Background
The Delaware Valley had been inhabited by the Lenape (or Delaware) Indians prior to exploration and settlement starting around 1609 by the Dutch, Swedish and English. The Dutch West India Company had established one or two Delaware River settlements but by the late 1620s had moved most of their inhabitants to Manhattan which became the center of New Netherlands.
The development of the colony of New Sweden in the lower Delaware began in 1638. Most of the Swedish population was on the west side of the Delaware, but after the New Netherlands' Fort Nassau was re-established to challenge the Swedes, Fort Nya Elfsborg was established in present day Salem County. Fort Nya Elfsborg was located between present day Salem and Alloway Creek near Bridgeport. The New Sweden colony established two primary settlements in New Jersey: Sveaborg, now Swedesboro and Nya Stockholm, now Bridgeport. Trinity Church, located in Swedesboro, was the site of the Church of Sweden for the area.
The Dutch defeated New Sweden in 1655. Settlement of the West Jersey area by Europeans was thin until the English conquest in 1664. Beginning in the late 1670s Quakers settled in great numbers first in present day Salem County and then in Burlington which became the capital of West Jersey.
Read more about this topic: West Jersey
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“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
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“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)