part two in the series, The Route Not Taken
This is part two of my series on the Delaware Flemington Railroad Company. Part One was Egbert T. Bush’s history of how this company failed. He provided us with lots of information derived from the company papers that had been saved. But so many questions were raised, and not addressed, starting with the people who thought up the idea and promoted the company.
The next presidential debate for Democratic candidates is coming up on September 12th. In light of that and also with thoughts about the kind of discourse Americans are having these days, it seemed appropriate to publish Mr. Bush’s article on a practice that went out of fashion long ago—local debating societies. Somehow it was possible for 19th-century neighbors to dispute current issues without making enemies of each other.
Part one in the series, The Route Not Taken
This article by Egbert T. Bush caught my attention because it is reminiscent of PennEast’s attempt to dig a pipeline across Delaware Township and other parts of Hunterdon and Mercer Counties. The big difference here is that many landowners along the proposed route of this railroad supported it because they expected real benefits, whereas PennEast’s pipeline is likely to do more harm than good.
Part one focused on the family of Judson Rittenhouse and Martha Bodine, who lived on the farm now known as the Sarah Dilts Farm Park in Delaware Township for most of their lives. The farm was purchased by Judson’s father, Wilson Bray Rittenhouse, in 1844. This article will first describe Wilson and his family, and then will trace the history of this property back to the first European owner.
This is a return to an article I wrote in 2012 about the family that used to own what is known today as the Sarah Dilts Farm Park. Some wonderful photographs have come my way that have inspired me to take a second look.
The Buchanan family begins in Hunterdon County with the Scottish immigrants, Samuel and Jane or Janet Buchanan, whose name was frequently spelled “Bohannon.” It is not known whether they had any more than one child. But one was enough–their son John left a family with a long history.
In my previous post (A Shrinking Township, part one), I wrote about a petition in 1896 to take a large chunk out of Delaware Township and give it to East Amwell Township. That petition was signed by two East Amwell residents, William H. Manners and Simpson Sked Stout. This post will describe these two, as well as the journey the bill took through the legislature, and the property owners who were affected by it.
On November 18, 1896, two gentlemen from East Amwell Township announced in the Hunterdon Republican newspaper that they would petition the state legislature to change the boundary between East Amwell and Delaware Townships. It was a fairly radical change they were proposing, in which Delaware Township yielded to East Amwell a large chunk from its eastern border and Delaware got nothing in return. On April 17, 1897, the State Legislature followed through and passed a bill to make that happen.
This article is a continuation of The Haines Farm, part one.
The Haines farm has a pretty remarkable history, as Mr. Bush wrote:
From the first Isaac Haines the property descended to his son, the second Joseph; from this Joseph to his son, the second Isaac; and from him to his son, the third Joseph, the present owner, to whom it was conveyed by his father and mother, March 10, 1920.
This post returns to an article by Egbert T. Bush titled “Old Farms in Old Hunterdon,” published in 1931. I published large parts of this article before, in “The Moore Family,” in 2016. As the introduction to that article mentioned, two families were discussed in Bush’s article, the Moores and the Haines. Having discussed the Moore family at length, it is time to focus on the Haines family and their farm on the east side of Haines Road in East Amwell. This will conclude my study of some (but not all) of the farms located in the original proprietary tract of John Dennis.