The Upland Court Record
is one of the earliest colonial documents that touches on the history of West
Jersey. The record, which runs from 1676 to 1681, documents the activities
of one of the three regional courts set up by James Stuart, Duke of York,
during the period that the Delaware Valley was under his jurisdiction. The
court, which typically met at Upland in Chester County, dealt with legal matters
on both sides of the Delaware River. Its records are a valuable window into
those times of early settlement and transition of government.
The text that appears
here was scanned and OCR’d from a transcription made by Edward Armstrong
that the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and J.B. Lippincott published
in 1860. This is our first large OCR project. It is far from perfect and we
plan to re do it.. Nevertheless,we felt that putting an imperfect something
out here is vastly preferable to waiting for perfection. Re-scanning, and
the addition of the introduction and end notes, will take place as we have
time. If anyone would be interested in helping this project along, please
let us know.
Finally, the calendar
year ran from March to March back then so some of the pages designated as
a certain year would, by our reckoning, contain information from the next
year.
Click
on the date to see the pages for that year.
