On May 26, 1668, New Jersey’s first colonial General Assembly met in Elizabethtown’s original meetinghouse. The gathering placed one of the province’s first representative institutions inside a building that also served the settlement’s religious community. No image of that first meetinghouse or of the Assembly is known to survive.

A legislature meets in Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown was still a young settlement when Governor Philip Carteret called the Assembly. The meeting came only a few years after English settlers established the town. Readers can find that earlier context in 1664: The Founding of Elizabethtown, New Jersey’s First City.

The National Register of Historic Places nomination for First Presbyterian Church records that the first colonial legislative assembly met in the original meetinghouse on May 26, 1668. A New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs historical notice adds that the session lasted five days and enacted militia legislation requiring men from ages sixteen through sixty to train at least four days each year.

These sources establish the date, place, and an important part of the Assembly’s work. They do not give us a visual record of the room or a complete account of what participants experienced. Any reconstruction of the scene would therefore be speculative.

One building with several public uses

Calling the site a meetinghouse matters. In a small colonial settlement, a meetinghouse could accommodate worship and public business before separate civic buildings became common. The 1668 session shows that Elizabethtown’s religious and governmental life could occupy the same physical space.

That setting should not be read as proof that church and government were identical institutions. It does show that the settlement relied on a shared building for more than one community purpose. The Assembly’s presence also confirms Elizabethtown’s early role as a center of provincial government.

The surviving evidence supports this broad interpretation, but it does not justify attaching every later civic activity in the district to the 1668 meetinghouse. Nearby commerce and public gathering belong to related stories, including Fairs and Market Days: Commerce Meets Community.

The building seen today came later

The church now standing on Broad Street is not the building where the Assembly met. A second church replaced the original meetinghouse in 1724. That later structure was destroyed during the Revolutionary War in 1780. Historic American Buildings Survey documentation dates the initial construction of the surviving successor to the years after 1780; the survey history identifies the rebuilding as 1784 to 1786 and records substantial later work.

This sequence is essential when reading photographs, architectural drawings, postcards, and the present site. They document the later church and the continuing importance of the location. They do not depict the first General Assembly or its meetinghouse.

A 1936 Historic American Buildings Survey photograph by R. Merritt Lacey shows the east elevation of the post-Revolutionary church. The photograph offers a documented historical view of the site nearly three centuries after the Assembly met. Its value lies in showing the later building, not in reconstructing the lost 1668 structure.

Why the 1668 meeting still matters

The meeting brought colonial lawmaking into a place already used by the community. It gives the Elizabeth Timeline a precise moment when the settlement served the government of early New Jersey. The event also helps explain why this part of Broad Street remained associated with worship, public institutions, and civic memory long after the original meetinghouse disappeared.

The clearest way to understand the site is to hold two facts together: the location preserves a connection to the 1668 Assembly, while the visible church belongs to a later period. Keeping that distinction makes the history more accurate and allows each surviving layer of the place to tell its own story.

Sources

• National Register of Historic Places nomination for First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth
• Historic American Buildings Survey record for First Presbyterian Church, Broad Street, Elizabeth
• New Jersey Department of Military and Veterans Affairs historical notice for May 26, 1668
• New Jersey Historic Trust site record for First Presbyterian Church of Elizabeth