All roads lead back to Bergen … at least in Hudson County | Tracing Our Roots

All roads lead back to Bergen, at least as far as Hudson County goes.

Bergen was the first incorporated place in the colony of New Jersey. Where the name came from is uncertain. One possibility is that it comes from the German word Bergen, which means “hills” and refers to the Palisades, the cliff formation that runs along much of the length of Hudson County.

The name was given to the land on this side of the North River (now known as the Hudson River), and a community settled there under a charter from Peter Stuyvesant in 1661, making it the first official municipality in New Jersey. The name still resonates throughout the area, most notably as the name of a town that separated from the original Bergen and called itself North Bergen. But there’s also Bergen Square, Bergen Avenue, Old Bergen Road and the Bergen Arches in Jersey City; Bergen Point in Bayonne and Bergenline Avenue and Bergen Turnpike in North Hudson.

Sadly, when the Township of Bergen merged with Jersey City, it lost its status as the oldest municipality. It no longer existed. That claim now belongs to Woodbridge, chartered by King Charles II in 1669.

Bergen County was one of New Jersey’s original four counties along with Essex, Middlesex and Monmouth. As populations grew, new counties were set off from older ones.

In February 1840, the New Jersey State Legislature passed a law sectioning off the southeastern part of Bergen County and naming it Hudson County. The original municipalities of the newly formed Hudson County were Bergen Township, Harrison Township and Jersey City.

New Jersey historians and genealogists owe a great debt to John P. Snyder, who outlined how counties and cities in Jersey from High Point to Cape May came into being. Snyder was a cartographer who worked for the U.S. Geological Survey. In 1969, the state Bureau of Geology and Topography published Bulletin 67, The Story of New Jersey’s Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968. If researching a forgotten town or city in New Jersey and you need to check the date on the founding of some municipality, this is the resource for you. And you can find it online.

I’m not going to go into how the all the municipalities of Hudson County came into being. It’s a long and convoluted list including the founding of towns, incorporations, reincorporations, consolidations, separations and boundary changes. If you’re interested in learning more, Snyder’s book will give you all you need and has the added advantage of being free.

Suffice it to say that all of North Hudson and the Heights section of Jersey City were formed from North Bergen, which split from Bergen Township in 1843. The Heights, originally known as Hudson City, split from North Bergen in 1852, becoming a separate municipality, then merged with Jersey City in 1869. The other North Hudson towns split from North Bergen at various times.

That’s Hudson County’s origin story. This information may explain some inconsistencies when doing federal or state census research or with other documents.

Danny Klein is the manager of the Jersey City Free Public Library’s New Jersey Room and a founding member of the Hudson County Genealogical and Historical Society. He can be reached at [email protected] and @hudsongenealogy on Twitter.