The Disputed Claim of the Proprietors of East Jersey to 

 Staten Island 



Edward C. Dexavan, Jr. 



There is no better way of interpreting ancient words, or of 

 construing ancient grants, deeds and charters, tlian by usage ; and 

 the uniform course of modern authorities fully establishes the 

 rule, that, however general the words of an ancient grant may 

 be, it is to be construed by evidence of the manner in which the 

 thing granted has always been possessed and used ; for so the 

 parties thereto must be supposed to have intended. Contem- 

 poranea Expositio est optima et fortis.sima in Lege.^ 



The grant by Charles II to his brother James. Duke of York 

 and Albany, on March 12, 1664, of a vast tract in the New World 

 was followed in the following year by the conveyance by the latter 

 to John, Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret, of the territory 

 later known as New Jersey, and described as 



"all that tract of land adjacent to Xew England and lying and 

 being to the westward of Long Island and Manhitas Island, and 

 lx)unded on the east, part by the main sea and part by Hudson's 

 river, and having upon the west Delaware bay or river, and ex- 

 tending southward to the main ocean as far as Cape May at tlie 

 mouth of Delaware bay and to the northward as far as the north- 

 ermost branch of the said bay or river of Delaware which is in 

 forty-one degrees and forty minutes of latitude and crossing 

 over thence in a straight line to Hudson's river in forty-one de- 

 grees of latitude. "- 



The complicated history of the Xew Jersey grants has been so 

 clearly treated in the third volume of the Xarrative and Critical 

 History of America, at pages 421 ct scquitiir. that it will be neces- 

 sary to refer to them only incidentally here. 



^ Brooms Legal ^Maxims. 8th Am. cd., 6S2. 4 American and English 

 Encyclopedia of Law, 2d ed., 796. 

 " I New Jersey Archives, first series, 8, 10. 



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