Historic Date Correction to be Gradual

CAPE MAY – The City of Cape May is a town where history is important.
The nation’s only National Landmark City, Cape May, more than many other communities, has an intimate relationship with its own history. An error in that history needs to be corrected. 
Wrong Date Discovered
When city resident and writer John Bailey did research for a book on Cape Island, he found that the date of incorporation on the city’s seal was incorrect. Bailey brought the error to officials’ attention.
Deputy City Clerk Erin Burke and Cape May County Public Records and Archives Clerk Laurie Boyd-Thomas researched the issue and brought the results of their efforts to a City Council meeting in January. Despite the date 1857 emblazoned on the municipal seal and flag, the date when Cape May was first incorporated as a city, at that time as the City of Cape Island, was 1851.
Speculation is that in the old hand letter numeral one, with the customary loop at the top, was mistaken for a 7, leading the city to use the wrong date.
Over the years, city officials, in this municipality that so prizes history, never noticed the contradiction between the city’s stated official incorporation date of 1857 and numerous historical sources that cited 1851. Even the most frequently turned-to history of the county, Rutgers Professor of History Jeffery Dorwart’s “Cape May County New Jersey,” published in 2002, correctly noted the incorporation of the City of Cape Island as 1851.
At the Feb. 5 meeting of the governing body, council passed a resolution stating its conclusion that the city was indeed incorporated in 1851. The resolution directed City Clerk Patricia Harbora to “take any and all action necessary to effectuate the modification of the municipal seal, including the procurement of a new seal and correction of city letterhead and other pertinent city documents.”
Harbora gets the task by virtue of state statutes that designate the municipal clerk as the secretary of the municipal corporation and the custodian of the municipal seal. 
A Not So Easy Task
The extent to which the seal is used throughout the city is staggering when one finally takes the time to notice. The nature of the council discussion turned to a phased approach to the change in incorporation dates. 
Want to know when recycling pickup occurs? The seal is on the copies of the paper schedule.
The seal, with the incorrect incorporation date, is on the application for using the dog park, the application for a yard sale, and even the dumpster permit form in the construction office.
To those interested in the city’s efforts on environmental sustainability, the seal is on the brochure. Parking permit forms, construction permit forms, even the form for requesting information through the state’s Open Public Records Act all contain the seal.
In today’s age of electronic documents, the changes may be easier than what they would have been just a few decades ago, but it would not be unfair to predict that the city may stumble over some new place that has the seal for some period to come.
As council passed the resolution to change the incorporation date one could look across the meeting room and see the current seal with the incorrect date on the podium the mayor recently used to deliver the State of the City Address. The city flag on the stage also contains the date of incorporation.
Council member Shaine Meier said he did not feel this would be an expensive endeavor. With the city looking to take this in phases and replace stationary and the like when otherwise necessary, Meier may be right. No cost for making the change has yet been identified.
Except for the task of procuring a new seal and using it to replace the most prominent displays of the old one, the change from 1857 to 1851 is likely to be less of an immediate, across-the-board alteration and more one that happens in a planned but more gradual fashion.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.