
The original provinces of West and East New Jersey are shown in yellow and green respectively. The Keith Line is shown in red, and the Coxe and Barclay line is shown in orange
The 'Quintipartite Deed' was a legal document that split
New Jersey, dividing it into
West Jersey and
East Jersey.
On
July 1,
1676,
William Penn,
Gawen Lawrie (who served from 1683–1686 as Deputy to Governor
Robert Barclay), Nicholas Lucas and Edward Byllinge executed a deed with Sir
George Carteret known as the “Quintipartite Deed,†in which the territory was divided into two parts, East Jersey being taken by Carteret and West Jersey by Byllinge and his trustees.
Almost as soon as the Deed was signed, disputes arose over the exact dividing point of the two provinces. The first attempt at resolving the issue, the
Keith line, was created by Surveyor-General
George Keith in 1686, and runs North-Northwest from the southern part of
Little Egg Harbor Township, passing just north of
Tuckerton, and reaching upward to a point on the
Delaware River which is just north of the
Delaware Water Gap. More accurate surveys and maps were made to further resolve property disputes. This resulted in the
Thornton line, drawn around 1696, and the
Lawrence line, drawn around 1743, which was adopted as the final line for legal purposes.
External links
★
Council of Proprietors of West Jersey - Origin and History
★
New jersey Pinelands on article on the division of East and West Jersey