180 EAKLY HISTORY OF CAPE MAT COUNTY. 



any weapon save that of argument.' Accordingly the bill was sup- 

 pressed, to the great mortification of those who wanted to raise in 

 New Jersey the spirit which so raged in New England." 



Col. Jacob Spicer was in the county as early as 1691. He was a 

 member of the Legislature fourteen years, from 1709 to 1723, and 

 Surrogate from 1723 to 1741 ; and for many years a justice of the 

 Court. It is believed he came over with William Penn, and settled 

 in the upper part of Gloucester a while previous to coming here.* 

 Born in 1668 ; died, 1741. 



His son, Jacob Spicer, deserves a more particular notice. He 

 was born in 1716. We have nothing to guide us in relation, to his 

 early days, or until he became a member of the Legislature in 

 • 1744, which station he occupied for a period of twenty-one years ; 

 the first in connection with Henry Young, Esq., and afterwards, 

 until his demise, with Aaron Leaming (second) Esq. ; being almost a 

 moiety of the time he lived. He bore a prominent part in the pro- 

 ceedings and business of the House, as the journals of those days 

 fully prove, and received the appointment in connection with Aaron 

 Leaming second to revise the laws of the State ; and " Leaming and 

 Spicer's Collection," the result of their labor, is well known at this 

 day as a faithful exposition of the statutes. f He was a man of 

 exemplary habits, strong and vigorous imagination, and strictly 

 faithful in his business relations with his fellow-men, being punc- 

 tilious to the uttermost farthing, as his diary and accounts fully 

 attest. He carried system into all the ramifications of business; 

 nothing too small to escape the scrutiny of his active miftd, nothing 

 80 large that it did not intuitively embrace. He married Judith 

 Hughes, daughter of Humphrey Hughes, Esq., who died in 1747 ; 

 and in 1751 he married Deborah Leaming, widow of Christopher 



* J. Townsend's manuscript. 



f I am more particular to reiterate the fact of his being concerned with Aaron Learning 

 in the work of compiling the laws, as Miokle, in his Reminiscences, claims the credit of it 

 for Jacob Spicer, of Mullica Hill; which is no doubt an error, as I have the most indubi- 

 table CTidence to the contrary. 



