When Did Cape May Become Cape May?

CAPE MAY – The Cape May City seal proclaims the city’s year of incorporation as 1857.
Residents and visitors to the resort can see that date everywhere. It’s on the city’s website, on the podium used at meetings of the governing body, on city stationery and on the city’s flag.
What city officials and the public learned at a Jan. 15 meeting of City Council was that the date is wrong.
Over a year ago, city resident John Bailey brought the potential error to the city’s attention after reading a 1937 history of Cape May. Bailey also contacted Laurie Boyd-Thomas, the County Records and Archives Clerk. The records’ exploration that followed is what led to the recent presentation.
It seems that one can select any number of dates for the city’s incorporation, but the one date that has no known legitimacy is 1857.
What Boyd-Thomas and the city’s Deputy Clerk Erin Burke discovered was that the city was first incorporated in 1848 when it left Lower Township. That year, made famous when James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, setting off the California Gold Rush, the new entity became Cape Island Borough. The incorporation was approved on March 8 of that year by the state Legislature.
Unlike the modern definition of a borough, this one came with distinctly early English titles for government officials. James McCray was designated chief burgess until an election could be held. Thomas H. Hughes held the title of high constable. Britannica notes that the high constable in England was responsible for suppressing riots and violent crimes and for calling out the militia when necessary.
Within three years, Cape May was again incorporated, this time as the City of Cape Island, Feb. 28, 1851. This marked the first time Cape May was designated a city.
The metes and bounds of the incorporation defined the city as “beginning at the point in the Atlantic Ocean opposite the mouth of cold spring inlet, as far southerly as the jurisdiction of the state extends, until opposite an inlet between Cape Island and the light house; thence, following the several courses of said inlet or creek until its junction with Cape Island creek; thence, following the several courses of said inlet or creek, down the main channel to the place of the beginning.”
The Laws of New Jersey in 1869 record yet another incorporation which changed the city name for the first time to the City of Cape May. This act was seen as supplemental to the 1851 incorporation, altering only the city’s name.
There was a further revision of the city charter approved March 3, 1875. That revision laid out details of municipal positions, duties, and requirements, but it did not change the name. The city remained the City of Cape May from the 1869 incorporation.
So where did the date of 1857 originate? It marks no act of incorporation in a long list of such acts. It marks no discoverable revision to the city charter.
Boyd-Thomas suggested one solution to the mystery. She explained that documents at that point of the 19th century were prepared in a formal script in which the number one could be written with a small loop that resembled the number seven. “It is possible that someone read the date as 1857, used it and everyone since then has run with it,” she said.
Burke verified the research done in the county with the state. Bette Epstein of the New Jersey State Archives was able to confirm each of the incorporation points in 1848 and 1851 with revisions in 1869 and 1875.
The task before council is to select the official incorporation date for the city and revise or remove 1857 from the many places it resides.
Once that decision is made, City Solicitor Frank Corrado said a resolution of the governing body must be adopted stating the historical facts and affirming the correct incorporation date.
To contact Vince Conti, email vconti@cmcherald.com.