Views Of Allamuchy, Hackettstown And Independence.

Warren County
Cultural & Heritage Commission

Historic Views Of Allamuchy, Hackettstown
And Independence
Allamuchy Township Region
The township of Allamuchy was incorporated on April 4, 1873. It was taken from Independence Township, and presently contains 20.3 square miles. In 1715, John Reading, a deputy surveyor, laid out for William Penn a tract of land "on both sides of the Paquassing(Pequest) River upon an Indian path that leads from Allamuchahokin (Allamuchy) to Pahackqualong(Pahaquarry)." The earliest settlers in this area were Quakers. William Penn had gived the Quakers a section of land for their use. In 1752, the first church was built of logs and twelve years later it was replaced by a stone structure. The earliest surviving structure in the township is the Old Home Farm, built in 1770. Halfway to Hackettstown was Wiretown. It was once a prosperous little village consisting of a store, foundry for making plows, a carriage factory and a hotel. The Morris Canal was built through the Township; by 1831, the first boat traveled through loaded with coal.
Several major country estates are located within the area. One of these, Tranquility Farms, owned at the turn of the twentieth century by John Rutherford Stuyvesant, had a 47 room mansion on 5000 acres. Another mansion, The Rutherford Mansion, consisted of 23 rooms built in 1903-1904 on a 1000 acre tract, is presently the Villa Madonna.
In 1882, the Belvidere-Anderson Branch of the Lehigh And Hudson River Railroad was built through the township.
Rutherford Estate.
This estate was known as Allamuchy Farms and built in 1903.
It is now known as The Villa Madonna.

Allamuchy School.
This school was built between 1910 and 1915.
It originally contained two classrooms and a meeting room.
It was enlarged in 1939 and again in 1961.

Hackettstown Region
The first purchase of land inside the boundaries of present-day Hackettstown, of which there is a record, occurred in 1754. It was then that Obadiah Ayers purchased some 1200 acres of land fron heirs of Thomas Lambert. He subsequently sold 200 acres to his stepson Daniel and smaller parcels to Edward Dunlop and others. A village soon began to take shape, and contained such enterprises as a saw mill, fulling mill, grist mill, and a log hotel which is believed to have stood on the site now occupied by David's Country Inn.
By the end of the Revolutionary War, the village was already known as "Hackett's Town". This was due to the influence of John Hackett. As an agent for the Philadelphia partnership of William Allen and Joseph Turner, he purchased many parcels of land. Hackett was the son-in-law of John Reading and also was a magistrate, and this combined influence caused the village to be named after him.
Hackettstown , along with many other communities in this part of the state, benefited from the opening of the Morris Canal in 1831. The town's economic importance increased again in 1854 when the Morris And Essex Railroad was extended through the town.
The carriage manufacturing trade was a major industry during the second half of the nineteenth century. More than thirty separate proprietorships were involved in carriage building, blacksmithing, wheelwrighting and harness making. An active board of trade was responsible for the establishment, in 1903, of the Lackawanna Leather Company and The American Saw Mill Company.
Octogan House.
This arcitectural oddity is located on Washington Street.
This eight sided house was built in 1859 for postmaster John Rice.

Post Office.
The post office in Hackettstown was established in 1795.
It has been in seven different buildings since then.

Saw Mill.
Opened in 1903, this company was a major industry in the area.
The factory is now occupied by the Bergen Machine Tool Co.

Soldiers Monument.
This monument stood at the intersection of Route 46 and
Mountain Avenue from 1896 until 1926.

Independence Region
The township of Independence was incorporated on November 11, 1782. The town of Hackettstown was removed from it in 1853 and Allamuchy Township in 1873. The northern half of the township is dominated by a low-lying glacially formed valley formerly known as The Great Swamp or Great Meadows. It was drained and converted to farmland in the nineteenth century.
The township was sparsely settled before the Revolutionary War. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, small villages began to form as the population growth necessitated a centralized location for trade and socializing. Vienna contained six houses in 1800, and a mill was established in Great Meadows in 1815. By 1830, the township contained eight stores, six saw mills, a number of tanneries and four distilleries.
Following the discovery of the value of lime as a fertilizer, many of the farms added private limestone kilns for the burning of the product. The limestone was heated, pulverized and plowed into the soil. This occurred between 1820 and 1900.
There existed a great health hazard caused by the threat of malaria due to the large meadow lands. As early as 1808, unsuccessful attempts were made to drain the meadows. Finally, it was successfully drained between 1830-1840. By the 1850's large areas of the Great Meadows were converted into farmland.
An important industry that rose prior to the Civil War was the mining of magnetite ore from the Jenny Jump Mountains. These mines operated between 1868 and 1879.
In 1881-1882, the Lehigh And Hudson Railroad built its line through the township. A train station, at Great Meadows, was built in 1882 in a stick style design. It survives today and was placed on the National Register Of Historic Places in 1989.
Independence Hotel.
This hotel at Great Meadows was built about 1855.
It was remodeled a fiew years ago
and is now an apartment house.

Rail Road Station.
The Great Meadows Station was built about 1882.
This photo dates to about 1910.

Vienna School.
The Vienna School was built in 1883 at a cost of $13.00 plus $25.00
for the land, $15.00 for a stove and $13.00 for the backhouse and gate.