Bergen Township, New Jersey (1661–1862)

Some believe it comes from the Dutch word bergen, which in the Germanic languages of northern Europe means hills,[1] and could describe the most distinct geological feature of the region, The Palisades.

[2] A more farfetched interpretation is that it comes from the Dutch word bergen, meaning to save or to recover, inspired by the settlers return after they had fled attacks by the native population during the Peach War in 1655.

[3] Another theory is that the Dutch residents named their city after an early Scandinavian settler of New Amsterdam, Hans Hansen Bergen, who arrived in Manhattan in 1633 as a ship's carpenter.

[5] Previous European settlements in present-day Hudson County included a small town called Communipaw (at the current Liberty Science Center) and other settlements that were all within Pavonia, which included only the lands surrounding of Harsimus Island (Harsimus), Aressick (Paulus Hook) and Hobocan Hacking (Hoebuck), all of which had been burned to the ground twice after an unprovoked massacre of Native Americans in 1643 at Communipaw and a series of raids and reprisals between the Netherlanders and the Lenape that followed, in what is known as Kieft's War and the Peach War.

[6] In 1658, Peter Stuyvesant, Director-General of New Netherland, negotiated a deal with the Lenape, and re-purchased the area, naming it Bergen, "by the great rock above Wiehacken," then taking in the sweep of land on the peninsula west of the Hudson and east of the Hackensack River extending down to the Kill Van Kull at Bergen Point and Constable Hook.

Its semi-independent government was granted on September 5, 1661, by Stuyvesant, as part of his efforts regain a foothold on the North River's western shore and expand beyond New Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan, under the condition that a garrison be built.

[10][11] The Treaty of Westminster finalized the Dutch capitulation in 1674, and the area officially became part of the proprietary colony of East Jersey.