I did not originate the "On Hillsborough" blog. In the months leading up to my first post appearing here on June 7, 2007, the blog was helmed by another Hillsborough resident - a former mayor and "change of government form" activist who, to misquote the bard, came not to praise Hillsborough but to bury it.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Hillsborough, New Jersey received its royal charter on May 31, 1771. Two hundred years later, the township residents came together came together to celebrate their bicentennial.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Over the years people have asked me where Anna Case - the South Branch girl who became a national sensation as an operatic soprano, concert and recording artist, and radio and film star - fits in with Hillsborough genealogy. This post will serve as a repository for some of my findings.| Gillette On Hillsborough
It was the morning of Friday, August 21, 1896, and Somerset County Detective George Totten had just spent his second sleepless night alone in a snake-infested cave on the Sourland Mountain in Hillsborough, New Jersey. On Wednesday morning, he had set out from Somerville in a small wagon loaded with enough provisions to camp for several days. As he approached the mountain, he stopped at a farmhouse near Rock Mills to put up his horse and take what he needed from the wagon - making sure that on...| Gillette On Hillsborough
A few weeks after the Belle Mead Army Service Forces Depot opened in August 1942, the Army officially announced that a second depot in Hillsborough was "rapidly nearing completion". This facility was located in the South Somerville section of the township and was officially known as the Somerville Quartermaster Sub Depot. | Gillette On Hillsborough
Let's begin by lamenting that the one singular iconic structure that identified historic Hillsborough Township, New Jersey was lost in a fire 89 years ago. Variously renamed by owners-of-the-moment as the Union House Tavern, or Hall's Hotel, it was best known by its first and last moniker, Woods Tavern.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Located at the southern end of the historic core of Duke Farms, the stone structure known a century ago as The Lovers' Tower is still a popular photo spot for 21st-century tourists.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Hear the phrase "asbestos hotel" in 2021 and you might be inclined to shout, "Yikes!" But to Hillsborough Township, New Jersey residents of the 1920s, those words provoked an entirely different reaction. | Gillette On Hillsborough
Two years before America was asking "who shot JR?" - the fictional millionaire oilman of TV's Dallas - Somerset County was asking "who bludgeoned PJ?" - Hillsborough's real-life millionaire recluse Philip Jankowitz. Television viewers waited 8 months for their answer. Hillsboroughians are still waiting nearly 43 years later. | Gillette On Hillsborough
While many features of Duke's Park - the early 20th century Hillsborough, New Jersey estate of tobacco magnate James B. Duke - are still present and available to be discovered by visitors almost a century after Duke's death in 1925, there are a few that are gone forever.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Our story begins in 1851 when railroad entrepreneur Asa Packer became the majority stockholder in the stalled Delaware, Lehigh, Schuylkill, and Susquehanna Railroad (DLS&S) and changed the name to Lehigh Valley Railroad. The DLS&S had been chartered in 1847 to move coal from Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley to Easton but had done little in four years besides some route surveying and grading. Packer brought financing and a bolder plan - to reach the lucrative metropolitan market of New York.| Gillette On Hillsborough
A small blurb in the May 3, 1902, issue of the New York Tribune contained the news that 200 pieces of bronze statuary - three railroad cars full - had just arrived at the James B. Duke estate in Hillsborough. The pieces included vases, allegorical figures, many animals, and an $80,000 ($2.5 million today) fountain of marble and bronze.| Gillette On Hillsborough
In the late afternoon of January 22, 1907, Morris "Max" Breen took a break from his chores to regale his friends with stories of his ongoing feud with Thomas Cox. Breen and Cox were rival shopkeepers in the hamlet of Frankfort, New Jersey - a small postal village in Hillsborough Township that up until 1878 had been named Flaggtown.| Gillette On Hillsborough
The Hillsborough Township Committee meeting minutes for June 7th and 8th, 1894, barely hint at it. Local newspapers published that spring are silent. The well-researched 1976 history "Portrait of a Village" gives the topic half a paragraph then throws in the towel - for good reason. There just doesn't seem to be any good information out there - either now or then.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Foothill Acres Nursing Home - early 1960s| Gillette On Hillsborough
Nearly all of the stone structures built at Duke Farms over a century ago - well houses, spring houses, summer houses, bridges, etc. - still exist today. They were a favorite of photographers in the early years of the last century and turn up frequently in published postcards.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Friends of Stephen P. Tallman began arriving at the foot of Liberty Street before 9 a.m. on the morning of June 25th, 1897. As they waited for the Central Railroad of New Jersey ferry that would take them across the Hudson to Jersey City, they spoke to each other about their friend's tragic passing. | Gillette On Hillsborough
Two hundred years ago, at the base of the Sourland Mountain on the border of Hillsborough and Montgomery Townships where the East Mountain Road met the road to Blawenburg, there was a tiny hamlet by the name of Post Town - so named because this was a place to send and receive mail. By the 1850s the name of the little village had been changed to Plainville and soon boasted a store, two blacksmith's shops, schoolhouse, hotel, and several residences. Today they are all gone.| Gillette On Hillsborough
The Delaware and Bound Brook Railroad - later a division of the Philadelphia and Reading and known in Central New Jersey today as the West Trenton Line - is one of the most important railroads in New Jersey history. It is also important to Hillsborough history - not only because 7 of its 27 miles of track were laid in Hillsborough but because of the connection to Hillsborough of two men intimately associated with the story.| Gillette On Hillsborough
As part of James B. Duke's massive construction project at his Hillsborough, New Jersey estate at the beginning of the last century, he had all of the road bridges rebuilt in stone to fit the new motif of Duke's Park. These included the bridges on River and Roycefield Roads as well as Duke's Parkway, as pictured in the postcard below from 1905.| Gillette On Hillsborough
A year after their marriage in 1937, Thurman and Mary Lawson moved to a 4-acre homestead on North Willow Road in Hillsborough. It was there that they raised a family that eventually grew to include three daughters, several cats, and 65 dairy goats.| Gillette On Hillsborough
The reason for the question mark in the title of this piece is that much like the Ship of Theseus, DeCanto's is a paradox. With but one plank remaining from its earliest days (the barbershop) we can hardly still assert that Hillsborough's first shopping center is the same one that residents knew and loved in the 1960s. Or can we?| Gillette On Hillsborough
The Frog Fountain was one of the early water features at Duke's Park, the Hillsborough Township, New Jersey estate of tobacco king James B. Duke. This playful pool featured perched frogs spraying plumes of water toward a central fountain.| Gillette On Hillsborough
Gillette On Hillsborough is a blog about current events and local history of Hillsborough Township, Somerset County, and central New Jersey.| cnhillsborough.blogspot.com
Water features were one of the most photographed elements at Duke's Park - the early 20th-century estate of tobacco millionaire James B. Duke in Hillsborough, New Jersey. The Raritan River, Duke's Brook, and a dozen man-made lakes all found their way to the viewfinder of the shutterbug and professional lensman alike.| Gillette On Hillsborough