled by Francis Bazley Lee and published in 1910. Like other books of this type, these volumes contain written biographies of notable residents with many high-quality engraved portraits and signatures.

Some beautiful sketches from
Inscriptions on Tombstones and Monuments

About half of the books on the shelves focus on various New Jersey counties. Among these, I found Inscriptions on Tombstones and Monuments in the Burying Grounds of The First Presbyterian Church and St. Johns Church for Elizabeth County. Compiled in 1892 by William Wheeler and Edmund Halsey, it describes memorials dating from 1664. Elizabethtown was the first settlement in New Jersey, so this volume contains some of the oldest records for the state. The book presents the text as it appears on the tombstone and includes several very nice sketches of tombstones and monuments. 

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