Jonathan M. Hoppock, known as ‘Jonty,’ was born Sep. 20, 1838 to Henry J. Hoppock and Lydia Wolverton. The family lived on a farm near Sand Brook in Delaware Township. Hoppock became a school teacher and developed a love of local history. Late in his life, the Democrat-Advertiser published articles he submitted about the places he knew best, nearly all of them in Delaware Township.
There has been a Baptist Church in Locktown since the early 19th century, and a cemetery associated with it. The church and the cemetery were located on land belonging to Daniel Rittenhouse, whose home was a short distance west of Locktown on the Kingwood-Locktown Road. Most of the names in this cemetery are of families that lived nearby in Kingwood and Delaware Townships, many of them descendants of original German immigrants. Many of the original stones are now missing, even ones that were inventoried in the 1940s. Old cemeteries are hard to preserve.
In 2011, I began a series of articles on the history of Bull’s Island, Raven Rock, and Saxtonville. (For the original post, please visit “Raven Rock and the Saxtonville Tavern,” where you will learn something of how the name Raven Rock began to be used.) Recently three documents turned up to shed more light on this subject–a deed of 1722, and two survey maps, one of them made in 1819 showing the original proprietary tracts. It is time to return to Raven Rock for another look.
by J. M. Hoppock, March 24, 1904
published in the Democrat-Advertiser
This is an obituary, for Rev. Joshua Primmer, who died on March 18, 1904. I wrote about Rev. Primmer in May 2014, in my article “From Primmer to Pauch.” At that time, I had forgotten my intention to eventually publish all of J. M. Hoppock’s articles with annotations. So today I am making up for that oversight. If you check the very end of the page “Index of Articles,” you will see a complete list of those articles, separated into those that have been published here, and those as yet unpublished.
It is odd that Mr. Hoppock consistently wrote the name as “Primer.” I wonder if he pronounced the name that way. Apparently that is the way his grandfather wrote it, but it is not the way Rev. Primmer wrote it.
Last week I posted a continuation of Egbert T. Bush’s article “The ‘Oregon’ and Other Schools,” focusing on the neighborhood once known as Ducks’ Flat. Mr. Bush wrote about Duck’s Flat in 1930. This was two years before a surprising event took place there. Given that the participants stayed at the Stockton Inn, near where Mr. Bush lived, I can’t help but think he knew about the goings-on. But he did not write about it. It wasn’t until 1996 that another talented writer described what happened at Ducks’ Flat—an early experiment in rocket science, which took place on November 12, 1932.
The writer was Bruce Palmer, and his tale was published in the Lambertville Beacon on November 13, 1996. (Note that Mr. Palmer’s article is in italics, and my comments are not.)
Over five years ago, I published an article about the Opdycke Cemetery in the Delaware Township Post. It has now been revised as “Opdycke Cemetery Revisited.” More recently, I came across some letters exchanged by Egbert T. Bush and Hiram E. Deats regarding their attempts to find this burying ground and to identify who was buried there. These letters can be found in the Egbert T. Bush Papers at the Hunterdon County Historical Society.
I first published an article on this interesting cemetery in April 2009 on the website Delaware Township Post. After five years, I have a learned enough to justify revising and republishing this article.
The cemetery is located on the Lambertville-Headquarters Road, on a farm near the intersection with Sandy Ridge Road. It is a private family cemetery without public access. The origin of the cemetery is nicely described by Egbert T. Bush.
by Egbert T. Bush, Stockton. N. J.
published in the Hunterdon Co. Democrat, December 18, 1930
This article by Mr. Bush is a perfect complement to a recent blog post, “Amos Romine’s Beloved Farm.” It is one of my favorite Bush articles. Because there is so much to say about the people he mentions, I will refrain from interrupting him and leave my comments for the end.
