My previous article discussed the evolution of political parties in the early 1850s, both nationally and in Hunterdon County. The Democratic party was still going strong, while the Whig party was fading away and two new parties had come on the scene: the Republican party and the American party, better known as the Know Nothings.
I am going to step away briefly from the life of John C. Hopewell to shed some light on a political movement that Hopewell and many other Flemington notables got caught up in.
The second generation of this Lair Family tree came to New Jersey came from Germany in the mid-18th century, after the death of the patriarch in Lyons, France. The widow and her sons came to Hunterdon County in 1757, but settled in different places, one in the northern county and the other in the southern. The name is usually spelled Lair, but sometimes as Lare.
