The Africa Hidden on Jersey Maps
There is a place in New Jersey where an old map once carried a name that seems almost impossible to find there today: Africa. It was not referring to the continent across the Atlantic. It identified a community of African Americans living in what was then known as Middletown Point, an area that would eventually become Matawan. More than 170 years later, that single word on an old map offers a remarkable doorway into a chapter of Black history that could easily have been forgotten.
In 1855, surveyor Thomas A. Hurley produced a map of the Middletown Point area. On that map appeared the word “Africa,” marking a section of the community where African Americans lived. Historical research by the Matawan Historical Society and the Monmouth County Historical Association has helped establish that this was an African American community in the area of present-day Atlantic and Johnson Avenues.
Imagine looking at that map in 1855. There were no modern highways, apartment complexes or suburban developments. The landscape was shaped by farms, waterways, small businesses, homes and dirt roads. And among the names written across the map was “Africa”—a name that told anyone who knew the area that Black families had established a community there.
That word is powerful because maps rarely tell us the full story. They show roads, property lines and geographic features, but they can also reveal something about the people who occupied the land. In this case, “Africa” gives historians a physical clue to a Black community that had developed in Middletown Point during a period when African Americans were fighting to build independent lives in the shadow of slavery and discrimination.
The community did not suddenly appear in 1855. African Americans had been living in Monmouth County for generations. Some had been enslaved; others were free. Families established homes, worked in the local economy, raised children and created institutions. Their lives were part of the history of the region even when the broader historical record did not always give them the attention they deserved.
New Jersey’s history makes this especially significant. The state was not simply a place where slavery disappeared and freedom immediately followed. The transition was complicated and gradual. Even free Black residents faced restrictions, prejudice and violence. Yet they continued building communities and asserting their right to live, work and raise their families.
The residents of this “Africa” community were also living through one of the most turbulent periods in American history. By the time of the Civil War, the nation was fighting over the future of slavery and the meaning of freedom. Those national conflicts reached directly into local communities such as Middletown Point.
In 1862, that tension erupted dramatically. An African American resident named Charles Hendrickson became involved in a confrontation after soldiers had been intimidating Black residents. Hendrickson was arrested after defending himself, but he was ultimately acquitted. His story did not end there. He later enlisted in the United States Colored Troops and served the Union during the Civil War.
Hendrickson’s story changes the way we should look at that old map. “Africa” was not simply a place where people happened to live. It was a community populated by people with names, families, ambitions, fears and courage. Some would experience the struggle for freedom personally; others would eventually take up arms to help determine whether millions of enslaved Americans would become free.
The historical record provides another remarkable connection. Research into African American Civil War veterans from the Matawan area has identified ten Black men connected to the community who served in the Union forces. The St. James A.M.E. Zion Cemetery on Johnson Avenue also preserves the memory of African Americans connected to this history, including Civil War veterans.
Today, someone walking or driving through the area might see ordinary New Jersey streets and have no idea what existed there generations ago. Atlantic Avenue and Johnson Avenue do not announce that an African American community once occupied this landscape. There is no giant sign saying “Africa.” The name disappeared from modern maps, but the people who gave the place its historical significance did not disappear from history.
That is why the old map matters. It gives us something tangible—a piece of evidence that allows us to put African American history back onto the physical landscape of New Jersey. The word “Africa” becomes more than ink on an old piece of paper. It becomes an invitation to ask who lived there, how they survived, what they built and what became of their descendants.
The forgotten “Africa” of Middletown Point reminds us that Black history is not confined to famous cities, national monuments or well-known historical figures. Sometimes it is hiding in a street name, an old cemetery, a family story or a faded map sitting in an archive. In Matawan, one extraordinary word survived the passage of time. Africa. It points us toward a community that once lived there—and toward a larger story of African Americans who helped build New Jersey long before their contributions were fully recognized.
