New Jersey has a rich and fascinating history, and the Department of State is literally the keeper of that history.
With its roots much older than the state itself, it is no wonder that the Department of State is regarded as a historical treasure and one of New Jersey’s oldest government agencies.
Established in 1703, the department was originally called the “provincial secretary” under New Jersey’s royal colonial government. During the early colonial days governors, chosen by the British Crown, in turn appointed a secretary to handle the most important official documents and recordkeeping functions of the government. As part of the provincial secretary’s duties were recording land transactions, issuing local government “patents” or charters, orders, commissions, and certified copies of such documents, and maintaining the archives of the colonial administration.
New Jersey Constitutions
In addition to its integral role as a repository for historical and important documents, the provincial secretary also was responsible for collecting specific fees for township patents, citizen’s petitions, health documents and recording deeds. Situated in two offices located in New Jersey’s colonial capitals of Burlington and Perth Amboy, the provincial secretary proudly served citizens and responded to their needs from those original locations until legislation was enacted in 1760 providing for the construction of “a proper House for the Conservation of Public Records in the Secretary’s Office.”
These two buildings actually continued in use until 1816, long after the colony had become a state and a single capital had been established in Trenton. After the State House opened in 1792, the legislature approved a bill in 1795 to relocate the state’s vital records to Trenton, the state’s capital. The building remained in use for about fifty years, until the State House received a major facelift in 1845.
The remains of a structure built in 1796 to house New Jersey’s colonial and early state archives were discovered in 2006, when a security enhancement project outside the State House required the demolition and excavation of the concrete sidewalk, handicapped access ramps and curbing in front of the capitol. The remains of the historic structure began to emerge inches below the existing grade, just east of the State House’s front entrance, near the foundation of the modern State House. The building occupied the northeast corner of the original State House grounds.
The essential duties and responsibilities of the office continued without substantive change when colonial administration gave way to state government during the American Revolution. In fact, New Jersey’s first state constitution (adopted in July 1776) still referred to the office of the provincial secretary. The first person to hold the office after independence was Charles Pettit (1776-78). By the close of the 18th century, however, the name changed to the secretary of state, and was formally recognized as such in the second state constitution in 1844.
The Department of State expanded during the late 19th century as New Jersey became an attractive haven for business incorporations and commercial recording activities intensified. The department’s administration of elections also increased in importance as New Jersey grew into the nation’s most densely populated state. A dramatic new cultural thrust to the department’s mission was added during the 1980s when several existing agencies were reassigned to the Secretary of State: the State Council on the Arts, the State Museum, the Division of Archives and Records Management, the New Jersey Historical Commission, and the Office of Ethnic Affairs. In 1998, the Division of Commercial Recordings was moved to the Department of Treasury, and the Division of Elections was moved to the Department of Law and Public Safety. In 1997, the Governor’s Office of Volunteerism moved to the Department of State and the AmeriCorps program was reassigned in 2002.
