Person

Jacob Van Wickle (1770-1854)

Identifier

NJS-PER-00068

Given Name

Jacob

Family Name

Van Wickle

Alternate Name

Van Wikle

Van Winkle

Birth Date

1770

Death Date

1854

Sex

Male

Biographical Description

Jacob Van Wickle was a corrupt Judge of Common Pleas in Middlesex County who took advantage of his position to establish a slave trading ring. Jacob Van Wickle's son Nicholas Van Wickle and brother-in-law Charles Morgan were also involved in his scheme to buy groups of enslaved people in New Jersey at cheap prices and send them to the Deep South to make huge profits. The Lost Souls Memorial Project, which seeks to memorialize the the individuals whose freedom was stolen by Van Wickle's slave trading ring, has documented over a hundred victims who were taken away from their communities in New Jersey.

New Jersey law stipulated that, before any enslaved person could be taken away (or "removed") from the state, the enslaved individual had to appear in court and give their consent to relocate with their enslaver. If the enslaved person consented, then the Judges of the Common Pleas would issue a removal certificate authorizing this relocation. In 1818, Jacob Van Wickle signed 77 removal certificates authorizing his own son, brother-in-law, and other associates who were part of the scheme to remove Black men, women, and children from New Jersey to Louisiana and Mississippi. But these Black people did not actually give their consent and were instead coerced to leave New Jersey with the slave traders or else left the state under false pretenses after being lied to about their destination.

Newspaper accounts of the Van Wickle operation note that Van Wickle assembled and imprisoned groups of Black people under armed guard at his house on the South River, which newspapers dubbed the "South River Establishment." Researchers affiliated with the Lost Souls Memorial Project identify present-day East Brunswick as the location of Van Wickle's "South River Establishment."

Place of Significance

South River, NJ

North Brunswick, NJ

South Amboy, NJ

East Brunswick, NJ

Occupation

Legal

Slave Trade

Parent of

Nicholas Van Wickle (1796-1865)

Stephen Van Wickle

Jacob Van Wickle

Spouse of

Sarah Morgan (1772-1835)

Related Person or Resource

Charles Morgan (1775-1848)

New Jersey Slavery Records > Understanding removal certificates and slave trading

Lost Souls Memorial Project website

Bibliographic Citation

Gigantino, James J., II. "Trading in Jersey Souls: New Jersey and the Interstate Slave Trade." Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 77, no. 3 (2010): 281–302.

Drake, Jarrett. "Off the Record: The Production of Evidence in 19th Century New Jersey." New Jersey Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1, no. 1 (2015): 104–25.

Bailey, Anne C. "They Sold Human Beings Here." The 1619 Project, New York Times, February 12, 2020.

Pingeon, Frances D. “An Abominable Business: The New Jersey Slave Trade, 1818.” New Jersey History 109, no. 3 (1991): 15–35.

Keywords

Van Wickle and associates