Quintipartite Deed

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History of New Jersey
Colonial period
American Revolution
Nineteenth Century
Twentieth Century
Twenty-first Century

The original provinces of West and East New Jersey are shown in yellow and green respectively. The Keith Line is shown in red, and the Coxe and Barclay line is shown in orange

The Quintipartite Deed was a legal document that split New Jersey, dividing it into West Jersey and East Jersey.

On July 1, 1676, William Penn, Gawen Lawrie (who served from 1683–1686 as Deputy to Governor Robert Barclay), Nicholas Lucas and Edward Byllinge executed a deed with Sir George Carteret known as the “Quintipartite Deed,” in which the territory was divided into two parts, East Jersey being taken by Carteret and West Jersey by Byllinge and his trustees.

Almost as soon as the Deed was signed, disputes arose over the exact dividing point of the two provinces. The first attempt at resolving the issue, the Keith line, was created by Surveyor-General George Keith in 1686, and runs North-Northwest from the southern part of Little Egg Harbor Township, passing just north of Tuckerton, and reaching upward to a point on the Delaware River which is just north of the Delaware Water Gap. More accurate surveys and maps were made to further resolve property disputes. This resulted in the Thornton line, drawn around 1696, and the Lawrence line, drawn around 1743, which was adopted as the final line for legal purposes.

[edit] External links

• Council of Proprietors of West Jersey - Origin and History
• New jersey Pinelands on article on the division of East and West Jersey