Re: The smell of a place
Posted: Mon Jun 25, 2012 11:21 amJeff Grossman/NYC wrote:Northern New Jersey is really a different state from the rest of New Jersey.
Historically NJ was two colonies for some time. It wasn't north and south, though, but East and West Jersey.
Functionally West Jersey was what you are probably thinking of as South Jersey, and south of the Raritan River and west of a line that goes down into the Pine Barrens, West Jersey was in the orbit of Pennsylvania and the Quakers. Towns like Haddonfield still have their old Quaker meeting houses as some of the earliest big buildings in town. See the map here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Jersey
East Jersey had a more New England Puritan cast to it, and originally was connected to New Amsterdam. I think Ben Franklin's Tory son was the governor of East Jersey at the time of the Revolution. My timeline is probably a little messed up, but as I recall he wasn't governor of the Quaker part of NJ.