Clinton, Flemington, and Lambertville

By Sally A. Freedman

The rich heritage of descendants of English, Dutch, and German settlers in the Hunterdon County population centers of Clinton, Flemington, and Lambertville is presented here.

Life among the rolling hills of northwest New Jersey and in the three small towns that became centers of that area's population has been faithfully recorded by residents since the Civil War, capturing the rural character of their landscape.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Jul 30, 2003
• ISBN: 9781439611982

Sally A. Freedman

Together with detailed captions and a historical introduction, Sally Freedman has created a fascinating journey down memory lane that tells of childhood's endless summer days, of church choirs and family reunions, of work in shops and mills, and of parades and carnivals.

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INTRODUCTION

Clinton, Flemington, and Lambertville are communities located in the north, central, and south sections, respectively, of Hunterdon County on the western border of New Jersey. The hill towns of Tewksbury are just east and north of Clinton. The Native Americans who preceded Europeans in the area were the Lenni Lenape, or Original People, of the Algonquian family of Indian tribes. Early colonists renamed them the Delaware, after the river near which many of them lived. Although most of the Lenape have moved west, area names such as Musconetcong and Cushetunk recall them to New Jersey residents today.

As the Hunterdon County Cultural and Heritage Commission recounts in its valuable booklet, The First 275 years of Hunterdon County: 1714–1989, the ownership of the land by the Lenape was recognized by the English: for trifling amounts, they bought and paid for several tracts in what is now Hunterdon County between 1688 and 1758. However that recognition did not stop them from parceling out the entire area among themselves as though it were not owned.

England’s King Charles II had granted his brother, James, Duke of York, all territory between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers in 1664, and the Duke gave what is now New Jersey to Sir John Berkeley and Sir George Carteret that same year. In 1676 the jointly owned territory was divided vertically into halves called East Jersey and West Jersey. By then, Berkeley’s half, West Jersey (where the present Hunterdon County is located), had been sold to John Fenwick as trustee for Edward Byllinge, a Quaker, who promptly turned over its management to William Penn and two other Quakers. The right of the Quakers to govern their colony was granted in 1680. Because of disputes with the colonists of both East and West Jersey, the owners of the territories gave them up in 1702 and England then united the two areas as a single royal colony, New Jersey.

Colonel John Reading, who purchased a plantation near Stockton in 1704, is considered the county’s first settler. John Holcombe, who settled in Lambertville in 1705 or shortly thereafter, was another firstcomer. Other English, Scotch/Irish, Dutch, and German settlers followed, moving northward along the Delaware and the South Branch of the Raritan for the most part. Ferries were soon established at Stockton and Lambertville, and by 1714 there were enough settlers in that area (then called Amwell) to form a company of militia.

At first, most of the Hunterdon County area was part of Burlington County. Hunterdon County was formed by 1714, and named in honor of Robert Hunter, the tactful and sincere Royal Governor of New Jersey between 1710 and 1719. At that time the county was nearly all wooded. Pioneer farms were hewn out of the wilderness and the settlers lived almost totally off the land. Most never fertilized their fields, but just moved on to another farm when cropland was worn out. By the 1790s, however, lime quarries and kilns were established to produce lime for fertilizer. This further depleted the forest, for it required two cords of wood to produce a ton of burnt limestone.

Centers of population often grew up around a ferry, a crossroads, a tavern, a grist or linseed oil mill, and later around a lime quarry and kiln. A general store was another essential, and, in time, a bank. Clinton, Flemington, and Lambertville filled the needs of the agricultural areas surrounding them, and so they grew. Lambertville, in fact, reached the 5,000 population mark that made it a city in 1872; it continues to call itself a city, although the population today is down to around 3,500.

Three of Hunterdon County’s ferries were especially useful to George Washington during the American Revolution. Part of the army with which he crept up on Trenton and surprised the Hessian column of the British army on Christmas Day, 1776, was borne across the Delaware on the Lambertville (Coryell’s) and Stockton (Howell’s) ferries as well