Monmouth County (N.J.). County Clerk

In 1906, any individual or group of individuals forming a partnership or limited partnership became regulated by the New Jersey state legislature. "An Act to Regulate the Use of Business Names, approved May 17, 1906," required such businesses to file a statement in the Office of the County Clerk in the County where the business transacted or conducted business. The statement had to include the full name of the business, the nature of the business, and the full names and residences of all partners. The County Clerk was required to keep an alphabetical index of each business recorded. Partnership agreements from 1850 to 1933 can only be found in recordings within ledger books at the County Clerk's Office. By late 1933, agreements were not only recorded in these ledger books, but copies of the actual agreements were also retained and filed by the County Clerk's Office. In the 1980s, the State of New Jersey took over the responsibility of recording partnership agreements. This collection of partnership agreements reflects this changeover, as it only goes up until 1981.

In New Jersey, a partition of land (also called a division), among heirs and for other purposes, was a long and confusing process during the Colonial era; in 1789 an act was passed by the state legislature which simplified the procedure and called for the appointment of three impartial commissioners, either by the Supreme Court or county Inferior Court of Common Pleas. The commissioners in turn appointed surveyors who made maps of proposed boundary lines to make an equitable division of the property among the parties involved, or in rare cases, sold the land and distributed the monies instead; records of the common pleas justices were subsequently turned over to the county clerk who recorded them in the Division of Real Estate Book.

County clerk chiefly responsible for keeping records documenting county business; in addition serves as Clerk of Elections and until 1995 served as Clerk of Pleas and Sessions.