This article is meant as a companion to the article by Egbert T. Bush, “The Daybooks of Dr. Bowne.” In this article, Mr. Hoppock goes on at some length about the first owner of the Bowne farm being Jacob Moore. Unfortunately, he was mistaken. As Mr. Bush wrote, Jacob Moore settled on what later became known as the Wagner farm (at Haines and Wagner Roads). The Bowne farm was first settled by Peter Moore, but Mr. Bush does not say when he settled there. It was certainly early, because Peter Moore’s executors (his three sons) sold the farm to Dr. Bowne in 1795.
Bowne Station
BOWNE STATION is a neighborhood on the border of Delaware and East Amwell Townships, created by the Flemington branch of the Central New Jersey Railroad. Today the Black River and Western Railroad passes by, but there is no longer a functioning railroad station. The place was also called Barber’s Station and Oakdale by the postal service, back when there were post offices here. Today, it is a very quiet place.
The Daybooks of Dr. Bowne
Recently I attended a workshop given by archivist Don Cornelius on the holdings of the Hunterdon County Historical Society. They are extensive, far more than I realized. Among them are the original daybooks of Dr. John Bowne of old Amwell Township, filled with the names of his patients and their treatment. These Daybooks are so important to genealogists that someone at the Historical Society has gone to the considerable effort of indexing the names into a card catalog, and—primitive as it may seem to be today—it’s a very useful genealogical tool for the time period of 1791 through 1857.
The Two John Barbers
In the early 1860s, two men named John Barber got involved on opposite sides of the question – should the country support Lincoln’s prosecution of the Civil War, or should it not?1