Joshua Pettit of Essex Co., NJ: On the Map (Part IV)

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Joshua Pettit of Essex Co., NJ: On the Map (Part IV).

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Brandon

I would like to hear from anyone with experience researching colonial deeds in New Jersey. There has to be more deeds than what is available at the state archives. Where are they? Is it possible early NJ land records are filed in NY?

Neva

Have you tried the land records under Family Search? They're not complete either but maybe you'll find something new. I'm trying to find the Frazee land deeds and I keep coming back to your wonderful maps to get my clues. Just in case you have but someone else hasn't:

Top bar SEARCH > Catalog > and type in under "place" New Jersey, Essex. That will take you to all the court records online at the present time under Essex County. This search can be done for any state and county, sometimes a city. Most of them do not have an index so it is a page by page skim and search.

Thank you for a marvelous site that certainly keeps me with my searches.

Brandon

Thanks for the suggestion Neva. Family search has a great service there with a lot of free records.

I had forgotten about my comment above. I need to put together a brief article to describe what I found in NJ and explain why so many of the early deeds seem to be missing yet are referenced in books like "Genealogies of the First Settlers of the Passiac Valley." In that book the early deeds are not only mentioned, they are specifically referenced by date and page number. The author clearly knew where they were at when he wrote the book yet nobody today can find them. The short version is, John Littell, the author who wrote that book in the 1850s had access to Essex County Deed Book A which had most of the early land record. Sometime between the time he wrote that book and the time the records were microfilmed, Book A was destroyed in a fire. The only information that survived is what was memorialized in "Genealogies of the First Settlers of the Passaic Valley". There may also be more information in the notes of John Littell if those could be located. They were inherited by his great granddaughter Winifred Littell Blacklock but I have been unable to find where they went after she passed.