DOS Home > New Jersey State Archives > Search the Collections > Imaged
Collections > Hunterdon County Birth Certificates of Children of Slaves,
1804-1835


Record Group: Hunterdon County
SubGroup: Clerk's Office
Series: Birth Certificates of Children of Slaves, 1804-1835
Accession #: 1977.013
Series #: CHNCL004
Guide Date: 3/1994 (JK)
Volume: 1.75 c.f. [4 boxes]

Legislative History

The records in this series are the direct result of "An act for the Gradual
Abolition of Slavery" passed by the New Jersey Legislature on 15 February 1804
(P.L. 1804, chap. CIV, p. 251). This law pronounced every child born to a
slave mother after 4 July 1804 "free" at birth, but bound as a servant to the
owner of the mother until the age of twenty-five for males and twenty-one for
females. Any person entitled by the law to such bound service was required
to file with the county clerk, within nine months of the birth of the child,
a written certificate containing the name of the slave owner and the name,
age and sex of the child. The clerk in turn was directed to record the
information in a special book for this purpose. The penalty for neglecting
to deliver such a certificate was $5 plus an additional $1 for each month
of delinquency.

The law also allowed for the abandonment of such children by the owners of
their mothers at the age of one year. In this case, the child would become
a ward of the local overseers of the poor; the slave owner was required to
file a notification of abandonment with the county clerk.

Content Note

Included here are original (usually signed) birth certificates submitted to
the Hunterdon County Clerk during the period 1804-1835. While the 1804 law
did not require that the mother's name be included on the certificate, it
almost always was. The father's name was included only in a few cases. Since
the certificates were filed by the slave owners, they are arranged here
alphabetically by slave owner name, and thereunder by the birth dates of
the children. To aid researchers, the collection has also been listed as
follows in the hard copy available in the Archives' Manuscript Room:

    by first given name of child/birth date
    by surname of child (if recorded)
    by given name of mother/name of slave owner
    by surname of mother (if recorded)
    by given name of father (if recorded)
    by surname of father (if recorded)

It should be noted that this series contains only the original copies of
certificates sent to the County Clerk. It is known that additional birth
certificates of children of Hunterdon County slaves are recorded in the
Clerk's birth and manumission book now in the custody of the Hunterdon County
Historical Society in Flemington. These were also abstracted in Phyllis
B. D'Autrechy's Some Records of Old Hunterdon County (1979), pp. 158-173,
196-201, 203.

Contents - by Slave Owner/Birth Date of Child

Slave Owner      Child's Name    Birth Date    Mother's/      Locality
                                               Father's Name

Cool, Christopher  Andrew        5/11/1809     Phebe          Amwell Twp.
Cool, Christopher  Jane          8/3/1810      Peg            [not recorded]
Cool, Christopher  David         3/8/1811      Phebe          [not recorded]
Cool, Christopher  Susan         10/23/1811    Peg            [not recorded]
Cool, Christopher  Charlotte     2/15/1815     Peg            Amwell Twp.
Cool, Christopher  Ben           10/31/1816    Peg            Amwell Twp.

Consult the Reference services page and/or the Guide to Reproduction and
Research Services, Policies and Fees for information on reproduction of
images included in this collection.


Created January 2008