In August of 1665, a 26-year-old man stepped off a ship called the Philip onto the muddy shores of what would become New Jersey, and in that single moment, he set the wheels of American colonial history in motion. His name was Captain Philip Carteret, and he had sailed all the way from England with roughly 30 settlers, many of them French-speaking islanders from the Channel Islands. They crossed the Atlantic, stopped in Virginia, arrived in New York, and then pushed onward to their destiny on the New Jersey shore.

The land he was about to govern had only just been named "New Jersey" after the tiny English Channel island of Jersey, because Sir George Carteret, Philip's powerful cousin back in England, had heroically defended it during the English Civil War. That act of loyalty earned him a royal gift of an entire American province as a thank-you from the Duke of York! Philip was handed a remarkably progressive constitution called the Concessions and Agreements, essentially a proto-democratic document granting colonists a free assembly, which was radical and groundbreaking for 1665. He named his new settlement Elizabethtown, today's Elizabeth, NJ, in honor of Sir George's wife, making it New Jersey's very first capital.

Centuries later, the legendary American illustrator Howard Pyle, known as the "Father of American Illustration" and teacher of the great N.C. Wyeth immortalized that dramatic landing in a sweeping mural painted in 1907 for the Essex County Courthouse in Newark, where it still hangs today. Pyle was commissioned to paint The Landing of Carteret, but the story behind that commission is fascinating. In 1905, Pyle became interested in mural painting, which was very popular at the turn of the century for decorating new public buildings. He began by practicing on seven panels of various sizes at his home. His very first official mural commission was The Battle of Nashville, painted for the governor's reception room in the Minnesota State Capitol, completed in 1906.