11 August 2020
As of this writing, New Jersey is considering changing the title of its county commissioners. Traditionally, the elected commissioners have served on Boards of Chosen Freeholders. New Jersey is the only state to refer to officials as freeholders. A bill that has passed the state senate and is under consideration in the assembly would rename them commissioners because the title of freeholder as used in New Jersey dates to a period when only white, male landowners could vote or serve in office.
But the word freeholder long predates New Jersey, and any racial connotation is a relatively new addition to the word’s meaning. Originally, a freeholder was simply a landowner, and the term freehold is still used in real estate law. Black’s Law Dictionary defines a freehold as
1. An estate in land held in fee simple, in fee tail, or for term of life; any real-property interest that is or may become possessory. • At common law, these estates were all created by enfeoffment with livery of seisin. 2. The tenure by which such an estate is held. — Also termed freehold estate; estate in freehold; freehold interest; frank-tenement; liberum tenementum.
And it defines a freeholder as:
Hist. (15c) Someone who possesses a freehold.
The fifteenth century date in Black’s is incorrect. The term is even older than that.
Freeholder can be traced back to the Anglo-Latin franca tenans. The use of francus relates to Frank or French and in Anglo-Norman has the sense of free, having the rights of a French person, someone exempt from feudal obligations. So, a franca tenans is literally one who holds tenancy to land free and clear of any obligation. The phrase appears in Anglo-Latin writing by the late twelfth century.
The Latin term is translated into the Anglo-Norman franctenant, which appears by the year 1268 in a charter in which King Henry III makes John, the duke of Brittany, the earl of Richmond as well:
E maundez est a chevalers e a fraunctenaunz delavauntdite cunte ke en totes choses soient entendaunz a lavantdit Johan, & ses heires, cume a lur seignur, si com avant est dit.
(It is commanded to the aforesaid knights and freeholders that in all things they be obedient to the aforesaid John and his heirs, as to their lord, as is said previously.)
Freeholder, therefore, is a calque or loan translation of fraunctenaunz. The English word appears by 1375 when it is used in describing part of the dowry of an Isabel Bardolf:
The thridde parte of the Rent of the seide maner, of ffree holders and bonde holders, iij li. xviij s.
New Jersey’s use of freeholder as an office title dates to the 1776 state constitution, which reads in part:
That on the said Second Tuesday in October yearly & every Year forever (with the Privilege of adjourning from Day to Day as Occasion may require) the Counties shall severally choose one Person to be a Member of the Legislative Council of this Colony, who shall be & have been for one whole Year next before the Election an Inhabitant and Freeholder in the County in which he is chosen, and worth at least one thousand Pounds proclamation Money.
Slavery was legal in New Jersey in 1776, and this constitution effectively limited state office holders to white men of property, although the free- in the word did not originally reflect the state of not being enslaved, but rather to owning land without debt or obligation. Over time, however, people began to reanalyze the free- in reference to slavery and to view its present-day use as inappropriate because it hearkens back to a time when white, male supremacy was the law.
The state’s use of freeholder is a quirky bit of New Jersey arcana, and dropping the term may result in the loss of some bit of the state’s uniqueness. But words and their connotations mean what people think they mean, not what their origins are. Words matter and using a word that has connotations of inequality only serves to reinforce existing inequalities. If enough people view freeholder as problematic, then we should let it go.
Sources:
1776 State Constitution (New Jersey). New Jersey Department of State.
Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2008, s.v. franctenant.
Black’s Law Dictionary, eleventh edition. Bryan A. Garner, ed. Thomson Reuters: Westlaw, 2019, s.v. freehold, n., freeholder.
Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources. R. E. Latham, D. R. Howlett & R. K. Ashdowne, eds. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013, s.v. francus. Brepols: Database of Latin Dictionaries.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019. s.v. fre-holder, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, June 2008, freeholder, n.
Rymer, Thomas. Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, et Cujuscunque Generis Acta Publica, Inter Reges Angliae et Alios Quosvis Impeatores, Reges, Pontifices, Principes, vel Communitates, vol. 1 of 4. London: 1816, 476. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Tully, Tracey. “A Political Title ‘Born from Racism’ Will Be Eliminated.” New York Times, 10 July 2020.