Westfield, New Jersey, was part of Elizabethtown from the time it was settled in late 1664 until 1794, when the Township of Westfield was created. The New Jersey Documents Collections, 1601 to 1983, consists of New Jersey legal documents, the bulk of which are from the town of Westfield, Union County, and include land records, financial records, estate records, and court records, many of which were created by various members of the Baker, Downer, Hetfield, Johnson, Miller, Pierson, Ripley, Ross, and Woodruff families. The majority of the collection material dates from 1750 to 1890.

Consists of a collection compiled by American clergyman Stewart M. Robinson (Princeton Class of 1915), including photostats of sermons, letters, pamphlets, and communications to newspapers by clergymen in colonial America, which he used as research material for a proposed book entitled "The Political Thought of the Colonial Clergy."