History of Slavery in New Jersey - Colonial Period

Colonial Period

The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves to New Amsterdam, capital of the nascent province of New Netherland. They worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders. It later expanded across the North River (Hudson River) to Pavonia and Communipaw, eventually becoming Bergen, where slaves worked the company plantation. Settlers to the area later held slaves privately, often using them as domestic servants and laborers. Although enslaved, the Africans had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, who also baptized their children. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours, when they earned wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell, the company freed all its slaves, establishing early on a nucleus of free negros.

English traders continued to import African slaves after they took over the colony from the Dutch in 1664 and established a proprietorship. Eager to attract more settlers and laborers to develop the colony, the proprietorship encouraged the importation of slaves for labor by offering settlers headrights, an award of allocations of land based on the number of workers, slaves or indentured servants, imported to the colony. The first African slaves to appear in English records were owned by Colonel Lewis Morris in Shrewsbury. In an early attempt to encourage European settlement, the New Jersey legislature enacted a prohibitive tariff against imported slaves to encourage European indentured servitude. When this act expired in 1721, however, the British Government and New Jersey's royal governor, countered attempts to renew it. The slave trade was a royal monopoly and had become a lucrative enterprise.