"[2] Meanwhile, the Town of Newark established a committee in 1699 to negotiate the "purchase of a tract of Land lying Westward of our Bounds, to the South Branch of Passaick River.
[5] Under the colonial land-grant system in New Jersey, Indian deeds were only one stage in the process of acquiring legal title.
For reasons unknown, the settlers did not complete this stage, and another group of wealthy landowners acquired the legal title instead.
These landowners attempted to collect quit-rents (a form of property tax) from the settlers or to evict them, touching off decades of instability and violence known as the Horseheck Riots.
At this point, all that remained of the original Caldwell Township was 6,624 acres of farmlands and undeveloped meadows in the northwesternmost part of Essex County.