From the newspaper Elizabeth Daily Journal of Elizabeth, Union County, New Jersey. Published February 26, 1917.
HISTORIC PAPERS NOT PRESERVED
Important N. J. Documents “Lost, Strayed or Stolen.”
TRENTON, Feb. 26.—While the State of New Jersey, one of the original thirteen colonies which formed the organization of the United States, is rich in historical lore, she is sadly lacking in the preservation of the documents and records which tell the story of the commonwealth’s career, according to the report filed to-day with Governor Edge and the Legislature by the Commission on the Condition of Public Records of the State of New Jersey.
Senate Bill No. 248, introduced by Senator Stevens of Cape May, providing for the establishment of a department of public records, is recommended for enactment to cure the situation which now exists.
The report to the Governor says such valuable public records of the State as the original grants of land in New Jersey, many of the original journals of the General Assembly, Provincial Congress, Constitutional Convention of 1776, messages and official correspondence of Governors, petitions to the General Assembly, court dockets and minutes, town and township records and other manuscripts of priceless value are in private possession. In many cases they have been abstracted from the official files of the State, sometimes by high public officials of other days. Some have been thrown out of public offices as junk by careless and ignorant officials. Others have been given to the relatives of public officials through their last wills and testaments. They have been mutilated and destroyed for personal gain.
"Again," says the report, “many of these valuable historic records have been floating around the auction houses of the country for the past seventy years, sold and resold, and the spoils of the plunder divided between the auctioneers and the marauder. These conditions are startling and shocking to the sense of mankind in this age of civilization. They should be immediately stamped out for all time.”
Three Governors of the State, Voorhees, Fort and Fielder, at different times in their administrations have been forced to command private interests to turn over to the State rare old papers of record which were about to be sold in auction rooms in the larger cities.
No less abominable, however, is the condition of the public records of certain municipalities of the State, says the report. The cities of Perth Amboy and Burlington have no records for the first 250 years of their incorporated existence and the records of many of the other municipalities are in practically the same condition.
For centuries nearly every European country has systematically preserved its public records and many of the States of the Union have or are doing the same.
One of the most glaring features of our ancient records has been their abstraction, a practice in vogue for more than a century, and the investigations of the commission finds that a large portion of them are now held and controlled by private interests, to the exclusion of citizens of this State who are by law entitled to a gratuitous examination of them for legitimate purposes.
One of the records retained in a private family are the original grants- leases and releases- given by James, Duke of York, to the territory and government of the Province of New Jersey, and of East and West Jersey, respectively, accompanied with nearly 200 kindred papers. This family resides in an adjoining State.
The report says that more than a century and a quarter ago a certain official of one of the most important records offices of the State abstracted nearly all the records of his office upon his retirement, his successor doing the same, when he retired sixty years later. “These papers are now held intact by their respective descendants residing in New Jersey,” says the report, which adds, "the present head of the family is willing that they be turned over to the proper State authorities.”
Some sixty years ago the original memorials, petitions and other communications presented to the Provincial Congress were possessed by a particular family in Virginia, who then turned them over to certain private interests in New Jersey, where they now remain. The Federal Government borrowed military records of the Revolutionary War to use in settling pension claims, and has never returned them. Many public records have been mutilated in order to obtain autographs. The commission was told it would be charged $1 a day to examine certain records held by private organization, yet the papers belong to the State.
The bill advocated by the report provides a non-salaried commission of three to supervise the work of preserving the records.
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Newspaper article transcribed above.
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