John Reid, the gard’ner

John Reid, author of The Scots Gard’ner, was born in 1655 at Niddry Castle near Kirkliston in West Lothian, where both his father and grandfather were gardeners to the Seton family. He was apprenticed in 1668 to Andrew Wardlaw, a merchant in Edinburgh, but by the 1670s had turned decisively to horticulture. His early career was spent in some of the great gardens of Scotland’s landed estates – first as under-gardener to Quaker Hew Wood on the Duke of Hamilton’s estate, then as gardener to James, Earl of Perth at Drummond Castle, and later to Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh at his estate at the Shank near Gorebridge, Midlothian.

Reid became a Quaker while in Hamilton and married Margaret Miller at the Friends’ in 1678. Around this time he began writing The Scots Gard’ner, the first practical guide to gardening and horticulture published in Scotland. It was issued in Edinburgh in 1683, shortly after his departure for East Jersey. The book distilled his knowledge, providing advice on soils, kitchen and flower gardens, orchards, and the setting-out of grounds.

‘Overseer’ for the first emigrants

John had gained the confidence of influential employers and also leading Quakers including Robert Barclay, prime mover in the East Jersey venture. This resulted in his appointment as one of two ‘overseers’ appointed by the Scots Proprietors to travel with the first shipload of emigrants aboard the Exchange of Stockton which left from Aberdeen in August 1683. Their role was to manage the initial settlement, ensure that provisions and resources were properly distributed, and supervise early agricultural activity. He was indentured for four years but, like his fellow overseer John Hamton, he was granted an salary of £25 and provided with a house and livestock. Hamton was also a gardener and a Quaker, gardening being an activity of great appeal to the early Quakers as a source of spiritual meaning and a way to contribute to society.

Surveyor, landowner and public official

Gardening was a highly skilled occupation requiring going beyond botany to encompass mathematics, physics and the science of weather. Not only did Reid make a practical contribution to the laying out of land and cultivation but his skills led him to be appointed Surveyor-General of East Jersey. He helped to establish the system of surveys and boundaries that underpinned East Jersey’s land administration and later assisted in defining the line dividing East and West Jersey, work for which his accuracy and fairness were commended.

Gardening was a highly skilled occupation requiring going beyond botany to encompass mathematics, physics and the science of weather. Not only did Reid make a practical contribution to the laying out of land and cultivation but his skills led him to be appointed Surveyor-General of East Jersey. He helped to establish the system of surveys and boundaries that underpinned East Jersey’s land administration and later assisted in defining the line dividing East and West Jersey, work for which his accuracy and fairness were commended.

Reid also played a role in the governance of East Jersey as a member of the Board of Proprietors from 1692, serving as proxy for William Dockwra, holding this position until 1705. He also served as a County Court judge and as commissioner of roads.

Religion and family

Reid was one of the Quakers who, following the criticisms of George Keith over doctrinal practices left for the Church of England. He received his first Anglican Communion in 1703 and remained a communicant thereafter.

Reid died in 1723 at Freehold, Monmouth County and was buried at Topanemus, at the Old Scots Burying Ground. His library, inventoried after his death, reflected both his scientific and literary tastes, containing books on law, theology, astronomy and history, as well as Scotland’s sovereignty asserted by Sir Thomas Craig and the novels of Aphra Behn.

He had travelled in 1683 with his wife Margaret to East Jersey with three daughters under four. Tragedy struck when the youngest, Margaret died within three months of their arrival, and six months later another child was stillborn. Two years on they had a son, John, who trained as a lawyer and practised in Westchester, New York. Their daughters were schooled in Philadelphia and the elder, Anna, married John Anderson, the master of the Unicorn, one of the ships that had been part of the Darien expedition in 1698, and later a prominent New Jersey politician. Their other daughter, Helen, married Reverend John Bartow. He had been sent in1702 as a missionary by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in London and two years later became Anglican rector of Westchester.

Other close kin also emigrated in 1683: two of John’s brothers: James who travelled as a free emigrant with his wife and two children, and George, an indentured servant, as well as John’s brother-in-law, James Miller of Gartshore and wife, Margaret Robinson.

See database entry for John Reid

Adam Hude was one of the Covenanters transported aboard the Henry and Francis in 1685. Born about 1661, he came from the Eastern Borders and worked as a weaver before his imprisonment.

In March 1685 Hude was described by the authorities as a “disaffected person”. During the trial of the young Covenanter preacher James Renwick he was accused of dictating a “seditious letter against the government and orthodix clergie” that had been left at Ashkirk church in Selkirkshire. Two months later, in May 1685, he refused to take the oath of allegiance demanded by the government. Such refusals were treated as proof of political and religious disloyalty. Had Hude taken the oath he would likely have been released, but his refusal led instead to imprisonment in Dunnottar Castle and ultimately to transportation in September. Amongst the other prisoners was Marion Renwick from Tongland in Kirkcudbrightshire who became his wife not very long after their arrival in the colony.

The transported prisoners were intended to be sold into indentured servitude on arrival. Hude, however, was one of those who argued in the County Court against this arrangement and secured his freedom. For a time, he lived on Staten Island, across the Arthur Kill from East Jersey, where he had opportunities for work and trade and found himself amongst others sympathetic to his Presbyterian beliefs.

Settled in Woodbridge

In 1695 Adam purchased land in Woodbridge in Middlesex County and moved from Staten Island not long afterwards. Over the following decades he became a well-established member of the community. Records show him serving on juries and undertaking other public duties, indicating the standing he had achieved among his neighbours. In 1701 he became a Member of the Provincial Assembly of New Jersey. In the same year he purchased further land in Woodbridge.

Adam remained a staunch Presbyterian and was formally admitted as a member of the new Presbyterian Church in Woodbridge in 1710.

Adam and Marion had six children in Woodbridge, two daughters and four sons. Both Robert and James were to follow their father into public life, holding local offices in Middlesex County.

Hude was appointed a judge on the Court of Common Pleas of Middlesex County in 1718 and was subsequently Presiding Judge for over 10 years, to 1733. His career illustrates the striking transformation experienced by many of the transported Covenanters: men who had been imprisoned and banished for their religious convictions in Scotland later became respected members of colonial society.

He lived to an advanced age, dying in 1746 at about eighty-five, Marion having pre-deceased him in 1732.

Further details, including sources, of Adam Hude’s life and family can be found in the East Jersey Bound database:

See database entry for Adam Hude

David Jamieson was born in March 1659 in Linlithgow, West Lothian, to David Jamie and Bessie Tod. He grew up in a Covenanter household and learnt the tailoring skills of his father’s business.

The authorities accused him of being a member of the Covenanter army at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge on 22 June 1679. The following January, he was declared an outlaw and his belongings confiscated for failing to appear on a charge of treason and rebellion. Regarded as able by his peers, he may briefly that year have studied in Utrecht, Netherlands, supported by Covenanter funds raised at conventicles or in other ways.

By 1681, however he was back in West Lothian and a leading member of a Covenanter sect known as the Sweet Singers, or Gibbites (as named after their leader, John Gibb). In May that year, he and others were arrested near Wolf Craigs in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh and imprisoned in Canongate Tolbooth. They had rapidly developed notoriety for their extreme views, not only in the eyes of magistrates but also fellow Covenanters for whom their rejection of the formal church and its ministers was anathema. They led very austere lives and took to periodic fasting, which led them to be accused of manic behaviour.

Despite being one of the authors of an extremely radical religious manifesto produced at the end of May, David and other Sweet Singers were subsequently released. However, he was again in prison in November for failing to pay a fine for absenting himself from parish church services. He appears again in the penal records on 4 January 1683, amongst Linlithgow residents accused of religious disorder.

In early May 1684 David was arrested, having been on the Fugitive Roll, and on 16 May he was formally banished by the Privy Council and ordered to be transported “to the Plantations in America”. He could have been shipped to South Carolina with other merchants but ended up the responsibility of Dr George Lockhart, the New York merchant with a property interest in East Jersey who also agreed to take two other Sweet Singers, John Gibb and Alexander Montgomery (or Monteith), along with six other prisoners.  Lockhart’s ship, the Seaflower left Leith on 21 August 1684 heading for New York.

There David was sold as an indentured servant to Josiah Clarke, Anglican chaplain of the New York Fort. Clarke regarded him with promise and he was allowed “to teach school to redeem himself”. He began to train in law and in 1690 was a legal clerk to Matthew Clarkson, Secretary of New York Province. It was not long before he was appointed Clerk to the Council of New York, 15 April 1691. He held the post until 1698 when he was dismissed by Governor Lord Bellomont, who accused him of having been condemned to death in Scotland and of atheism and bigamy.

This was not, however, to be the end of his career in public office. In June 1701, he was appointed deputy provincial Surveyor-General and in 1711 he became Chief Justice of New Jersey, serving until 1723. In June 1712, he also became Recorder of New York City with significant legal responsibilities. In January 1720 he was sworn in as New York Attorney General.

He practised independently as an attorney and was one of the founders of the New York Bar Association. In 1707, he was one of three attorneys defending Francis Makemie, a Scots-Irish minister, for preaching without a licence, a case notable in the annals of Presbyterianism in the USA. David himself was no longer Presbyterian, having become Anglican and been chosen as a vestryman (like an elder in the Church of Scotland) in the Trinity Church in Lower Manhattan.

David was active in the property market mainly in New York. In June 1696, he was a partner in a land patent in Harrison, Westchester County and the following year in a consortium which secured what became known as the Great Nine Partners Patent in Dutchess County, though the latter investment he never saw fully realised. Later in 1697  he was party to a land grant of 1,200 acres in Deerpark, Orange County. On 11 November 1703, he sold land in Piscataway, New Jersey, to Scottish immigrant Thomas Grubb and his wife.

David married Anna Maria Hardenbroeck on 7 May 1692 at the Collegiate Church in New York. Anna Maria was niece of Margarete Hardenbroek, a leading merchant in New York in her own right as well as partner to her second husband, Frederick Philipse. Philipse was involved in slave trading and privateering including as a sponsor of William Kidd’s piratical activities with the Adventure Galley in the Indian Ocean in 1695.

David and Anna Maria had two children: Elizabeth and William. After Anna Maria’s death he married Joanna Meech on 16 January 1703. He died on 26 July 1739 in Manhattan and was buried there.

See database entry for David Jamieson

Jean Moffat was born in about 1666 at Netherbarns just outside Galashiels, the daughter of James Moffat, tenant farmer and determined Covenanter. Jean was perhaps even stronger her beliefs and persistently refused to attend the services of the local minister. In consequence her father was fined 1,000 merks, for failing in his legal responsibility to ensure religious conformity by his family and farm workers. Her father was already in trouble, accused of harbouring rebels and placed on the Fugitive Roll. Their house was raided by dragoons and goods and livestock carried off.

On 18 May 1685, following the authorities’ round-up of many of the most resolute Covenanters, Jean found herself in Burntisland, Fife amongst the 45 women prisoners to be sent to Dunnottar Castle in Kincardineshire. There she was held about 80 days in cramped, filthy conditions housing over 160 people. By mid August, Privy Council members were impatient to remove the most recalcitrant Covenanters and on 18 August, Jean was banished for refusing oaths of allegiance to the King and opposition to taking up arms in rebellion and given to George Scot of Pitlochie for transportation.

Once aboard the Henry and Francis lying off the port of Leith, she was one of 28 signatories of a testimony protesting the banishment of the Covenanters. The ship left on 5 September 1685 and arrived at Perth Amboy on 7 December with Jean amongst the survivors of the disease-ridden voyage.

Jean was amongst the party of Covenanters who decided to leave East Jersey and head for New England where they hoped to encounter English settlers who held sympathetic religious views. By 1686, she was living in Waterbury, Connecticut, where she married John Fraser [or Frazer], a fellow Dunnottar prisoner transported on the Henry and Francis.

John, a university graduate from the Fraser of Pitcalzean family, Nigg in Ross-shire, had earned a living in London as a writing master where he had been arrested in December 1684 for attending a house conventicle. Once in Waterbury he was licensed to preach by local Congregationalist ministers. This stood him in good stead when he and Jean returned to Scotland after the accession of William and Mary and the consequent resumption of religious authority on the part of the Presbyterian Church. Jean was then able to visit with her father who was once more living on his farm at Netherbarns.

John Fraser was ordained as minister of Glencorse parish near Penicuik, Midlothian in December 1691, before transferring to Alness in Easter Ross in 1695, pressed by the General Assembly to move to help address a shortage of Gaelic-speaking ministers.

John Fraser wrote a memoir of his experience as a Covenanter prisoner which was used by Robert Wodrow in his History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, in the process firmly planting the tales of Dunnottar Castle and the voyage of the Henry and Francis in popular Covenanter memory.

Jean and John had five children after their return to Scotland: Jean, James, Katherine, Isabel, and John. Their son James trained for the ministry and later (1736) also became minister of Alness. James’s collected works were published in 1834, with the addition by the editor of an account of his and his parents’ lives.

Following the death of John Fraser in 1711, Jean married widower George Gordon, minister of Cromarty in 1714. There she was regarded as an attractive woman though known  – not to her face – as ‘Luggie’, as it was rumoured that she had suffered the fate other banished Covenanters of having her ears clipped. Hugh Miller relates in his Scenes and Legends of the North of Scotland (1835), his history of Cromarty, that this was not the case although she always kept her ears covered. Jean may have outlived George Gordon, who died in 1749.

See database entry for Jean Moffat


See database entry for John Fraser

Andrew Paterson was a Covenanter who was transported in 1685 and made his way to Connecticut where he settled and had a family.

Andrew Paterson [or Patterson] was born in 1659 in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. He was firm in his Covenanting beliefs and may have been in the Covenanter army at the Battle of Bothwell Bridge in 1679.

In 1685, in the light of the expected Argyll Rising, the authorities considered him a threat, brought him under arrest and held him in Glasgow Tolbooth. On 20 May he refused the oath of allegiance to the Crown but though he “remained obstinat” he avoided the formal sentence of banishment unlike some of the others. This did not however, prevent his later transportation.

He was immediately sent to Burntisland to join other Covenanter prisoners and thence to Dunnottar Castle, where he was held until early August. The group was then taken to Leith, arriving on 17 August and soon after placed aboard the Henry and Francis. There he was one of the signatories of the testimony protesting their enforced exile on their refusal to acknowledge the King, not Jesus, as head of the church, “a sworn enemy to religion, an avowed papist whom by our covenants we are bound to withstand and disown”.

Patterson was one of the survivors aboard the Henry and Francis, arriving in Perth Amboy on 7 December 1685. 

A life in Connecticut

In early 1686, he walked over 90 miles to Stratford, Connecticut, accompanying Robert McEwen and ten other Covenanters who wished to find somewhere to live with people were sympathetic to their religious beliefs. They were also under threat for forced indenture if they stayed in East Jersey, though this was resolved in favour of the Covenanter transportees in late February 1686.

Four years later, Paterson married Elizabeth Peat [or Peet], granddaughter of an English Puritan emigrant, John Peat from Derby. The Patersons went on to have seven children: Sarah, Charles, William, Elizabeth, Hannah, Mary, and John. In late 1691 he acquired 16 acres on the west side of Stonibrook Hill in Stratford, giving him the status of a town proprietor. His son John was one of the first graduates of Yale College in 1718.

Paterson served as Town Sergeant for a spell, responsible for maintaining public order and carrying out orders of the town’s governing body, including serving warrants, summoning individuals to court, and making arrests. He was also a School Committeeman in 1718, contributing to the oversight of the local school.

In November 1738, along with his sons William and John, by then also town proprietors, he was granted a portion of undivided land in Fairfield.

Andrew Paterson died, aged 87, on 2 December 1746 and was buried in the Old Congregational Burying Place in Stratford.

See database entry for Andrew Paterson

Read more

Elisha G Patterson, Andrew Patterson, of Stratford, Conn., and the First Four Generations of His Descendants (privately printed, 1892) 

David Simson was an exiled Presbyterian minister and amongst the oldest Scots emigrants.

David Simson, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, was born around 1632 and served faithfully in parishes of Argyll for several decades before being exiled to East Jersey for his religious convictions.

He began his ministry in 1656 at Killean and Kilchenzie parish in South Kintyre, later moving to Kilcholumkill and Kilblaan or Southend parish, where in he was one of nearly four hundred ministers – one third of Scotland’s clergy – who were ‘outed’ from their parishes. They left either of their own volition or forced to leave and were required to live at least 20 miles from their former congregations. This was a consequence of the series of Acts that year passed by the Scottish Parliament. These forced the Church of Scotland to adopt Episcopalianism. Henceforth, ministers could only serve in a parish if a bishop or a patron (typically a local landowner) had nominated them, and all ministers were required to swear allegiance to the crown. King Charles II was seeking to introduce a common structure across all of Britain, with rule by bishops and standard use of the Book of Common Prayer.

Many outed ministers continued to preach, in people’s houses or in the fields. Penalties for hosting or preaching at such irregular and banned events known as conventicles could be severe.
Under an Act of Indulgence in September 1672, David was amongst 89 ministers allowed to return to their parishes, provided that they avoided political dissent, such as preaching against the King had power over the Church, and strove to maintain religious order within their parishes.

In March 1685, he was imprisoned in Edinburgh, accused of nonconformity. He was released on a heavy bond of 5,000 merks, on the condition that he leave Scotland and cease ministering while still in the kingdom. On 14 August 1685, the Privy Council ordered the return of his bond, clearing the way for him to board the Henry and Francis, a ship carrying scores of Covenanter prisoners to East Jersey.

Simson arrived in Perth Amboy in October 1685. He was one of several ministers exiled during this period, but his importation was specifically noted as having been arranged by Lord Neill Campbell, an important figure among the Scottish proprietors of East Jersey. Though he lived only a short while in the colony, dying around 1686, sources remember him as one who “continued stedfast in his principles till his death.”

He was married to Jean Thomson and was succeeded as minister in Southend parish by his son David in 1686. As the latter was performing as an episcopalian minister in 1688 when the Presbyterian church was restored to supremacy, he had to petition the Synod of Argyll to be received into Presbyterian Communion. In 1691 he became minister of Kilchoman parish on Islay.

David Falconar played a significant role in the East Jersey venture as a promoter and investor and was a leading member of the Quaker community in Scotland.

David Falconar (or Falconer) was born around 1632, the eldest son of Sir John Falconer, Master of the Cunziehouse (the Scottish Mint), and Sibil Ogilvy. Though he never emigrated himself, Falconar played a pivotal role in facilitating early Quaker settlement in East Jersey.

In 1646 when he was about 14, he was granted a right to succeed his father as Master of the Mint, and was trained in the role, and furthered his education in England, France, and Holland. However, he became estranged from his father and in 1672, having joined the Society of Friends (Quakers), he renounced his claim to his position at the Mint. The role passed to his younger half-brother, John, later Sir John Falconer of Balmakellie.

Falconar was one of the earliest Scots to join the Quakers and one of the earliest to be imprisoned for his faith, in Edinburgh in 1664. He became a significant figure within the movement, becoming a proselytiser while working as a factor for Colonel David Barclay of Ury and Anthony Haig of Bemersyde. With Colonel David’s son Robert, Falconar organised Quaker meetings around Aberdeen in 1667 and established himself in business there, becoming a burgess in 1671.

On 7 March 1672 he married Margaret Molleson, daughter of Gilbert Molleson, prominent merchant burgess and bailie of Aberdeen. This was two years after Robert Barclay had married Margaret’s sister Christian.

By 1674 Falconar was back in Edinburgh as a merchant. There he purchased land for a Quaker burial plot in The Pleasance and was appointed by fellow Quakers to oversee the construction of a meeting house.

By the early 1680s, Falconar was showing considerable interest in Quaker plans for a new colony in America, and volunteered to act as an emigration agent for the plantation of West Jersey in 1671, one of the three in Scotland along with Hew Wood, gardener at Hamilton Palace, and John Cowie, merchant in Aberdeen.

Being close to Robert Barclay he was much involved in the subsequent plans for the Scots emigration to East Jersey, and again acted as an emigration agent. He was in a position to encourage several relatives in this direction, such as the merchant Patrick Falconar and the Fullarton of Kinnaber brothers, Robert and Thomas.

He acquired land in East Jersey from Robert Barclay in 1682 and shipped goods aboard the first emigrant vessel, the Exchange of Stockton in August 1683. He later obtained more land from Sir John Gordon of Durno in 1685 and Robert Barclay junior in 1701.

This was a difficult time personally, for his half-brother, John of Balmakellie was embroiled in a scandal fighting accusations of malversation (corruption) at the Mint, along with two other Falconer cousins. Falconar had other close cousins in important positions, including Sir David Falconer of Newton who was made Lord President of the Court of Session and a Privy Councillor in 1682. Newton was at the heart of the authorities’ response to the Argyll rebellion and Covenanters in 1685 as a member of the Secret Committee.

In 1689, Falconar and his growing family moved from Edinburgh to Kirktonhill, Marykirk parish, Kincardineshire in 1691 he took on the role of factor to his brother-in-law Gilbert Molleson who was already established in London as a silk draper. This Molleson bought an East Jersey fraction in 1696 and was one of the Proprietors of East Jersey who agreed to give up their rights when New Jersey was created a royal province in 1702. His three surviving sons all went to America. His eldest son John built a substantial transatlantic business in London while Gilbert and Alexander settled permanently as merchants in Kent County, Maryland.

David Falconar died on 18 April 1713 at Kingswells, near Newhills in Aberdeenshire, and was buried at Ury two days later.

See database entry for David Falconar

William Niven, a smith from Pollokshaws in Cathcart parish, Renfrewshire (now part of Glasgow), lived through some of the harshest years of the Covenanter persecutions in late 17th century Scotland. His religious nonconformity led to repeated imprisonments, torture, and eventual transportation across the Atlantic.

In May 1678, Niven was arrested after attending an illegal conventicle and refused to name those who had preached or attended. For this, he was sentenced to transportation to the plantations. He was imprisoned in Edinburgh Tolbooth and, by December, placed aboard the St Michaell of Scarbrugh, intended for Virginia. However, the ship never left port as the contractor responsible, London merchant Ralph Williamson,  failed to appear and the prisoners were released at Gravesend. [Another in the party was William Layng from Hawick who was also later transported to East Jersey.]

Niven returned to Cathcart around September 1679, but his freedom was short-lived. In 1684 he was again imprisoned, this time in the Canongate Tolbooth, accused of disloyalty to Church and Crown and refusing to take pledges of allegiance. In May 1685, he was formally sentenced to banishment. He was among the many Covenanters held in grim conditions at Dunnottar Castle. During his captivity, he took part in a failed escape attempt and suffered torture by lit matches tied to his fingers.

On 5 September 1685, Niven was shipped aboard the Henry and Francis as a banished prisoner. He arrived in Perth Amboy, East Jersey, on 7 December 1685. A legal case brought in early 1686 by the ship’s captain, Richard Hutton, shows that Niven was among the prisoners successful in opposing his claim for their transportation costs. Despite his traumatic exile, Niven managed to return to Scotland by around 1692.

Back home in Pollokshaws, he appears to have resumed a normal life. By 1703, he had some social standing, serving as an elder in the local Church of Scotland. He had at least one child, also named William. He died sometime after 1703.

See database entry for William Niven

William Ridford [or Reidford] was one of the first Scots emigrants to East Jersey in the 1680s. He was born around 1642 in Friershaw, near Lilliesleaf in Teviotdale, Roxburghshire. He was a Quaker, a member of the Kelso Monthly Meeting.

By 1682, tenant farmer Ridford was in negotiation with Arent Sonmans, one of the East Jersey proprietors, to emigrate to the American colonies. Under their agreement, Ridford was promised 100 acres of land in East Jersey rent-free for ten years, a significant incentive.

Ridford left Scotland from Aberdeen aboard the Exchange of Stockton on 31 August 1683. After a transatlantic crossing, he arrived in Staten Island, New York, on 19 December 1683. He and his family (his wife Margaret and their seven children) initially settled in Elizabethtown, New Jersey. On 26 September 1685, the family was granted a survey warrant for 250 acres of headland, recognising their arrival and settlement.

Ridford had joined the Kelso Monthly Meeting sometime before 1682 and was to remain a Quaker until his death.

Later records show Ridford in Freehold, Monmouth County, where he was still farming as a yeoman by 1720. He maintained his Quaker faith throughout his life, leaving a legacy to the Monmouth Meeting of Friends in his will.

William Ridford died in 1726 and was buried in the Old Scots Burying Ground in Freehold. His will, dated 27 February 1720/21, named his wife Margaret and sons-in-law Gideon Craford and James Lowrey (Lawrie) as executors, though Margaret later declined due to infirmity. His property and legacies, including his religious bequests, testify to a life of persistence, belief, and quiet influence in early East Jersey society.

See database entry for William Ridford