Manuscript Group 859, Essex County, New Jersey Clerk’s Office Book of warrants, 1784-1787
Archives Documents, Manuscripts, Maps, & Photographs
Manuscript Group 859, Essex County, New Jersey Clerk’s Office
Book of warrants, 1784-1787, 0.3 linear feet / 1 volume
Call Number: MG 859
- Summary
- Administrative Note
- Biographical Note
- Provenance Note
- Scope and Content Note
- Related Collections
Comprised of writs issued by Aaron and Robert Ogden, respectively clerk and junior clerk of Essex County, to the sheriff of Essex County as a result of litigation in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas at Newark. Includes some information on Loyalist forfeited estates.
Deposited by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Nova Caesarea Chapter.
In New Jersey, the roll of the county clerk was to keep official county documents such as land records, naturalizations, marriages, and court records. When a civil case was tried in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, the county clerk recorded the result and issued a formal warrant instructing the sheriff in the legal resolution of the case. Usually the warrant involved collection by the sheriff of debts, damages, and court fees from one of parties involved in the suit.
Robert Ogden (1746-1826) and Aaron Ogden (1756-1839) were born in Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth), New Jersey, and were the sons of Phebe Hatfield (1720-1796) and Robert Ogden (1716-1787).
Robert Ogden was a lawyer and judge in Elizabethtown who served as a quartermaster and commissary during the Revolutionary War. He was appointed by Governor William Franklin to the Surrogate Court seat given up by his father in 1772, and was later the junior clerk for Essex County. He married Sarah Platt (1750-1782), after her death he married Hannah Platt (1756-1812). He was the father of eleven children.
Colonel Aaron Ogden was a Revolutionary War soldier, a lawyer, and politician. He served as the clerk of Essex County; as U. S. Senator, 1801-1803; and as Governor of New Jersey in 1812. He married Elizabeth Chetwood (1776-1826) in 1787 with whom he had seven children.
Sources:
Wheeler, William Ogden, The Ogden Family in America, Elizabethtown Branch (Lippincot, Philadelphia, 1909).
Manuscript Group 386, Ogden Family (Newark & Elizabeth, NJ) Papers
This volume is on deposit by the Daughters of the American Revolution, Nova Caesarea Chapter.
This volume is an official book of writs issued as a result of civil litigation in the Inferior Court of Common Pleas at Newark, New Jersey. The writs were written by Robert and Aaron Ogden, junior clerk and clerk of Essex County, to the sheriff of Essex County, variously Joseph Crane or Caleb Camp (1737-1817). The most common result of these warrants was the sheriffs collection of debts or damages, usually for sums less than one thousand pounds. Among those named in suits are members of the Ball, Crane, Meeker and Winans families. This volume also includes some information on the settlement of estates forfeited by loyalists during the Revolutionary War.
Manuscript Group 242, William Pierson (1796-1882), Sheriff of Essex County, Record books
Manuscript Group 386, Ogden Family (Newark and Elizabeth, NJ) Papers
Processed by Luis Delfino, July 2001 as part of the “Farm to City” project funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
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