ELIZABETH  , a

city and the county-seat of Union county, New Jersey, U.S.A., on Elizabeth river, Newark Bay, and Arthur Kill, to m . S.W. of Jersey City . Pop . (189o) 37,764; (1900) 52,130, of whom 14,770 were foreign-born and 1139 were negroes; (1910 census) 73,409 . It Ti served by the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley and the Central of New Jersey railways . The site is level and the streets are broad and shaded . There are many residences of New York business men, and several historic buildings, including Liberty Hall, the mansion of William Livingston, first governor of the state; Boxwood Hall (now used as a home for aged women), the former home of Elias Boudinot; the old brick mansion of Jonathan Belcher (1681-1757), governor of the province from 1747 to 1757; the First Presbyterian Church; and the house occupied at different times by General Winfield Scott . The city has several parks, the Union county court house (1905), a public library and several charitable institutions . Elizabethport, that part of the city on Staten Island Sound, about 2 M . S.E. of the centre of Elizabeth, has a port open to vessels of 300 tons; it is an outlet of the Pennsylvania coal fields and is thus one of the most important coal shipping depots in the United States . Here, too, are a plant (covering more than Boo acres) of the Standard Oil Company and a large establishment for the manufacture of the " Singer " sewing machine—according to the U.S. census the largest manufactory of sewing machines in the world—employing more than 6000 workmen in 1905; among the other manufactures of Elizabeth are foundry and machine shop products (value in 1905, $3,887,139), wire, oil (value in 1go5, $2,387,656), refined and smelted copper, the output of railway repair shops, edge tools and lager beer . The value of the manu- factured products was $10,489,364 in 189o; $22,861,375 (factory product) in 1900; and $29,300,801 (factory product) in 1905 .

' Elizabeth was settled in 1665 by a company from

Long Island for whom the land had been purchased from the Indians and a grant had been obtained from Richard Nicolls as agent for the duke of York . But about the same time the duke conveyed the entire province to John, Lord Berkeley, and Sir George Carteret, and these two conflicting grants gave rise to a long-continued controversy (see NEw JERSEY) . The town was named in honour of Elizabeth, wife of Sir George Carteret, and was first known as Elizabethtown . From 1665 to 1686 it was the seat of government of the province, and the legislature sat here occasionally until 1790 . In the home of the Rev . Jonathan Dickinson (1688-1747), its first president, the first sessions of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) were held in 1747, but immediately afterwards the college removed to Newark . In December 1776 and twice in June 178o the British entered Elizabeth and made it a base of operations, but on each occasion they were soon driven out . Elizabeth became a " free town and borough " in 1739; the borough charter was confirmed by the legislature in 1789 and repealed in 1790, and Elizabeth was chartered as a city in 1855 . See E . F . Hat field, History of Elizabeth, New Jersey (New York, 1868) .