Goodspeed Histories: The Cook Proprietary Tract

The Hammond Maps of Hunterdon County proprietary tracts are a wonderful resource for county historians. Many of the property owners shown on these maps drawn by D. Stanton Hammond in 1963 were the first Europeans to claim title to this part of the state of New Jersey. What happened to those properties in succeeding years has always fascinated me and provided wonderful material for my articles.

So far, I have written about Samuel Green (“Samuel Green of West NJ”) and his relations, especially the Opdyckes, the Wrights, Richard Bull, the surveyor, and Edward Kemp (“First Landowners of Hunterdon County”). Other early proprietors I have written about were John Reading, Daniel Robins, Dorothy Metcalf, Edward Milner, John Lewis, John Calow, and Peter Fretwell.

Lately, I have been writing about early settlers in the Haddon Tract.1 The Haddon Tract was one of many surveyed in the Lotting Purchase of 1703. Adjacent to the Haddon Tract was a property surveyed for John Cook in 1714–my subject for today. Read the full article here.