The question of whether Washington actually visited Headquarters has bedeviled local historians for decades. The source of the controversy was Fanny Carrell, who was interviewed by Charles W. Opdycke, for his well-known Opdyke Genealogy sometime around 1880 [pg 218-19]. Frances ‘Fanny’ Opdycke was the wife of James Carrell, and he was the grandson of Elizabeth Opdycke Arnwine, daughter of old John Opdycke Esq.
Headquarters
HEADQUARTERS, once also known as Grover, has a long history, going back to the 1730s when the area was first being settled. Samuel Green acquired hundreds of acres here, around 1710, and provided his daughters and their families with large plantations of their own, in particular, John Opdycke and wife Margaret Green.
“Headquarters” Has Two Buildings of Historic Interest
Mill and Mansion Built at Time of French and Indian War
Name “Grover” Never Stuck
by Egbert T. Bush, Stockton, N.J
Hunterdon County Democrat, November 7, 1929
While the mother countries and their colonies were scouring rifles and picking flints in preparation for that spectacular game in the Noble Sport of kings, known to us as the French and Indian War, humble workers whose names are all forgotten were quietly engaged in shaping stones, pouring mortar and cutting “B. 1754” into the date stone for a gristmill six miles west of Flemington.
Opdycke’s Mill, Headquarters, NJ
I was going to publish here an article I wrote about the Headquarters mill that first appeared on The Delaware Township Post in 2006. But like many writers, I can never leave well enough alone. Since Samuel Green figures in the history of the village of Headquarters, if not the mill itself, it seems appropriate to focus on the earliest history of the mill.