One person's opinion for the move from Long Island to New Jersey (Thomas LAKE (111.0) moved from Staten Island to Hunterdon County, New Jersey between 1725 and 1732): BEGIN Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2004 14:49:54 -0800 From: Dane Coefer Several reasons for the exodus from New York. #1 would be religious. When the English took over New Amsterdam they made several concessions to religious tolerance. Over time, however, those concessions were reduced. Trinity Church's founding in the 1690s was followed by taxes to support the established church. Restrictions were placed upon ministers of other faiths. In 1707, a Presbyterian minister in New York was jailed for two months for preaching without a license, while a year earlier the Governor (Cornbury) rejected what should have been a rubber-stamp approval of a petition to recognize a new minister for the Reformed Dutch Church at Flatbush. (He later approved the minister). Between 1700-1715 the migration of Dutch from New York greatly accelerated. Likely the Gravesend Anabaptists had similar motivations. #2 could be the end of the Proprietorship of New Jersey in 1702. Prior to that time, much of the land traded in the area was speculative in multi-thousand acre sections that were never occupied. After 1702, the sale of smaller tracts, suitable for family farms, increased the desirability of the region. Land became "cheaper" due to the smaller size of the tracts. #3 could be population pressures. In pre-industrial America, the children of large farm families did not move to the cities, but to new farmland. Many of the early 1700 NY Wills list children residing in NJ. Early settlement of the Millstone valley also led to further settlement upriver into Hunterdon. #4 could perhaps be "cheap land." Cheap as compared to the expensive developed land the settlers were selling behind them in New York and cheap to the settlers who in many cases were affluent New Yorkers. Other considerations would include stories of "the land of milk and honey" from early migrants (and land speculators), the relative political freedom resulting in the distance of the central government (NJ originally being governed from New York)... END Sussex Co. NJ Migrations Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 22:54:30 -0500 (EST) From: Catherine Di Pietro BEGIN *Subject: Sussex County Migration * Greetings Sussex County Researchers, The largest group were Dutch from Long Island/New Amsterdam through Ulster, Dutchess then down through Orange County, NY to Sussex, NJ. There was a group of Loyalists and non-conformists who moved away from the contested east New Jersey - Elizabethtown, Hackensack (New Barbadoes) and the Essex county area in the 1770's. Another group of settlers lived in Morris County but maintained iron mills (and saw mills and grain mills) in Sussex County as it was an important source of iron ore in the state. Some of these families like KINNEY, CARD and MARTIN eventually stayed in Sussex. There was a group of Quakers up from Philadelphia, part of William Penn's group and also some Moravians up from Hope, NJ. I've also noticed second and third sons of Somerset and Gloucester counties in NJ moving northward to Sussex to farm and open merchant shops in the later 1700's. Not to be discounted is a large group of Scots who were promised land in NY state until the Governor went back on the deal. A large group of these CAMPBELLs, McCOY, McCALLUM simply moved to the rich farmland of Sussex instead. A real melting pot indeed. When researching in Sussex, do not discount Orange County, NY or Pike County in PA as the early settlers rarely regarded state boundaries before marrying or crossing borders to have children. This combined region is called the Minisink. Later periods of migration include the Polish, Slavic and Scandinavian workers who traveled up the railroad from Paterson, NJ newly off the boat in NYC, to work in the tin and zinc mines in Franklin and Ogdenburg in the later 1800's. There was a large Loyalist migration out of Sussex in the 1780's, mostly followers of James Moody and some preachers moved whole congregations (especially in the Vernon area) northward to Quebec. Other migrations out of Sussex County seem to start in the early 1800's and the settlers usually cross PA to settle in Ohio and states westward. Some early names which remain prevalent in Sussex County to this day (right out of the phone book) include DUNN, DECKER, CLARK, LITTEL, WHITE, VAN ORDEN, SNOOK, MILLER, McCARTHY, McKENNA, MARTIN, LOSEY, GREEN, GARRIS, CARD and VANDERHOFF. END Explanation of the move of people from New Jersey to Pennsylvania (Abraham Lake (16.0) and his family moved from Knowlton Township, Warren County, New Jersey to Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania in about 1858): BEGIN Sent: Saturday, October 28, 2000 5:03 AM Subject: Move from Sussex Co to PA & elsewhere Besides the land grants from the government there were several reasons folks did not move north and west of the Appalachians in Northern, PA until late in the 1700s and early 1800s. 1. Questions of clear land title. The northern part of PA was claimed by CT and NY as well as PA and it took the Continental Congress and the three states several years to work it out after the Revolution. Under the British few wanted to buy land from one proprietor group/syndicate and then find that they in fact did not own the land and either loose it or pay for it again to the ultimate winner of the dispute. [Main reason southwestern PA was settled first, was VA had a much clearer title and legitimately was able to sell land there from 1760s onward, though of course PA as a state's claim ultimately did win after the Revolution. [One does find NJ folks in Washington County, PA in 1780s & 90s]. But the Penn family land grant did not go that far west, so VA had a stronger claim for years to the Monongahela River Valley as well as the Ohio River. [You may recall that West Virginia was part of VA until during the Civil War.] There was actually a "war" fought in the early 1770s in the Wyoming Valley of Luzerne County between CT settlers and PA settlers. [CT got the Western Reserve lands in Ohio as a tradeoff for relinquishing their claims to northern PA in 1789 or so.] From our earliest days as a nation land/property ownership and claims have been one of the driving forces for the government. Much of the work of the Supreme Court for it's first 50 years was to be the ultimate arbitrator of land claims & disputes between & among states and address individual complaints about what share some folks did receive. 2. Native Americans still lived in that region until after the American Revolution and they took sometimes violent exception to colonists moving into areas the British had given to them by treaty after the French and Indian war. This is one of the many reasons the various tribes in PA, NY and OH & Great Lakes region supported the British in the Revolution. England had said settlement for whites was to not go over the Allegheny Mountains or into the Ohio River Valley. They had reserved the area for the Indians, some of whom had been their allies in the F&I War and the rest they were trying to appease by treaties. In fact the British government had set up that whole trans-Appalachian area to be administered by their Canadian provenance government in the late 1760s to keep it out of the hands of the colonial activists, politicians and land syndicates from VA, PA, MD, NY & CT, all lusting for more territory. The British were trying to keep control and create the landed and class system they had in England in the colonies. Colonists were not buying it, that is one reason for the rebellion, to get a change in the land policies and make more available for all the growing population. Folks like Daniel Boone group to KY and others defied them and crossed the mountains. But before and through the Revolution they were a trickle, only a few hundreds who dared take the risk. Most of the PA Indians moved to Ohio & Indiana and Canada after the Revolution. During the period between 1883 and the end of the War of 1812 [in 1817 or so] the British in Canada encouraged the Indians to stage raids in the frontier regions and paid bounties at times for keeping settlers out of areas, so the frontier settlers really did live with threat and risk for two generations in the late 1700s, even after it was possible to legitimately go live on the northern PA land. 3. The mountains were a physical obstruction with little easy access or attraction to farmers. Mountains & hills, with no roads [the indian paths were on the top of the ridges, they seldom used the narrow valleys], totally covered by forest and woods and not much valley floor space with streams for cultivation anyway. Remember the Conastoga wagon is a creation of the future that came about partly to deal with this very movement of folks and goods into, over and through the mountains. Most folks still would use the river systems to move about as roads were poor at best when they existed. So NJ folks who moved on often went south to MD or VA then up river to Susquehanna, Shenandoah and Monongahela river valley areas in 1760s through 1790s. After the Articles of the Confederation finalized in 1787 and one knew which state owned the land, and folks had their "grants" for military service then they finally could go and move 50 -75 miles away to northern parts of PA and settle the Wyoming Valley and Luzerne County and points west in PA. If you ever drive on I80 across the northern part of PA you will see civilization and settlement never did take over all of this part of the world, still incredibly forested and undeveloped with low population compared to the rest of the East coast. Sort of our empty quarter, the preserve of PA hunters and now parks. The coal mining brought more people to parts of the region than anything else ever did. New Yorkers building the Erie Canal which drained later immigrants and settlers directly to the Midwest within the next 40 years, and had much to do with northern PA never becoming heavily populated and settled. Just a few of the factors that led to the delayed movement of folks from Sussex County and northern NJ over the Appalachians / Alleghenies / Poconos & into PA or southwestern NY for that matter. END