and plank roads, but crucially not to railroads; the Joint Companies continued to dominate politics. Fort also secured a bill for the regulation of banks consistent with the "hard money" platform of the Democratic Party. The legislature also passed a homestaed exemption act, protecting family homesteads from sale for debts of less than $1,000. During his term in office, the system of Assembly elections was amended to replace countywide elections with district apportionment. Personal life and legacy In 1830, Fort married Anna Marie Wright in Imlaystown. They had four children. Anna was the daughter of Samuel G. Wright, an iron manufacturer who represented Monmouth County in the New Jersey Legislative Council at the time; Wright was elected to a term in the United States House of Representatives as a Whig but served only four months before his death in 1845. Fort's nephew, John Franklin Fort, also served as Governor of New Jersey from 1908 to 1911. Unlike his uncle, John F. Fort was a Republican. Later life and death At the expiration of his term in office, incoming Governor Rodman M. Price appointed Fort to the Court of Errors and Appeals. After leaving the bench, Fort resumed the practice of medicine in New Egypt. He served as a trustee of Bordentown Female College and Zoar Methodist Episcopal Church in New Egypt. Fort spent the final years of his life writing a laudatory history of Freemasonry in the United States, which was published three years after his death. Fort died on April 22, 1872, at his home in the New Egypt section of Plumsted Township. He was buried in the United Methodist Church Cemetery in Pemberton. Publications Early History of Antiquities of Freemasonry (1875) A Historical Treatise on Early Builders' Marks' References External links Biography of George F. Fort, New Jersey State Library New Jersey Governor George Franklin Fort, National Governors Association 1809 births 1872 deaths Democratic Party governors of New Jersey Democratic Party New Jersey state senators People from Pemberton, New Jersey People from Plumsted Township, New Jersey Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania alumni Politicians from Monmouth County, New Jersey Politicians from Ocean County, New Jersey Methodists from New Jersey Democratic Party members of the New Jersey General Assembly Burials in New Jersey 19th-century American politicians