ment for assisting his fellow Quakers to hold meetings. Probably
the occasional severity of the administration of the New York laws
against Quakers, which were the same as those of England, had as much
to do as had the whales with the migration to Cape May. This Quaker
civilization extended from Cape May up as far as Great Egg Harbor where
the Great Cedar Swamp joined the seashore. Quaker meeting houses were
built at Cape May, Galloway, Tuckahoe, and Great Egg. All have been
abandoned and the buildings themselves have disappeared, except that of
the Cape May meeting, called the Old Cedar Meeting, at Seaville; and it
has no congregation. The building is kept in repair by members of the
Society from other places.

Besides the Quakers, Cape May included a number of New Haven people, the
first of whom came there as early as 1640 under the leadership of George
Lamberton and Captain Turner, seeking profit in whale fishing. They were
not driven out by the Dutch and Swedes, as happened to their companions
who attempted to settle higher up the river at Salem and the Schuylkill.
About one-fifth of the old family names of Cape May and New Haven are
similar, and there is supposed to be not a little New England blood
not only in Cape May but in the neighboring counties of Cumberland and
Salem. While the first New Haven whalers came to Cape May in 1640, it is
probable that for a long time they only sheltered their vessels there,
and none of them became permanent settlers until about 1685.

Scandinavians contributed another element to the population of the Cape
May region. Very little is definitely known about this settlement, but
the Swedish names in Cape May and Cumberland counties seem to indicate a
migration of Scandinavians from Wilmington and Tinicum.

Great Egg Harbor, which formed the northern part of the Cape May
settlement, was named from the immense numbers of wild fowl, swans,
ducks, and water birds that formerly nested there every summer and have
now been driven to Canada or beyond. Little Egg Harbor farther up the
coast was named for the same reason as well as Egg Island, of three
hundred acres in Delaware Bay, since then eaten away by the tide. The
people of the district had excellent living from the eggs as well as
from the plentiful fowl, fish, and oysters.

Some farming was done by the inhabitants of Cape May; and many cattle,
marked with brands but in a half wild state, were kept out on the
uninhabited beaches wh