Why is it called that?

The whole county

Named for Robert Hunter, colonial governor of New Jersey from 1710 to 1720, after his family seat of Hunterston in Ayrshire, Scotland. The county was formed in 1714 out of Burlington County. Some sources put the charter at 1713, taking effect in 1714.

Sources: Hunterdon County, official county site · Hunterdon 300th anniversary project

Named for James Alexander, a New York and New Jersey lawyer and surveyor general who bought roughly 10,000 acres here in 1744. The township was formed by royal charter on March 5, 1765, out of part of Bethlehem Township.

Sources: Wikipedia, Alexandria Township, New Jersey

Named after Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, which German Moravian settlers had named on Christmas Eve 1741 for the birthplace of Jesus. The New Jersey township took the name secondhand, from the Pennsylvania settlement rather than straight from the Bible.

Sources: Bethlehem Township, official municipal site · Wikipedia, Bethlehem Township, New Jersey

Two accounts of this name survive and neither one is tied to a primary document. Bloomsbury split off from Bethlehem Township and became its own borough in 1905.

Sources: Bloomsbury Borough, official municipal site · Some Hunterdon Place Names (scanned PDF, not read in full)

The settlement was first called California, after resident Jacob Neighbor caught the 1849 California Gold Rush bug and built sawmills on the South Branch of the Raritan. That part is documented. How the name lost half its letters is where the accounts part ways, and all three of the versions below are oral tradition.

Sources: The Califon Station, Historical Marker Database · Califon Borough, official municipal site · Hidden New Jersey

Named for DeWitt Clinton, governor of New York and the force behind the Erie Canal, whom local leaders picked to honor when the township was incorporated in 1841. The town of Clinton formed inside the township on April 5, 1865, and became its own municipality in 1895.

Sources: Clinton Township, official municipal site

Same DeWitt Clinton as the town, and the township got there first. It was named in 1841, when it split off from the southern end of Lebanon Township.

Sources: Clinton Township, official municipal site

Named simply for the Delaware River, which forms its southwestern boundary. It was formed on April 2, 1838, out of part of the original Amwell Township.

The first settler here was Colonel John Reading, in the early 1700s. He also helped create Hunterdon County itself in 1714.

Sources: Delaware Township, official municipal site · Wikipedia, Delaware Township, New Jersey

East Amwell split from the original Amwell Township on April 6, 1846, and that date is documented. Where the word Amwell came from is not settled.

Sources: Wikipedia, East Amwell Township, New Jersey · West Amwell Township, official municipal site

Named for Samuel Fleming, an Irish-born colonial landowner who bought 210 acres from Thomas Penn, son of William Penn, in 1741 and built the house now known as Fleming Castle in 1756. The place was called the Fleming Settlement, then Fleming's, and had become Flemington by the 1870s.

Sources: Samuel Fleming House Museum · Wikipedia, Flemington, New Jersey

The township, incorporated April 7, 1845, is named for a Franklin. Which Franklin is genuinely unresolved, and the township says so itself. No surviving document settles it.

Sources: Franklin Township, official municipal site

Named for the French-speaking families who settled around Paul Henri Mallet-Prevost, a Swiss refugee who fled the French Revolution and arrived in 1794 with his wife, three sons, and several other families. Neighbors were calling the place Frenchtown by the late 1790s for the language so many residents spoke, and the name became official when the post office opened in 1839.

Surnames among those first families included LaRoche, Femere, and Carpentier.

Sources: Frenchtown, Historical Marker Database · Frenchtown Borough, official municipal site

Named in 1871 for the Gardner brothers, who ran a chair and frame factory in the settlement. It became its own borough on March 26, 1919, taking in parts of Lebanon and Bethlehem townships.

Before 1871 the place had cycled through Eveland's Tavern, after tavern keeper John Eveland, then Spruce Run Mills, and, for a while, Sodom.

Sources: Glen Gardner, Historical Marker Database · Glen Gardner Borough, official municipal site

The borough started life as Junction, incorporated in 1895 from parts of Lebanon and Bethlehem townships and named for the crossing of the Central Railroad of New Jersey and the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western lines. Council renamed it Hampton effective February 11, 1909.

The rename is documented. Why council picked Hampton in particular is not, in any source we found.

Sources: Hampton Borough, Living Places

Named for the enormous railroad trestle the Central Railroad of New Jersey built across the South Branch of the Raritan in 1852, a structure about 100 feet high and 1,300 feet long. The original wooden trestle sagged under heavy trains and was replaced by a stone-arch, earth-filled bridge begun in 1859 and finished in 1865, at a cost of $72,252.50, that still stands over Arch Street and the river.

Sources: High Bridge and the Railroad, Historical Marker Database · High Bridge Borough, official municipal site

Named by Dutch settlers for their home country. It was the last township added to Hunterdon County, splitting from Alexandria Township in 1874, briefly merging back in 1878, then separating for good on March 11, 1879.

Sources: Wikipedia, Holland Township, New Jersey · Hunterdon 300th anniversary project

Kingwood Township was established in 1746 and incorporated by act of the New Jersey Legislature on February 21, 1798, as one of the state's original 104 townships. No source we found explains where the name Kingwood itself came from.

Nobody has found the answer to this one.

Two ideas get floated: an early settler surname, since a family named King is documented among Kingwood's pioneers, and a descriptive reading of king's wood. Neither is confirmed anywhere in the record.

The township was home to Daniel Bray, the local captain who rounded up the boats for Washington's crossing of the Delaware.

If you have the record that answers this one, a deed, a church book, a family paper, write to steve@hunterdonscoop.com and it goes on the map with your name on it.

Sources: Hunterdon County, History of Kingwood Township

Settled in 1705 as Georgetown, renamed Coryell's Ferry in 1732 for Emanuel Coryell, who ran the Delaware River crossing. In 1812 Captain John Lambert built the stone inn that is now the Lambertville House, and his uncle, U.S. Senator and acting governor John Lambert, secured a post office for the crossing and had his nephew made postmaster. The village became Lambert's Ville for the family, and Lambertville by 1814.

Sources: Lambertville Historical Society

The borough shares its name and its origin with Lebanon Township, which it split away from. The name traces to 1731, when it was attached to a ridge northwest of the settlement, and is usually assumed to be biblical, from the cedars of Lebanon.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

The biblical link is an assumption borrowed from other American Lebanons. No Hunterdon source spells it out.

Sources: Wikipedia, Lebanon Township, New Jersey

The name first shows up in the record on October 26, 1731, already attached to a ridge here and to the northernmost township in the county. The township was incorporated in 1798. The cedars and mountains of Lebanon were a common naming touchstone for colonial hill country, which is the usual explanation.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

No Hunterdon document confirms the reasoning behind the choice.

Sources: Wikipedia, Lebanon Township, New Jersey

It began as a grist mill site and was known as Burnt Mills after the mill burned in 1769. Colonel Thomas Lowery, who had already developed what is now Frenchtown, bought the Burnt Mill farm in July 1795 and spent a decade improving it, and the place was renamed Lowerytown, then New Milford.

The usual explanation for the final name is the plain description of a mill at a ford. That reading fits, but no source we found records anyone actually choosing it for that reason.

Milford became its own borough on April 15, 1911, out of Holland Township.

Sources: Milford, Historical Marker Database · Milford Borough, Living Places

Named for the Raritan people, a Lenape band who lived along the lower Raritan River and Raritan Bay in the 16th century. The word itself is usually read as forked river, stream overflows, or point on a tidal river.

The tribal namesake is well established. The word's exact meaning is a scholarly best guess, since Lenape place-name etymology is reconstructed rather than recorded.

Sources: Wikipedia, Raritan people · Wikipedia, New Jersey placenames of Native American origin

Chartered on July 15, 1730, as Readings, or Reading's Town, after John Reading, New Jersey's first native-born colonial governor and an early landowner here. It became Readington Township in 1798.

Sources: Readington Township, official municipal site · Wikipedia, Readington Township, New Jersey

The settlement was Reading Ferry, then Howell's Ferry, then Centre Bridge Station, matching the post office across the river in Pennsylvania. It became Stockton when a local post office was created in 1851, and was incorporated as a borough on April 14, 1898, out of Delaware Township. Who the name honors depends on which source you read.

Stockton, California is named for the commodore.

Sources: Stockton Borough, official municipal site · Stockton Borough, Living Places

Named for Tewkesbury, a market town in western England, with the American spelling dropping a letter. It was established by royal patent on March 11, 1755, as a division of Lebanon Township, and it formalized a sister-city relationship with the English Tewkesbury in 2003.

The English town's own name goes back to Tidwulf's burh, Tidwulf's fortified place, which is several links removed from anything that happened in New Jersey.

Sources: Tewksbury Township, official municipal site · Wikipedia, Tewksbury Township, New Jersey

Union Township runs along the Musconetcong and takes in the hamlets of Pattenburg, Jutland, and Cokesbury. No source we found says why it was called Union.

Nobody has found the answer to this one.

Union was a common patriotic name for townships in this era across the country, but applying that here is inference, not documentation.

If you have the record that answers this one, a deed, a church book, a family paper, write to steve@hunterdonscoop.com and it goes on the map with your name on it.

Sources: Union Township, official municipal site

West Amwell split from the original Amwell Township on April 6, 1846, the same day as East Amwell. The question of where Amwell came from is the same one, and it is still open.

Sources: West Amwell Township, official municipal site · Wikipedia, West Amwell Township, New Jersey

Clinton Township

It started as Beaver Brook, then became Clinton Station when the Central Railroad of New Jersey ran a line and a station through in 1852. It was renamed Annandale in the early 1870s, for Annandale, a valley in Dumfriesshire, Scotland.

Sources disagree on the year of the rename: some give 1871, the railroad marker gives 1873.

The station turned the village into a shipping hub for lime, milk, coal, lumber, and peaches.

Sources: Annandale Historic District, Historical Marker Database · Central Railroad of New Jersey, Historical Marker Database

Kingwood Township

Named for the two Baptist congregations the earliest settlers founded here: Bethlehem Baptist Church, constituted in 1742, and the Kingwood Baptist Congregation, organized July 27, 1745. Members alternated Sunday services between the Baptistown meeting and a second site three miles southwest they called the Lower Church.

Sources: Goodspeed Histories, Baptistown part one · Goodspeed Histories, Baptistown part two

Franklin Township

The place was known as Dogtown, a name reportedly tied to a tavern of 1737, before it became Cherryville. The new name is usually credited to the Cherry family, who owned land in the area.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

The family namesake is a possibly, not a confirmed. Sources also disagree on when the name changed, giving both 1839 and 1856.

A stone schoolhouse went up around 1830 and a Baptist church in 1849. By 1882 Cherryville had a post office and about 65 residents.

Sources: Cherryville, Historical Marker Database · Wikipedia, Cherryville, New Jersey

On the Clinton and Tewksbury township line

The name is two surnames welded together, for Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury, the first two bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, which was organized after the Revolution. It has also been spelled Cokesburg over the years.

Sources: Wikipedia, Cokesbury, New Jersey · Some Hunterdon Place Names (scanned PDF, not read in full)

Where Delaware, Raritan, and West Amwell townships meet

No Hunterdon source we found explains this name at all. It is here as an open question rather than an answer.

Nobody has found the answer to this one.

Croton-on-Hudson in Westchester County, New York is said to come from Kenoten, the name of a Kitchawanc chief. That is an explanation for a different Croton in a different state, and stretching it to this one would be a guess.

If you have the record that answers this one, a deed, a church book, a family paper, write to steve@hunterdonscoop.com and it goes on the map with your name on it.

Sources: Village of Croton-on-Hudson, New York (a comparison only, not an explanation)

Union Township

Named for the Jutland Peninsula in Denmark, home of the ancient Jutes. The story is repeated everywhere as evidence of Danish settlement here. The village grew with the Lehigh Valley Railroad's Easton and Amboy line in 1875.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

No source we found actually documents a Danish community founding or naming this place. There are no church records, deeds, or census figures behind the claim, only the claim. This is the single best question to put to the Hunterdon County Historical Society, whose land and church records could settle it either way.

Sources: Wikipedia, Jutland, New Jersey · Union Township, official municipal site

Alexandria Township

The place became known as Little York around 1828, named by resident John Van Syckle. An 1838 deed still uses an older name, Valley Mills, so the two names overlapped for a while.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

The 1828 naming is attributed to local tradition by the source itself, not to a document.

The village grew around colonial mills on the Hakihokake Creek, inside a large tract first surveyed for the proprietor Colonel Thomas Byerly in 1714.

Sources: Little York Historic District, Living Places

Delaware Township

Egbert T. Bush, writing in the Hunterdon Democrat on May 22, 1930, said the name came out of a church fight. When a dispute split the Baptist congregation, rival factions padlocked the meeting house doors against each other, and the tavern keeper nearby hung a third, bigger padlock between the other two so the wall would look balanced. He is the one who started calling the place Locktown.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

Goodspeed Histories, which republished the piece, notes that this is the only source anyone has found for the three-locks story and that Bush was relying on what the neighborhood said. It is a good story. It is not a document.

Sources: Goodspeed Histories, E.T. Bush: How Locktown Got Its Name

West Amwell Township

The hamlet grew up around Holcombe's Storehouse, a two-and-a-half-story sandstone building Samuel Holcombe put up in 1743 at the easiest crossing point between the Delaware and the Raritan, on the well-traveled Old York Road.

The settlement history is documented. Why anyone picked the name Mount Airy is not, in any source we found. It was a common descriptive name for high, breezy spots across the colonies.

Sources: Mount Airy, Historical Marker Database · Mount Airy Historic District, Living Places

Lebanon Township

A separate hamlet from the borough of Hampton, which was called Junction until 1909, though the two are historically tied through Lebanon Township.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

No source we found explains when or why the New was added.

Sources: Wikipedia, Lebanon Township, New Jersey · Wikipedia, Hampton, New Jersey

Union Township

The settlement was Calvin's Mills until 1812, when the distillers Cummings and Dolphin started making rye whiskey there with grain from the mill and water from the Mulhockaway Creek. On the suggestion of one Henry Carcuff it was renamed Pattenburg, in honor of the distillery's patented whiskey recipe. The name is built out of the word patent.

European farm families, English, Scottish, and Irish, had settled the area from the 1730s. Bellewood Park, on the edge of the village, opened July 4, 1904 and became one of New Jersey's best-known amusement parks.

Sources: Union Township, official municipal site

Alexandria, Franklin, and Union townships

The place was Hoff's Mills, after landowner Lawrence Hoff, until 1764, when the Trenton merchant Moore Furman bought the property. Furman is said to have renamed it Pittstown, for William Pitt, the British statesman who fought the 1765 Stamp Act. A British officer's 1781 sketch map of northern New Jersey marks the two villages here simply as "Pitt" and "Quaker."

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

The source hedges on the rename, and none we found ties the name to Pitt with a document, or records why Furman chose it. The purchase and the buildings are solid; the tribute is the story attached to them.

Furman built a nail factory, a distillery, flour mills, a store, and a hotel here. In 1778 he built a mill specifically for military use, grinding grain for soldiers camped at Jockey Hollow and elsewhere.

Sources: New Jersey Skylands, Quakertown and Pittstown · Goodspeed Histories, Pittstown Inn part one

Franklin Township

Named for the Quakers who came north from Burlington County and settled these hills soon after 1700. Friends acquired the land here in 1733 and put up a log meeting house, replaced by a stone one in 1754.

The building standing today was torn down and rebuilt in 1862, reusing the original stones, and the meeting is still in use with records going back to 1744. It is the only Quaker meeting house built in Hunterdon County.

Sources: Quaker Meeting House, Historical Marker Database · New Jersey Skylands, Quakertown and Pittstown

East Amwell and Raritan townships

Known as Greenville by the 1830s, then renamed for Runkle Rea, who became the settlement's first postmaster in 1850. It had been a stagecoach stop on the Old York Road through the 18th century.

Sources: Wikipedia, Reaville, New Jersey

East Amwell Township

Named for John Ringo, who settled this wilderness crossroads around 1720 and ran a tavern on the Old York Road, now Route 179. The account comes from an 1844 history of New Jersey, so it rests on early secondhand testimony rather than a deed, but it is consistent, specific, and tied to a named man and place. The tavern was a meeting spot for patriots during the Revolution.

A separate family legend says Ringo was a ship captain who fled to New Jersey after pirates boarded his vessel, and who refused to spend the blood money taken from murdered victims. That part is folklore layered on top, not documented.

Sources: Ringoes, Historical Marker Database · Ringo's Tavern, Historical Marker Database

Delaware Township

The village was Cross Keys, after the tavern at the corner of what are now Routes 604 and 519, and took the name Rosemont around 1845.

The story as told, not confirmed in the record.

The Cross Keys name and the 1845 change are documented. Why anyone chose Rosemont is not.

Sources: Wikipedia, Rosemont, New Jersey

Delaware Township

The village was Skunktown, also written Skoonkton and Skuncktown. It was renamed Sergeantsville in 1827 for Charles Sergeant, a Revolutionary War soldier, honoring a family three of whose members ran local shops.

Sources: Wikipedia, Sergeantsville, New Jersey

Readington Township

The place was Housel's, for farmer Johannes Housel, whose land lay on Dreahook Road, then Waggoner's Hill, then Mount Pleasant. When the post office was set up, Hunterdon already had a Mount Pleasant, so it became Stanton, taken from Stenton, James Logan's Pennsylvania estate, which was itself named for the Scottish village where Logan's father was born.

Logan was a West Jersey proprietor, a mayor of Philadelphia, and chief justice of Pennsylvania. Readington's Logan Way is named for the same man.

Sources: Matthew Smith, History of Pleasant Run in Stanton · Readington Township, official municipal site

Readington Township

Named for the three bridges that crossed the South Branch of the Raritan at this point. The third went up in 1813, and the name Three Bridges was established by 1866.

The village grew as a stop on the Central Railroad of New Jersey's South Branch line, later the Lehigh Valley Railroad's Easton and Amboy extension of 1875, and now Norfolk Southern.

Sources: Readington Township, official municipal site

East Amwell Township

Named for the Werts family. Before the formal name stuck, people called the crossroads Werts' Corners.

By 1881 the hamlet had a school, a Baptist church, a post office, a general store, a shoemaker's shop, and a wagon shop.

Sources: Wikipedia, Wertsville, New Jersey

Readington Township

Named for an inn Abraham Van Horne built around 1750 at a creek crossing on the Jersey Turnpike. Its white plastered walls had travelers calling it the White House, and the hamlet around it took the name. Station was added after the Somerville and Easton Railroad came through in 1848 and sparked a second settlement to the east, which inherited the old tavern's name at one remove.

Van Horne had settled the area in 1733.

Sources: Readington Township, official municipal site · Wikipedia, Whitehouse Station, New Jersey

Ringoes and Mount Airy, on the way from Philadelphia to New York

The road began as a Lenape path, the Raritan people's Naraticong Trail, also called the Tuckaraming Trail, which colonial settlers widened into a road between Philadelphia and New York. It became a formal King's Highway in 1764 and carried the main stagecoach route between the two cities. The Swift Sure line ran it in two days.

A memorial at Old York Road and Canal in Raritan marks the Naraticong people's agreement allowing the road to be built over their trail.

Sources: Old York Road, Historical Marker Database · Memorial to the Naraticong Indians, Historical Marker Database

Runs past Pittstown and joins the South Branch of the Raritan below Clinton

The name is Lenape. What it means is gone. The record is unusually blunt about it: Indian in origin, meaning unknown. That is the documented finding here, not a gap someone will fill later.

The same thing happened to the Hakihokake, the Wickecheoke, and the Lockatong. Lenape was spoken, not written, and the English colonists who wrote the names down did not write down what they meant.

Sources: Goodspeed Histories, Pittstown Inn part one

The northern boundary with Warren County

A Lenape name usually translated as clear stream, or river of the clear water, from moschakgeu, meaning clear, and hannek, meaning stream.

The translation traces to Viola Hutchinson's 1945 study of New Jersey place names. Unlike the Capoolong and the Wickecheoke it is consistent across sources, but it still rests on twentieth-century reconstruction rather than a native speaker's record.

Sources: Wikipedia, Musconetcong River, citing Hutchinson, The Origin of New Jersey Place Names, 1945 · National Park Service, Musconetcong Wild and Scenic River

Delaware Township, under the Green Sergeant's Covered Bridge

A 15-mile Lenape-named tributary of the Delaware. That the name is Lenape is not in doubt. What it means did not survive, and we could not find it anywhere in the accessible record.

Nobody has found the answer to this one.

Local historians group it with the county creeks whose names outlived their meanings.

If you have the record that answers this one, a deed, a church book, a family paper, write to steve@hunterdonscoop.com and it goes on the map with your name on it.

Sources: New Jersey Conservation Foundation · Goodspeed Histories, Pittstown Inn part one