Burlington County, New Jersey Genealogy

United States New Jersey  Burlington County  

County Courthouse
Burlington County Courthouse 49 Rancocas Road; PO Box 6000; Mount Holly, NJ 8060 Phone: 609.265.5122 County Clerk has land and military records: County Surrogate has probate records; County library has naturalization records

Parent County

 * 17 May 1677, Burlington County is the first county created in what is now New Jersey, from the Colonial lands.

Boundary Changes

 * 1692, boundary set with Gloucester County.
 * 1693, Gloucester County boundary repealed.
 * 1710, boundaries more definite.
 * 7 March 1837, part set off to form Atlantic County.
 * 1838, part transferred to Mercer County.
 * 15 February 1850, Ocean County set off. *1857, boundary with Ocean County clarified.
 * 1891, Egg Harbor township transferred to Ocean County.
 * 1902, parts added from Camden and Atlantic counties.

Neighboring Counties
Atlantic | Camden | Mercer | Monmouth | Ocean | Pennsylvania counties: Bucks | Philadelphia

Census

 * 1745 - Godfrey, Carlos E. "A List of the Freeholders for the City and County of Burlington, and in each Respective Township, taken this 15th Day of April 1745," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 29 (1905):421-426. Digital version at Internet Archive - free.

Church Records

 * 1708-1985 - Pennsylvania, Church and Town Records, 1708-1985 at Historical Society of Pennsylvania – $, free to members of the society; Also available at Ancestry.com – $; 7,542,774 entries. This database is incomplete for all counties.


 * Contains the church records of:
 * Beverly: Beverly Presbyterian Church; First Presbyterian Church

Additional churches:


 * St Mary Parish, Founded:1837- Address: 45 Crosswicks St, Bordentown, NJ 08505 - Phone: (609) 298-0261 Fax: (609) 298-7178 - Website: www.stmarysbordentown.org/

Episcopalian

 * 1702-1836 - "Register of St. Mary's Church, Burlington, N.J.," Publications of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Jun. 1903):241-302. For online access, see WeRelate; see also . Includes baptisms, marriages, marriage banns, and burials.

Quakers

 * 1685-1730 - "Marriages at Chesterfield, New Jersey, 1685-1730. Certificates Records in the Minutes of the Chesterfield (N.J.) Monthly Meeting," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 9 (1885):347-352. For free online access, see WeRelate.

Gazetteers

 * United States Geographic Survey Place Names - GNIS for Burlington County (over 1150 entries) (may not always be present in alphabetic order on first try.)

History

 * 1681, court established in province of West Jersey.
 * 1694, formed by union of "1st and 2nd tenths"

Migration
Early migration routes to and from for settlers included:


 * Delaware River a pre-historic pathway serving as the border between New Jersey and Pennsylvania rises in Schoharie County, New York and flows by the Lehigh Canal in Pennsylvania, Frenchtown, Trenton where river meets tidewater, and past Bordentown in New Jersey, Philadelphia in Pennsylvania to empty into the North Atlantic Ocean.
 * Delaware and Raritan Canal 1834 connected New Brunswick, New Jersey on the Raritan River (and NY City) to Bordontown, New Jersey on the Delaware River and parts of Pennsylvania including Philadelphia.

Newspapers
Burlington County Newspaper Notices Index http://www.bcls.lib.nj.us/newspapers/nni/

The "Burlington County Newspaper Notices Index" includes citations to birth announcements, marriage announcements, death notices, obituaries, and other related news items gathered from over twenty-five Burlington County area newspapers and publications.

The oldest citations in this index date back to 1810 and are from the Rural Visitor, a newspaper published in Burlington City, from July 1810 to July 1811. The majority of the citations in the database are death notices and marriage announcements from the mid-1800's and 1910-through the WW II era. Most of the birth announcements date from the 1970's-early 1980's. However, no newspaper in the Burlington County Library System microfilm collection has been indexed from the first issue to the last.

Bordentown Register http://www.bcls.lib.nj.us/newspapers/bordentown/

The "Bordentown Palladium" was founded in 1845 as a weekly community paper serving the Bordentown region of Burlington County, New Jersey, an area six miles south of Trenton. The newspaper was renamed "Bordentown Register" in 1851 and renamed again in 1966 to"Register-News". Over its 160 years of publication, the newspaper has chronicled the history of the Bordentown region, including local news for surrounding towns of Fieldsboro, Florence, Roebling, Columbus, Chesterfield, Mansfield, and Yardville, marriages and death notices, legislative news, judicial announcements, business and social concerns of the area. Of special note is the news of hometown soldiers in the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korean, and Vietnam Wars and subseqent.

Probate Records
Obtaining Copies of County Probate Records

Copies of recorded probate records and the estate files can be obtained from the surrogate's offices for a fee. Addresses of surrogate's offices are found in:


 * Eichholz, Alice, Editor. Ancestry's Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources. Revised Edition. Salt Lake City, Utah: Ancestry, 1992. (.) Explains state-by-state history, vital records, census, background sources, periodicals, archives, libraries, societies, maps, land, probate, court, tax, cemetery, church, and military records. Includes county boundary map and table which shows when each county was created and the parent counties.

In addition, copies of the original wills, administrations, inventories, and guardianships sent to Trenton since 1901 can be ordered from:


 * Clerk of the Superior Court
 * Records Information Center
 * P.O. Box 967
 * Trenton, NJ 08625-0967
 * Telephone: 609-292-4978
 * Fax: 609-777-0094
 * Internet: http://www.answers.com/topic/new-jersey-superior-court

Taxation

 * 1684 - Thompson, John J. "A Burlington County, New Jersey, Assessment List, 1684," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 15 (1891):346-349. For free online access, see WeRelate.

Voting Records

 * 1739 - Thompson, John J. "'Poll Book of an Election in 1739' Burlington County, New Jersey," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 18 (1894):185-193. For free online access, see WeRelate.
 * 1787 - Shinn, Henry C. "An Early New Jersey Poll List," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 44 (1920):77-81. For free online access, see WeRelate.

Courthouses
"Welcome to Burlington County, New Jersey" Board of Chosen Freeholders of Burlington County 49 Rancocas Road Mount Holly, NJ 08060


 * Former seat was Burlington, but when the population moved away from the Delaware River, a new center was needed.

Family History Centers

 * Introduction to LDS Family History Centers

Web Sites

 * The Burlington County NJGenWeb Project, an member of The NJGenWeb Project, an affiliate of The USGenWeb Project.
 * The USGenWeb Archives Project for Burlington County.
 * The USGenWeb Archives Project for Burlington County. (Backup site)
 * Family History Library catalog for Burlington County
 * 1810-1980s Newspaper Notices Index (Search)