John Reading and the Creation of Hunterdon Co., part two

By in Amwell Twp, Hunterdon, Reading Tags: , ,

MtAmwell

This is part two of a speech delivered on Nov. 16, 2014 for the Hunterdon County Tercentennial. You can find the first installment here.

MtAmwellMoving to Hunterdon

I ended the last post with the statement that in 1704, John Reading had a tract of 1440 acres surveyed in the far northwestern corner of the Adlord Bowde purchase. It was an excellent location—superior agricultural soil and access to the river. At this point, the river runs east-west, so Reading’s house could face south as well as face the river, and he had an excellent view of traffic going both ways. He named it Mount Amwell, after his family’s ancestral home in England.

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Gathering Nuts Was Once An Industry

By in Croton, E. T. Bush, Historians, Hockenbury, Raritan Twp Tags: , ,

A Boy Could Make From 30 to 40 cents a Day by Hard Work
Pegg Family Conserved Acres

by Egbert T. Bush, Stockton, N.J.
published by the Hunterdon Co. Democrat, November 21, 1929

This is another in a series of articles by Egbert T. Bush Paying attention to the wonderful trees of old Hunterdon County. A complete list of Bush’s tree articles can be found at the end.

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John Reading & the Creation of Hunterdon County (part 1)

By in Amwell Twp, Burlington County, Hopewell Twp, Hunterdon, Reading, West New Jersey Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

On November 16, I gave a speech about John Reading and the Creation of Hunterdon County. There was quite a lot of information in that speech, covering the years 1664 to 1718. In fact, it was probably a bit too much.

For example, the beginning of the speech covered the conquest of New Netherland by the English in 1664, the Third Anglo-Dutch War of 1672-74, the Quintipartite Deed of 1676, and John Reading’s settlement in Gloucester County in 1684; also Edward Byllinge and the early settlement of West New Jersey. Rather than rehash material that I have already written about, you can see a list of pertinent articles at the end of this one. They cover the settlement of West New Jersey, its political history, its infamous governor Daniel Coxe, and the early career of John Reading.

For the history of Hunterdon County, it is best to start with 1694. What follows is the first part of a somewhat amended version of the speech.

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