Elizabeth, New Jersey: The Lady Carteret in Pepys's Diary

The woman behind the name of Elizabeth, New Jersey, turns up in Samuel Pepys’s diary: Lady Elizabeth Carteret, wife of proprietor Sir George Carteret. Her husband was one of the two men the Duke of York handed New Jersey to in 1664, and the town that was first called Elizabeth-Town was named for her.

A town without a name, then Elizabeth-Town

The settlers got here before the name did. In September 1665, a deed for part of the land still called the area “Arthur Cull or Emboyle.” Edwin F. Hatfield, whose History of Elizabeth, New Jersey came out in 1868, reasons from that deed that the town’s name “had evidently not been determined” yet. That’s telling, because the buyer in that deed was the new governor himself, Philip Carteret, who had just arrived.

Thomas F. Gordon’s 1834 Gazetteer of the State of New Jersey says there were “only four houses here” at the time, and “the name was given by him in honour of Lady Elizabeth Carteret.” Gordon’s entry for the town adds that she was “the wife and executrix of Sir George Carteret.” A 1905 federal guide by Henry Gannett says the same in fewer words, though it calls her husband “Lord Carteret.”

Hatfield is a little more careful than the others. Since the deed shows no name yet, he writes, “it is, therefore, quite probable, that, in this case, tradition reports truly” about Lady Elizabeth. In other words, he didn’t have a signed naming order to show you. What he had was the deed and the tradition. His own footnote even adds “Per contra” (Latin for “on the other side”) and points to page 20 of the “Answer” to the Elizabethtown Bill, the settlers’ reply in the long land lawsuit against the proprietors. We haven’t been able to see what that page says, so there may have been another view back then.

The governor wasn’t her brother-in-law

There’s a wrinkle you’ll find in the older books. John W. Barber and Henry Howe’s 1844 Historical Collections say the governor named the town for “Lady Elizabeth, the wife of his brother.” Hatfield checked the family and says that can’t be right. Sir George’s brother Philip had died in 1665, and the governor’s own father was a different Helier Carteret. By Hatfield’s count, Sir George “was but the fourth cousin of the governor.” The name honors the same woman either way. Only the family tree in the story changes.

What Pepys heard from her

Hatfield wanted readers to know “something of her,” so he quoted Pepys, whom he calls one of her “familiar friends.” On October 15, 1666, Pepys wrote: “She cries out of the vices of the Court, and how they are going to set up plays already… She do much cry out upon these things, and that which she believes will undo the whole nation.” So the city carries the name of a woman who, at least once, complained to Pepys about the Court.

Her husband’s story gave the whole state its name, too. You can read that one in How New Jersey Got Its Name.

Sources & further reading

• Edwin F. Hatfield, History of Elizabeth, New Jersey (1868), pp. 51-52, 110-111. The September 8, 1665, deed naming “Arthur Cull or Emboyle”; the name “had evidently not been determined”; “quite probable” that tradition is right about Lady Elizabeth; the Pepys entry of October 15, 1666, and a footnote pointing “per contra” to the Answer to the Elizabethtown Bill, p. 20 (pp. 51-52). Governor Philip Carteret as Sir George’s fourth cousin, not his brother (pp. 110-111).
• Thomas F. Gordon, A Gazetteer of the State of New Jersey (1834), history p. 28 and gazetteer p. 136. “Only four houses here”; the name “given by him in honour of Lady Elizabeth Carteret”; “the wife and executrix of Sir George Carteret.”
• John W. Barber and Henry Howe, Historical Collections of the State of New Jersey (1844), pp. 159-160. Named by the governor “in honor of Lady Elizabeth, the wife of his brother.”
• Henry Gannett, The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, 2nd ed. (USGS Bulletin 258, 1905), p. 116. “Named for the wife of Lord Carteret.”
• GNIS feature 876147 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Elizabeth.