[1] On July 1, 1676, William Penn, Gawen Lawrie (who served from 1683 to 1686 as Deputy to Governor Robert Barclay), Nicholas Lucas, and Edward Byllynge executed a deed with Sir George Carteret known as the Quintipartite Deed, in which the territory was divided into two parts, East Jersey being taken by Carteret and West Jersey by Byllynge and his trustees.
The Deed divided New Jersey by a straight line from "the Northernmost Branch of said Bay or River of De la Ware which is in forty-one Degrees and forty minutes of latitude…unto the most southwardly poynt of the East syde of Little Egge Harbour.
The Keith Line runs north-northwest from the southern part of Little Egg Harbor Township, passing just north of Tuckerton.
The line was to continue upward to a point on the Delaware River which is just north of the Delaware Water Gap, but Keith was stopped in his survey by Governor of West Jersey Daniel Coxe, when Keith had reached the South Branch of the Raritan River in what is now Three Bridges in Readington Township.
[3][7] Over a century later, in 1855, the New Jersey Supreme Court adopted the Lawrence Line as the final arbiter in all property settlements in Cornelius and Empson v. Giberson, 25 N.J.L 1 (Sup.