Philip Carteret is shown landing at the mouth of the Elizabeth River in 1665, one year before the settlement at Newark.

Howard Pyle's mural in the Essex County Courthouse portrays Carteret's secretary reading the 'Concessions and Agreements' to the colonists, a formal establishment of English government in New Jersey.

Complicated land title problems resulted in long-range legal disputes for many years. For all of the 17th and a portion of the 19th Century our neighbor, Elizabethtown, was part of Essex County.