Province of New Jersey

The Province of New Jersey was created in 1664, when James, Duke of York, granted the territory he had just seized from the Dutch to two courtiers, Sir George Carteret and Lord Berkeley of Stratton, who named it after Carteret's home island of Jersey in the English Channel. Following a brief Dutch reoccupation in 1673 to 1674, the province was divided into the separate proprietary colonies of East Jersey and West Jersey from 1674 to 1702, each with its own governor and constitution, before the two proprietorships surrendered their governmental rights to the crown and were reunited as a single royal colony on April 17, 1702. New Jersey's colonial government ended when it adopted its first state constitution on July 2, 1776, drafted and ratified within a week to establish an independent government as the American Revolutionary War began. As a colony governed successively by proprietors and then the crown, it is grouped here among Kingdoms and Principalities, the closest available classification for a monarchical dependency pending a dedicated colonial-provinces category.