New Jersey Center for Civic Education

Map of New Jersey Counties

Creator: New Jersey Center for Civic Education, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

Grade Level: Elementary

Objectives: Students will be able to:

• locate the 21 counties in New Jersey
• identify which county they live in
• the structure of their county government

New Jersey Student Learning Standards for Social Studies (2020):

• 6.1.5.CivicsPI.3: Explain how the United States functions as a representative democracy and describe the roles of elected representatives and how they interact with citizens at local, state, and national levels.
• 6.1.5.CivicsPI.4: Describe the services our government provides the people in the community, state and across the United States.
• 6.1.5.CivicsPI.5: Explain how government functions at the local, county, and state level

1. Can you identify New Jersey’s counties?

Historical Background

As an English colony from 1674 to 1702, New Jersey was governed by two groups of proprietors as two distinct provinces, East Jersey and West Jersey, each with its own governor. New Jersey's first counties were created as administrative districts within each province, with East Jersey split in 1675 into Bergen, Essex, Middlesex and Monmouth counties, while West Jersey's initial counties of Burlington and Salem date to 1681.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_in_New_Jersey

New Jersey's county names derive from several sources, although most of its counties are named after place names in England and prominent leaders in the colonial and revolutionary periods. These original counties then broke into additional units as their populations grew. The State of New Jersey entered the union as the 3rd state on December 18, 1787 with a total of 13 counties.

Eight more counties were added in New Jersey between 1824 to 1857 bringing the total to 21 counties, where it has remained to this day.

Activity One: Identify the counties

• Divide students into groups and give them Handout One: Map of New Jersey with county lines (but no names) and Handout Two: List of names of New Jersey counties (you can cut them into slips that your students can paste, tape or otherwise match to their appropriate locations on the map).
• Share Handout Three: Map of New Jersey with counties identified with the class.
• Have students listen to or sing along with the students singing the NJ County Song at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTZGsKpr-FQ.

Activity Two: Why do we have counties? What services do county governments in New Jersey provide?

Have students work in groups to research what their county does by going online, looking at local news sources or contacting the clerk of the county office directly, and prepare a short written or oral presentation.
The presentations should include the following:

• NJ counties maintain significant powers since they have existed in some form since colonial times.
• Counties were created as administrative district courts within each province. Now there are 15 vicinages for Superior (trial) courts in the state, organized primarily by county (Bergen, Essex, Passaic, Hudson, Union, Middlesex, Monmouth, Mercer, Camden, Burlington and Ocean Counties; with Atlantic and Cape May Counties together; Morris and Sussex Counties together; Somerset, Hunterdon and Warren Counties together; and Gloucester, Cumberland and Salem Counties together as one court vicinage.
• Counties also provide services for older citizens, parks, public safety, road construction and repair, corrections (jails), help with elections, and maintain important property, health and other records.

Activity Three: How does your county government make decisions?

Background

• New Jersey counties are run by an elected board of commissioners.
• The county board of commissioners serves as both the legislative and executive body (for counties with supervisors or administrators, that person serves as the executive).
• Depending on the county, the executive and legislative functions may be performed by the Board of County Commissioners or split into separate branches of government.
• In counties without an Executive, a County Administrator (or County Manager) may be hired to perform day-to-day administration of county functions.

Have students research and determine the type of county government they have in their county.

• In 16 counties, the County Commissioners perform both legislative and executive functions on a commission basis, with each commissioner assigned responsibility for a department or group of departments.
• In the other five counties (Atlantic, Bergen, Essex, Hudson and Mercer), there is a directly elected County Executive who performs the executive functions while the commissioners retain a legislative and oversight role.

Handout One: Map of New Jersey with county lines

Handout Two: Names of New Jersey’s Counties

1. Sussex
2. Passaic
3. Bergen
4. Hudson
5. Essex
6. Morris
7. Warren
8. Hunterdon
9. Somerset
10. Union
11. Middlesex
12. Monmouth
13. Mercer
14. Burlington
15. Ocean
16. Atlantic
17. Camden
18. Gloucester
19. Salem
20. Cumberland
21. Cape May

Handout Three: New Jersey’s Counties

Map of East and West Jersey

Lesson Creator: New Jersey Center for Civic Education, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

Grade level: Elementary Grades

Objectives: Students will demonstrate an understanding of how New Jersey became an English colony

New Jersey Student Learning Standards for Social Studies (2020):

• 6.1.5.GeoSV.5: Use geographic data to examine how the search for natural resources resulted in conflict and cooperation among European colonists and Native American resulting in changes to conditions.
• 6.1.5.GeoGI.1: Use multiple sources to evaluate the impact of the movement of people from place to place on individuals, communities, and regions.
• 6.1.5.GeoGI.2: Use historical maps to explain what led to the exploration of new water and land routes.
• 6.1.5.GeoGI.3: Use geographic tools to determine factors that impacted emigration, settlement patterns, and regional identities of the US colonies.

Focus Questions:

• How did the decisions of individuals and groups influence the creation of New Jersey and the United States?
• What is a colony?
• Why were colonies beneficial to the mother country?
• How did the area of New Jersey become a British colony?

Glossary:

• Colony: a group of people who move from where they were born to another land but are subject to the control of parent country.
• “Mother country”: a country where colonists came from to live in another land. For example, although individuals from many nations have immigrated to the United States, England was the mother country of the United States when it was a series of colonies under its control in the 1700s.
• Proprietors

Opener: New Jersey did not start as an English colony! Swedes, Finns, Dutch and English all settled on the land that became New Jersey, buying or taking land from the Native Americans that were living on the land.

Day One: What is a colony? Why were colonies beneficial to the mother country?

Have a class discussion about what a colony is and why colonies were beneficial to the mother country.

A colony is a group of people who immigrated (moved) from where they were born to another land but are subject to the control of the parent or mother country. For example, England was although individuals from many nations have immigrated to the United States, England was the mother country of the United States when it was a series of colonies under its control in the 1700s. Colonies were beneficial to the mother country because they provided a course of raw materials and for exports, increasing the economic power of the mother country.

Day One: New Netherlands

Background: Around 1524, Giovanni de Verrazano, a Florentine explorer sailing for King Francis I of France, was the first European to explore New Jersey. In 1523-24, he voyaged along the coast from Newfoundland to Cape Fear, North Carolina, anchoring off Sandy Hook in New York Bay where he encountered Lenape Native Americans. During the 1600s, Europe was undergoing expansive social, cultural, and economic growth. Nations vied for domination of lucrative trade routes around the globe, particularly those to Asia. In the Americas, the English had a settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, the French had small settlements at Port Royal and Quebec, and the Spanish were developing colonies in South America and the Caribbean.

The colonial history of New Jersey began in 1609 when Henry Hudson first claimed the region on behalf of Holland and renamed it New Netherlands. Hudson was an English sea captain and explorer who sailed three times for the English in 1607 and 1608 looking for, but failing to find, a Northeast Passage from Europe to Asia through the Arctic Ocean. Finding nobody in England to support another voyage, in 1609 he sailed for the Dutch East India Company. He explored the waters off the northeast coast of North America at Newfoundland and Cape Cod. Hudson believed that the passage to the Pacific Ocean was between the St. Lawrence River and the Chesapeake Bay, so he sailed south to the Bay, then turned northward, traveling close along the shore. From Delaware Bay, he began to sail upriver looking for the passage. After passing Sandy Hook, Hudson and his crew entered the Narrows into the Upper New York Bay. Hudson thought that he had found the continental water route, so he sailed up the major river that now bears his name. He found the water too shallow to proceed several days later at the site of Troy, New York.

Upon returning to the Netherlands, Hudson reported that he had found a fertile land and an amicable people willing to engage his crew in small-scale bartering of furs, trinkets, clothes, and small manufactured goods. It was the catalyst for Dutch merchant-traders to fund more expeditions. The Dutch West India Trade Company subsequently gave out land grants to encourage settlement, attracting many migrants from Sweden as well as Holland. Cornelius Jacobsen Mey and other Dutch sailors explored, surveyed, and mapped the area between Maryland and Massachusetts in four voyages made between 1611 and 1614. These surveys and charts were consolidated under the name New Netherland (it was also called Nova Belgica) for the first time on maps.

Map Activity: Share Handout 1: Map of New Netherlands with your students and ask them to identify the land that became New Jersey on the map.

Day One: New Sweden

Background: Hoping to advance its world power status and become a dominant member of the European economic market, in 1637 the Swedish government permitted the formation of a New Sweden Trading Company to sponsor a voyage to the new world to trade with the native population. Landing on the banks of the Delaware River in 1638, Swedish settlers set up a trading colony which ultimately extended from just north of Trenton, New Jersey to as far south as Wilmington, Delaware—including the land that the Dutch Fort Nassau sat on. The Dutch protested Swedish claims to the land on the Delaware as early as 1639, but since they, like the Swedes, had few soldiers, neither side was able make a decisive move against the other. Around late 1641-early 1642, however, the two groups temporarily stopped bickering and combined their efforts to evict a group of sixty English men and women, who had come to establish England’s claim to the region.

The first English settlers on the Delaware River were representatives of the English Delaware Company based in New Haven, Connecticut. Finding the area around the Delaware to be sparsely populated, the Company was successful in purchasing tracts of land from the region’s Natives. Having purchased its land, the Company sent a group of sixty settlers to establish two new communities; one at present-day Salem, New Jersey. Both the Swedes and the Dutch felt threatened by the English presence and their almost instantaneous monopolization of the region’s Indian fur trade. Tired of having to compete for furs and living in fear of their developing a more substantial settlement, the Swedes and Dutch joined forces and forcibly removed the English from the region. For information on New Sweden go to https://libraries.psu.edu/about/collections/unearthing-past-student-research-pennsylvania-history/new-sweden-brief-history.

Day One, Map activity: Have students locate some of the early Swedish settlements on the map of New Jersey (Handout 2).

Day Two: The English Provinces of East and West Jersey

After a war with the Dutch, which England won in 1664, the Dutch ceded its New Netherlands colony to the English. English King Charles gave the region between New England and Maryland to his brother, the Duke of York (who later became King James II).

Soon thereafter, the Duke of York granted the land between the Hudson and Delaware Rivers to Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley, who had been loyal to him through the English Civil War, and named New Jersey after the English Channel Island of Jersey. As a result, Carteret and Berkeley became the two English Lords Proprietors of New Jersey. The two proprietors of New Jersey attempted to attract more settlers to move to the province by granting sections of lands to settlers and by passing the Concession and Agreement, a 1665 document that granted religious freedom to all colonists of New Jersey. There was no religious freedom in English where the Anglican Church was the established religion for everybody.

In 1673, Lord Berkeley sold his share of New Jersey to two Quakers and New Jersey became divided into two proprietary (that is, administered by the owners or “proprietors”, rather than the king) colonies: East Jersey and West Jersey, with very different governments. Several different surveys lines were drawn differentiating East and West Jersey (surveys were not perfectly accurate in those days—several surveys on Handout 3). With low prices for land and religious and political freedom, East and West Jersey were able to attract new settlers and grew quickly.

The political division of East and West Jersey existed until 1702 when governing rights were given up to British Queen Anne and East and West Jersey were united as the Province of New Jersey. For many years, New Jersey shared a royal governor with New York. The governorship was finally split in 1738 when New Jersey got its own governor, Lewis Morris.

Day Two, Map activity: Have students find the approximate location of their town on the map (Handout 4) and determine if it was initially part of East or West Jersey.

Critical Thinking activity: Have students consider the early history of New Jersey and explain how it was commercial interests and rivalry among European monarch that led to the exploration and settlement of New Jersey.

Handout 1:
New Netherland (“Nova Belgica/Nieuw Nederland”)
Can you pick out New Jersey on the map?

Handout 2: Identify New Sweden (North of Trenton, NJ to Wilmington, DE along the Delaware River)

Handout 3: Survey lines for East and West Jersey

Handout 4: East and West Jersey

Great Falls, Paterson, NJ

Lesson creator: The New Jersey Center for Civic Education, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ

Grade level: Elementary

Objectives: Students will explain how Alexander Hamilton’s idea to use the force of the Great Falls in Paterson, NJ, provided the energy to propel the develop of industry in the United States.

New Jersey Student Learning Standards for Social Studies (2020)

• 6.1.5.GeoSV.2: Use maps to explain the impact of location and place on the relationships between places in New Jersey, the United States and other countries.
• 6.1.5.GeoHE.2: Cite examples of how technological advances have changed the environment in New Jersey and the United States (e.g., energy, transportation, communications).
• 6.1.5.EconEM.2: Identify examples of the variety of resources that are used to produce goods and services (i.e., human capital, physical capital, natural resources).
• 6.1.5.EconEM.4: Compare different regions of New Jersey to determine the role that geography, natural resources, climate, transportation, technology, and/or the labor force play in economic opportunities.
• 6.1.5.EconNM.2: Use data to describe how the availability of resources in New Jersey and other .0regions in the United States have impacted economic opportunities.
• 6.1.5.HistoryCC.9: Evaluate the impact of ideas, inventions, and other contributions of prominent figures who lived in New Jersey.
• 6.1.8.EconNE.4.a: Explain how major technological developments revolutionized land and water transportation, as well as the economy, in New Jersey and the nation.
• 6.1.8.EconNE.4.b: Analyze how technological innovations affected the status and social class of different groups of people and explain the outcomes that resulted.
• 6.1.12.EconEM.2.c: Analyze how technological developments transformed the economy, created international markets, and affected the environment in New Jersey and the nation.
• 6.1.12.HistoryCC.6.b: Explore factors that promoted innovation, entrepreneurship, and industrialization and determine their impact on New Jersey (i.e. Paterson Silk Strike) and the United States during this period.

Background

The British colonies defeated Britain in the war for Independence and established a constitution for a new government. Now they need to grow their economy.

Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury under President Washington, wanted to set the United States on a path to industrial development as was occurring in Britain. Hamilton had visited the Great Falls on the Passaic River in New Jersey in 1778 when he was serving as an aide to General Washington during the American Revolution and saw how powerful they were. The falls not only offered energy but were also conveniently located within the main population centers of the country between New York City and Philadelphia and on a river which could be reached from New York Harbor.

In 1792, Hamilton founded the "Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures," supported by private investors and chartered by NJ, and established the Great Falls as the first planned industrial city. Under the auspices of the Society for the Establishment of Useful Manufactures, the waterfalls were used as an energy source to harness the power of the Passaic River for a new industrial economy. Hamilton hoped to demonstrate the ability of the U.S. to use its plentiful raw materials and its people's special aptitude for technological pursuits through successful manufacturing.

The power of the falls was initially used for grist mills and resulted in the growth of Paterson (named after NJ’s first governor William Paterson) as one of the first industrial centers in the United States. Paterson was also the site for the initial manufacturing of the Colt revolvers, as well as the Roger Locomotive Company that built the railroad trains used across the state and the country. Paterson became the center for silk manufacturing in the late 1800s. The historic industrial district of Paterson surrounding the falls is now a National Historical Park.

Have students watch the 90-second Kean University video, “It Happened Here” about Alexander Hamilton and New Jersey and/or the two-minute Smithsonian video focused on Industry in Paterson at Paterson, NJ: Birthplace of U.S. Industry?.

Critical thinking map activity:

Ask students to look at a map of the eastern United States and explain why Hamilton selected the Great Falls as the site for the first United States industrial park.

Answers should include the fact that the Great Falls are close to the population centers of New York and Philadelphia, on a river which could be reached from New York Harbor. This made it an ideal location to develop manufacturing since products could be easily shipped to large populations.

Science activity: Hydroelectric power

A 10,950-kilowatt hydroelectric generating station was located at the base of Great Falls, the second-largest waterfall by volume east of the Mississippi River. The current hydroelectric powerhouse was completed in 1914 and operated with its original equipment until 1969. The facility’s current three vertical Kaplan turbine generators, installed in 1986, produce approximately 30 million kilowatt-hours of clean energy in a typical year.

Have students read about hydroelectric power at Hydroelectric Energy: The Power of Running Water. Although we now have many other sources of energy to power industry and electricity, water power is still employed. Have students compare the various sources of energy and their pros and cons.

Extension

Great Falls is a National Historic Park in Paterson, NJ, open to visitors old and young and very interesting. Bring your students to visit Paterson Great Falls or take a virtual tour. For information go to Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park (U.S. National Park Service).