Voorhees, Foster McGowan (b.Nov. 5, 1856; d. June 14, 1927). Lawyer and governor. Foster McGowan Voorhees was born in Clinton, the son of Nathaniel W. Voorhees, a nonpracticing attorney, cashier of the Clinton Bank, and a delegate to the i860 Republican convention. Educated in the local public schools, the son graduated from Rutgers College in 1876 and taught for a year at Rutgers Grammar School. Then he studied law in Elizabeth with William J. Magie, Union County Republican senator, and Joseph Cross, who later occupied that office. Voorhees was admitted to the bar in 1880.
Voorhees began his political career on Elizabeth’s board of education in 1884. He served in the assembly from 1888 to i890. There he played a major role in framing the Werts Liquor License Law, which increased the cost of liquor licenses and added a quarter of a million dollars annually to the state economy. He was active in the defeat of a Democratic bill to tax railroads at the same rate as other property; and perfected the Werts Ballot Reform Law, providing secrecy on official ballots.
Elected to the State Senate in the fall of 1893, Voorhees became the Republican leader in the 1894 "Rump Senate” that split on the credentials of Sen. James Bradley. When Democratic governor George T. Werts nominated Voorhees to be a circuit court judge, he declined in order to remain in the senate during the dispute (eventually decided in favor of the G.O.P. by the state supreme court). In 1895 he chaired a special senate investigating committee that exposed State House frauds, resulting in the election of John W. Griggs, the first Republican governor in twenty-seven years, and in Voorhees losing the nomination for himself. In i896 he declined the position of clerk in chancery and was reelected to the senate, continuing as majority leader and then in 1898 as senate president.
A complication arose when Griggs was appointed attorney general of the United States, with Voorhees in line to assume gubernatorial duties. The legislature created the office of acting governor, the first such designation in New Jersey. Griggs signed the law on January 25, i898, and resigned one week later. Because the state constitution prohibited a governor from succeeding himself, Voorhees resigned as governor in September, and in November he won fifteen of twenty-one counties.
As governor, Voorhees was notably successful in improving social conditions: aid to children, reform of criminals, and protection of public health and the environment. In his final official gubernatorial message (1902) he advocated amending the federal Constitution to elect U.S. senators by popular vote instead of by a state legislature. In i9ii, two years before such an amendment was ratified, New Jersey’s legislature became the first in the East to acquiesce in the choice of a primary election.
In 1903 Voorhees became president of the ailing Bakers’ Life Insurance Company of New York City. In 1906, only months before the New York Insurance Department prohibited the company from further business, factional strife and reorganization caused Voorhees’s resignation and return to his Elizabeth law practice. Together with the company’s former secretary, he was indicted for perjury by a special grand jury in i908 on charges that he had signed a false statement that dividends worth $20,000 were not due the stockholders. Pleading not guilty, Voorhees told the press that "it is simply a case of my signing certified reports without careful inspection.” The indictment was dismissed in 1910.
His High Bridge farm, to which he retired for the last two years of his life, is now Voorhees State Park.
Voorhees. 11.6-square-mile township in Camden County. Voorhees is named for Gov. Foster McGowan Voorhees, who acceded to the township’s desire for separation from Waterford Township in 1899. It was once a milling and farming community, with neighborhoods organized along major roadways. With the exception of Gibbsboro, which seceded in 1924, Ashland, Glendale, Kirkwood, Kresson, and Osage are viable areas today. Growth began with the arrival of the Cam-den and Atlantic Railroad in 1854. The population grew most rapidly in the decade between 1955 and 1966 because of new housing developments. It surged with the opening of the PATCO High-Speed Line in 1969, which provided suburbia with speedy access to Philadelphia. The following year, builder James Rouse developed Echelon Urban Center, which now contains some 166 stores and almost 3,000 housing units. Other developments followed, and Voorhees became a shopping and residential mecca. The township is home to several major health-care and professional facilities; the diversity of its population is reflected in more than twenty religious organizations. Its affluence may be seen in its upscale housing and shopping developments. Voorhees is one of three county communities where immigrants from southeast Asia and India have caused the biggest population growth.
The 2000 population of 28,126 was 78 percent white, 8 percent black, and 11 percent Asian. The median household income was $68,402.
Voting. In colonial New Jersey, the franchise was generally limited to free white males who were property owners, reflecting the society’s values and prejudices. The new state’s 1776 constitution gave the vote to "all inhabitants” of full age who met a property and residence requirement. This broad language created opportunities for some women and blacks to vote, but the loophole was closed by statute in 1807. The 1844 constitution removed Voter Turnout, Selected Primary Elections, 1971-2001 (Percentage of Eligible Voters) privately printed by political parties or candidates; voters were bullied; ballot boxes were stuffed and their contents miscounted.
The Progressive Era brought a sustained effort at reform. It began with the Werts Ballot Reform Act of 1890 and peaked with the Corrupt Practices Act and the Geran Act of 1911, two laws that tried to overhaul the whole system. Results of these moves included closed primaries for major party nominations, a uniform secret ballot, standard registration procedures, and improved supervision of registration, voting, and vote tabulations. Heavy reliance was placed on the checks and balances of bipartisan election boards to protect the integrity of the voting process. Although the property requirement. Legal discrimination against black voters was eliminated in 1870 by the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and against women by the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. (Starting in 1887, there had been limited participation by some women in school elections.)
|
Election Year |
Governor, State Senate, and General Assembly |
State Senate and General Assembly |
General Assembly |
|
1971 |
16 |
||
|
1973 |
24 |
||
|
1975 |
14 |
||
|
1977 |
28 |
||
|
1979 |
13 |
||
|
1981 |
29 |
||
|
1983 |
17 |
||
|
1987 |
11 |
||
|
1989 |
21 |
||
|
1991 |
13 |
||
|
1995 |
10 |
||
|
1997 |
14 |
||
|
1999 |
6 |
||
|
2001 |
14 |
There was little effective regulation of the voting process in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century New Jersey. Since elections ultimately determined political control, the legislature frequently tinkered with the subject for partisan reasons, though such laws were typically ignored or bypassed. Voter registration was haphazard and often corrupt; polling places included bars and taverns; ballots were corruption did not cease, these measures provided the foundation for a reasonably honest, efficient elections system.
Voter Turnout, Selected General Elections, 1972-2001 (Percentage of Registered Voters)
|
Election Year |
President; U.S. Senate; Congress |
Governor, State Senate, and General Assembly |
General Assembly |
|
1972 |
83 |
||
|
1973 |
61 |
||
|
1975 |
57 |
||
|
1977 |
60 |
||
|
1979 |
48 |
||
|
1981 |
64 |
||
|
1984 |
79 |
||
|
1988 |
77 |
||
|
1989 |
60 |
||
|
1995 |
38 |
||
|
1996 |
72 |
||
|
1997 |
56 |
||
|
1999 |
31 |
||
|
2000 |
70 |
||
|
2001 |
49 |
Elections today are governed by Title 19 of the New Jersey statutes. The Department of Law and Public Safety and its Division of Elections exercise overall jurisdiction. Operating responsibility lies with bipartisan county election boards (supplemented, in some counties, by superintendents of elections) and similar boards that they appoint in each election district. Party and candidate challengers are allowed at each polling place, helping to ensure that only eligible voters participate.
Legislatures have also made voter convenience a major goal, especially in recent years. Registration can now be accomplished by mail. Registered voters receive a sample ballot in advance of each election. It includes information on polling places, voting hours, offices to be filled, the names of candidates, and so on. Voting machines are now used in all counties. Election districts should contain no more than 1,500 voters. In urban and many suburban areas, therefore, polling places are within walking distance of a voter’s residence. Under specified circumstances, people can vote by mail. The hours polls must remain open have been lengthened. Despite these changes, voter turnout is uneven. Presidential and gubernatorial elections attract many voters; primaries and school elections often bring out but a handful.
The Progressive Era’s direct-democracy devices—recall, initiative, referendum—are widely available at the local level. A 1993 constitutional amendment made every local and state elected official subject to recall after one year in office. The initiative is not available at the state level. Statewide referenda are limited to approving constitutional amendments and, in limited cases, state bond issues. Nonpartisan elections are conducted in local and regional school districts, in fire districts, and to choose members of the governing body in some municipalities.
Woodrow Wilson voting, Princeton, 1912.
Vries, David Pietersz de (b. c. 1593; d. 1655). Explorer and landowner. David Pietersz. de Vries, a Dutch sea captain, made many voyages, including one to the East Indies in 1629-1630. In 1632 he acquired a pa-troonship on the Delaware River, including Swanendael, which Vries visited in 1632-1633; he was the first of the New Netherland pa-troons to do so. The settlement did not last. A year later, in 1634, returning to New Amsterdam from Dutch Guyana, where a new settlement was started, Vries acquired the pa-troonship of Staten Island in New York Bay and Vriesendael (River Edge, New Jersey). In 1638 he returned to his property and during the next few years he tried to establish and sustain an agricultural colony there. Continuous hostility from the Indian population, however, destroyed the Staten Island settlement in 1642 and Vriesendael in 1644. Shortly afterward Vries returned to Holland.
Vroom, Peter D. (b. Dec. 12, 1791; d. Nov. 18, 1873). Governor, lawyer, and ambassador. Peter D. Vroom was the son of Col. Peter D. Vroom and Elsie (Bogert) Vroom. His father was an officer in the Revolutionary War who led a company at the Battle of Germantown, and later he was active as a politician in Somerset County, serving as sheriff, justice of the peace, and a member for many years of the New Jersey legislature. The son grew up on a farm in Hillsborough and was educated at Somerville Academy and Columbia College, graduating in 1808. After reading law, he was admitted to the bar in 1813 and practiced law in Somerville. He married Ann Dumont, a daughter of Colonel Dumont, and when she died, Maria Matilda Wall, the daughter of Sen. Garret D. Wall.
Like his father, Peter Vroom started in politics as a Federalist, at a time when that party was dying. In 1824, along with a number of other Federalists in New Jersey, Vroom supported Andrew Jackson for president, helping to create the Democratic party. He was elected to the New Jersey General Assembly as a leader of the new party in 1826, 1827, and 1829. With the Democrats in control of the joint meeting of the legislature in 1829, Garret D. Wall was elected governor. When Wall declined the legislature’s appointment, Vroom was chosen in his stead, replacing Isaac H. Williamson. Vroom was reelected in 1830 and 1831, was defeated by Samuel L. Southard in 1832, and won elections in 1833, 1834, and 1835. Because of poor health, he declined election in 1836, and was replaced by Philemon Dickerson.
As governor Vroom played an important role in restoring the office’s prestige, which under his predecessors had become largely a judicial position. Vroom gave an annual address to the legislature in which he made proposals for future action. Subsequently, he met with the Democratic caucus in that body to push for his agenda. In his six years in office, Vroom promoted a number of major reforms in the state. He tried to abolish imprisonment for debt and secured a partial victory. He also urged the building of a new state prison, which was completed during his last year in office. One of Vroom’s most important accomplishments was to get the legislature to distribute money from the school fund to local school districts. The 1829 law was the initial move toward the creation of a state-supported school system.
Vroom’s most controversial act as governor was to push for the creation of a canal company and a railroad company to cross central New Jersey, linking New York City with Philadelphia. After the legislature in 1829 granted charters to the Delaware and Raritan Canal Company and to the Camden and Amboy Railroad, Vroom supported the merger of the companies into the Joint Companies and still later agreed to support a monopoly by the companies over all traffic across the state. These measures were aimed at raising the capital needed to build the canal. One consequence of the legislation was that the state secured shares in the Joint Companies and a regular yearly dividend, which helped pay for the completion of the prison and support of public schools.
After leaving office, Vroom retired to private practice, but was elected to Congress in 1838 in a disputed election called the "Broad Seal War.” Vroom served one term and returned to the practice of the law, moving his office to Trenton. In 1844 Vroom served as a delegate to the 1844 Constitutional Convention. He held the chairmanship of the committee on the legislature and also played a leading role in developing the parts of the new constitution dealing with the judiciary. After the adoption of the new constitution, Vroom helped to revise the statutes of New Jersey to conform to the organic law.
In 1853 President Franklin Pierce appointed Vroom to serve as ambassador to Prussia. In 1860 Vroom supported the Democratic ticket of John Breckinridge. Following the secession of South Carolina, he was one of the nine delegates appointed to represent New Jersey to a conference called by Virginia to prevent civil war, but when war broke out, he remained loyal to the Union. He was a critic of President Abraham Lincoln, particularly on the issues of the Emancipation Proclamation and the suspension of habeas corpus. In his later years, Vroom continued to practice the law and participate in Democratic party politics.
Wachovia Bank. Wachovia Bank, formerly First Union Bank, entered New Jersey in 1996 with its acquisition of the largest bank in the state at the time, First Fidelity Bancorpo-ration. The purchase of CoreStates Financial Corporation, a Philadelphia bank, followed in 1998. CoreStates, in its own expansion into New Jersey, had previously acquired First People’s Financial Corporation, New Jersey National Corporation (in 1986), Inter Community Bancorporation, and Constellation Bancorpo-ration. In June 2001 Wachovia (First Union) was the second-largest bank in New Jersey with almost $18 billion in deposits and a market share of 10 percent.
First Union Corporation and Wachovia Corporation, two of the largest bank holding companies in the country, completed their merger in September 2001. The merged bank, called Wachovia, is the largest bank (in deposits) on the East Coast, with 2,900 branches in eleven states from Florida to Connecticut and the District of Columbia. Headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina, it is the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States with $326 billion in assets as of fall 2001.
First Union was founded in 1908 as the Union National Bank of Charlotte. Wachovia was chartered as the Bank of Salem in 1866 and adopted the Wachovia name in 1879. Wachovia, the name the Moravian colonists of North Carolina chose for their land tract, is the English translation of the German "Der Wachau,” a valley along the Danube River, which the area resembled.
