Welcome to the official page of Historic Bound Brook,NJ ,08805. Bound Brook was founded on American history including the Revolutionary War The battle of Bound Brook and is the oldest town in Somerset County with a lot of beautiful historical landmarks and has some of the most awesome stories to tell & with our old-fashioned postcards, We are a journey through the past with a bright upris
ing future ahead. The area was first settled in 1681 and a community was established near the Bound Brook stream of the same name, which flows into the Raritan River via the Green Brook on the eastern side of the borough. Bound Brook was originally incorporated as a town by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 24, 1869, within portions of Bridgewater Township. On February 11, 1891, it was reincorporated as a borough, based on the results of a referendum held on the previous day. Our page tells you the latest updates in Weather ,Town Emergencies, Amber Alerts Missing Children ,Lost animals Town Parades Ceremonies events yard sales flea markets rummage sales buildings for rent local business throughout our town advertisements and the latest Arts ,Entertainment Bars & Nightlife. We are a generous town with caring neighbors & pleasant community filled with historical landmarks and we welcome you to our neighborhood! Feel free to contact us our Private Messaging inbox is always open someone will always get back to you. More History of Bound Brook, NJ:
About Bound Brook
In 1681, 100 pounds of trade goods was the purchase price paid to the Lenape Indians for the land where Bound Brook now stands. Thomas Codrington, who the only Proprietor (one of the English merchants who purchased what is New York from Berkely and Carteret families) actually to build a house and reside on his land, received 877 acres of the purchase. A settlement grew on this tract, and Bound Brook became the first settled town in Somerset County. Several of the early settlers purchased tracts of 1,000 acres each. The Raritan River was the first means of transportation for the early settlers, but in time the Great Raritan Road and Old York Road offered transportation for people and supplies. Over the next century, the town grew slowly, in spite of the constant threats of the floods and freshets of the Raritan River. At the time of the Revolutionary War, the town had grown to 35 families. Both the British and Continental Armies conducted forays in and about town for needed supplies. Washington's army was encamped twice at Middlebrook. On April 13, 1777, the British stationed at New Brunswick sent a force to attack the outpost manned by General Lincoln's troops. On October 26, 1780, Colonel Simcoe and his troop of Loyalist Cavalry conducted a sweep through the area, destroying boats at Van Veghten bridge and burning both the Dutch Reformed Church along the river west of town and the Somerset Court House at Millstone. Recuperating from the ravages of the war, the town experienced slow growth until 1806, when the New Jersey Turnpike Company began construction of a toll road from New Brunswick to Phillipsburg via Bound Brook and Somerville. This road was heavily used by farmers moving their products to New Brunswick. Some days, the gatekeeper could count up to 500 wagons moving produce to New Brunswick. The Swift-Sure Stage Line established before the Revolution made three trips each week from New York to Philadelphia via the Old York Road in 1826. Another factor in the town's growth was the building of the Delaware and Raritan Canal, begun in 1830 and completed in 1834. The canal was open from April through December, and an unending stream of barges traveled the waterway day and night, carrying more freight than any other U.S. In 1867, 3 million tons of cargo were transported via this waterway. Yet another factor in the town's growth was the coming of the railroad. Begun in 1831, the Elizabethtown and Somerville Railroad reached Bound Brook in 1838, supplying a new mode of travel to the area and bringing new residents and industries to town. At this time, there were 80 dwellings, and 566 inhabitants called Bound Brook home. In the years after the Civil War, the Reading Railroad and Lehigh Valley Railroad ran lines through town. The availability of an hour's ride to New York City enticed many New York businessmen to build homes and move their families to the attractive small town within commuting distance of their places of business. Some 100 passenger and freight trains passed through town in a
day during these years, and the town became a hub of railroad business with roundhouses and turntables servicing the five lines that passed through the area. Another innovation was the trolley lines that came to town in 1887, later to be electrified in 1897. All these travel conveniences brought industries to town, changing its tenor from a sleepy farm village to a busy small industry town. In 1855, John Smalley & Company built farm machinery in a factory at the corner of John and Church Streets. The Herberts ran a thriving gristmill on Easton Turnpike west of town. In 1880, the Einstein Brothers opened their Woolen Mills, employing 300 workers. In addition to these, other small businesses drew in new residents so that in 1898, 2,600 people resided here. The rising population brought the need for additional educational facilities. For more than two centuries, there had been a succession of one-room schools presided over by consecutive schoolmasters. In the 1870s, Lafayette School was built and boasted 189 students. Likewise, population growth brought the need for additional churches. Until 1846, the Presbyterian church was the only one in town. The Methodist, Episcopal and, in 1876, the Roman Catholic denominations all had congregations and had built places of worship. Floods and fires seem to be the town's nemesis, for almost annually the Raritan River would flood, causing damage to the center of town. In 1881, a disastrous fire destroyed all the buildings in a block of Main Street. In 1896, flooding caused the lime in the L.D. Cook lumberyard to ignite by spontaneous combustion. Fanned by strong winds, the fire spread to and destroyed the Presbyterian church building erected in 1829. The 1881 conflagration brought about the formation of afire department. Since the town lacked a fire department of its own, it was necessary to bring fire equipment by railroad latcar from Somerville to fight the disastrous conflagration. As the town grew, so did the need for a local paper. Several were printed in Somerville, but the deficiency was corrected by the publication of the short-lived Argus, the Rock, and the Family Casket. The Family Casket was begun in Whitehouse Station but was moved to Bound Brook in 1877 by owner Andrew Shampanore, who also changed its name to the Chronicle. In 1884, W.B.R. Mason purchased the newspaper from Shampanore and ran it for 53 years until he sold it to Irving Reimer in 1937. There was also a short-lived German-language newspaper published in town. William R. Whiting became the first mayor when a borough form of government was adopted on February 10, 1891, after severing the town from Bridgewater Township. At this time, there were no paved streets, no sidewalks, and kerosene supplied the lights to the more than 3,000 residents. Amenities came with expansion: a public library in 1897; a hospital in 1927; police force in 1917; two theaters, one boasting a fine stringed pit orchestra; and three additional schools-a high school in 1907, LaMonte School in 1914, and Smalley School in 1951. As the 20th century arrived, Bound Brook's population continued to increase. This was because the town remained a railroad hub with 30 trains running daily to and from New York City as well as direct service to Philadelphia. In 1917, a round-trip fare to New York City was $8.80. Such easily available transportation lured additional factories to the area that depended on the local workforce for staff. World War I saw 500 men and women from Bound Brook, South Bound Brook, and Middlesex serve their country overseas. During World War II, the number of Bound Brook service personnel was many times larger. The industries that had located in the area during the time between the wars worked around the clock producing products for the war effort. This increased activity brought about a great population boom and a housing shortage. Today, the large industries are gone, and the railroad only employs a small number of people. Moreover, faces in town have changed to reflect a more diverse population. Only time will tell what the 21st century has in store for the little village on the Raritan, settled first more than 300 years ago. Reproduced with Permission
Images of America Bound Brook
Copyright 2000 by Dorothy A. Stratford and Margaret McKay
Published by Arcadia Publishing
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About Middlebrook
The stretch of West Main Street bounded on the east and west by the railroad, contains the oldest standing structures in Bound Brook and is its oldest intact neighborhood. Originally settled in the early 1700s, the hamlet of Middlebrook grew contemporaneous with but separate to Bound Brook until the early 1800s. Consisting of between 6-8 structures by the time of the American Revolution, the village was situated along the Old York Road on the first ridge of high ground north of the Raritan River. It was known as Middlebrook or as the "upper part of Bound Brook". Prior to settlement by Europeans, the area was the location of a pre-historic Indian village and trail complex. The most notable structure in the village was Vossellor's Tavern later known as Fisher's Hotel. Located on the northwest corner of Vossellor and West Main Street, this building stood until early in this century. During the mid 1700s, the tavern was a popular stop for travelers going between New York and Philadelphia. There is a strong likelihood that George Washington stayed at this tavern during his first visit to Bound Brook in 1773. In the time of the American Revolution, there seem to have been 7 houses located at Middlebrook. Vossellor's Tavern (already mentioned), another structure opposite on the northeast corner of the Vossellor Avenue - West Main Street intersection, a grouping of 4 houses on the south side of West Main Street and another house on the north side of Talmage Avenue at the crossing of the Middle brook. It is believed that remains of at least two 18th century houses remain incorporated in existing structures on the south side of West Main Street. These houses may have served as quarters for Continental Army officers and soldiers during the spring of 1777 and during the winter of 1778-79 when the main portion of Washington's Army was encamped north and west of Bound Brook. It is known that at least one of these houses was used by an officer of the Continental Engineers during 1779 and other houses may have been used by high ranking officers in the Maryland Line, who were encamped one mile north. In the 19th century, Middlebrook gradually lost its identity becoming an extension of Bound Brook itself. By 1860, 21 buildings were located along this stretch of road, some of which still remain standing. In the 1870s, the construction of the Bound Brook Woolen Mills brought a large industry to this section of the borough. Many residents of the West Main Street area were employed at the mills. Throughout the 20th century, this area has retained its residential and agricultural character. On the extreme west end of the street was located the "Middlebrook Stock farm" which was one of Somerset Counties most successful dairies. While new building construction has changed and intruded upon the historic landscape, this street still retains a fine selection of 19th century architecture including the oldest standing buildings in the borough. Used with Permission
By Ernest Bower
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Battle of Bound Brook Info: www.njskylands.com/hsBoundBrook.htm
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The Historic Old Stone Bridge: http://www.preservationnj.org/site/ExpEng/index.php?/ten_most_12/archive_by_year_detail/2002/Old_Stone_Bridge
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Historic Somerset
Intro
Shem Systems Corporation has scanned in the Bound Brook chapter from a book titled Historic Somerset, compiled by J.H. Van Horn, and published by the Compiler for the Historical Societies, New Jersey in 1965. We wish to thanks the Somerset County Historical Society for granting us permission to put this content onto our website.
-Shem Systems Corporation
On a map of New Jersey by Adriaen Vander Donck, dated 1656, the Raritan River is shown from its mouth to its north and south branches, and there the river is given its present name. From this it is reasonable to assume that Dutchmen were the first Europeans to visit the site on the north bank of the Raritan's big bend, which was to become the Borough of Bound Brook. Bordering the site on the east and west was waterpower in abundance and on the south a spacious waterway flowing to the coast. Equally, if not more important, the place was a suitable location for a trading post; for among the early Dutch were those who came to barter with the natives. They hoped to return to Holland made rich in the fabulous fur trade of those times. Here then was a location that lent itself to what was uppermost in mind; a crossroads, so to speak, of Indian trails merging from the north, south and west - a mart in the wilderness, ready-made. At this point on the Raritan we find that a tract of land was transferred by the first recorded land title deed in the county. It was executed on May 4, 1681; parties to the same were two Raritan (Lenni-Lenape) Indians, the grantors, and Governor Philip Carteret with others, the grantees. Though there was no acreage stated, and some of its then meets and bounds have long since disappeared, it is known that the area included what is now the Borough of Bound Brook. For a settlement no larger than this village of one and six-tenths square miles, much has taken place. From its earliest to present times it has been a prominent stop on routes of trade and travel. Its most eventful days were those of the Revolution. Then, the village was the oldest and largest settlement in the county; with a church, a tavern, a blockhouse, and thirty-three houses. Some of the events that occurred in this vicinity were of such importance as to be included in our national history, but it is the local incidents of which we write, and these are described in the accounts that follow. Getting now to more recent times, we find that by 1800 New Jersey was becoming prosperous from its production of flour, leather,
lumber, iron, and livestock. To reach the markets there was need for roads, and it was then that the era of the turnpike was on its
way. In 1806 construction was started on the original New Jersey Turnpike, a toll highway from New Brunswick to Phillipsburg via Bound Brook and Somerville. Next, in 1808 a turnpike from Perth Amboy through Metuchen joined it at Bound Brook, when traffic through the village was at times amazing. By 1841 the Elizabethtown and Somerville Railroad (later the Jersey Central) had built its tracks as far west as the Yellow Tavern, a temporary station 1/4-mile east of the Borough of Bound Brook. For the village, this must have been a momentous event. Not only was it an invaluable utility to the neighborhood, but it laid the way for Bound Brook to become a New York City commuters' town. During the period 1886-1890, the area saw the introduction in New Brunswick of the horse-drawn streetcar. In 1895 its conversion to an electric system, known as the Brunswick Traction Company, took place. In 1897 it commenced the extension of its system from New Brunswick via the Albany Street Bridge, the River Road, Bound Brook and Somerville, to Raritan. However, progress was rudely interrupted. Another concern, the New York-Philadelphia Traction Company, attempted to block the project. It went so far as to employ an engineering concern of Maryland to construct two miles of a finished electric rail system over part of the right-of-way then in dispute. This was accomplished by working hundreds of imported Negro laborers on a Sunday, when the law was nowhere near to intercede. At once litigation started that resulted in the New Brunswick company's preventing further hindrance or interruption. Finally, that company bought up the assets of the New York-Philadelphia Company, and in 1898 the line was in operation, end to end. By 1904 similar projects resulted in additional street railway service from New York City through Newark to Bound Brook and on to Trenton. That form of transport lasted until 1931 when the auto jitney came in vogue; and though unauthorized and uncontrolled, it served well the many short-distance riders of the times. In turn, the jitneys gave way to the motor buses of today, which, as we know, adjust themselves to current needs, whatever they may be. There was a time when the Jersey Central, Baltimore and Ohio, Philadelphia and Reading, Lehigh Valley and Port Reading Railroads together moved more than a hundred fast passenger, coal, and heavy freight cars through the borough daily. This traffic, over three parallel rights-of-way but 200 feet in width called for rail roading at its best. On the western edge of town the tracks crossed Main Street at two points within a quarter-mile. Here it was that serious accidents frequently occurred, either through the driver's fault or from the fractious horses frightened by the noise. The solution to this dilemma was not an over or an underpass, but a simpler one - swinging one block of West Main Street from east and west, 90° north and south, where traffic from the east took the main road going west by a right turn and a next left. Soon thereafter the road east and west out of West Main Street, known as the Easton Turnpike, became the Shun-Pike; and the shunt, in 1926, became Columbus Place. Thus the dog-leg on West Main Street was a lifesaver, and will no doubt remain. Recognized as a town in 1869, Bound Brook was separated from Bridgewater Township and incorporated as a borough in 1891; and in all its years there were but two fires that did extensive damage - one in 1881 and the other in 1896. It was the latter that caused the greater loss, including the historic Presbyterian church in East Main Street. From earliest Colonial days the stream Bound Brook was the name given the more prominent of the minor branches emptying into the Raritan. Among the Records of New Jersey that name was used in numerous deeds defining local land ownership. Authentic evidence shows it was Bound Brook and not Green Brook that emptied into the Raritan, thus refuting the name applied to it on some maps of today. Evidence to that fact we note below:
Grants and Concessions of New Jersey, 1664-1702, shows, among the laws passed at the General Assembly in the Town of Perth Amboy in 1688, " ... an act dividing the County of Middlesex into two counties.... Be it therefore enacted by the Governor's Council and Deputies now in General Assembly and by authority of the same, that the said uppermost part of the Raritan, beginning at the mouth of the Bound Brook where it empties itself into the Raritan River, and to run up the said brook to the meeting of the said Bound Brook with the Green Brook, and from the said meeting, to run upon a northwest line into the hills; and upon the southwest side of the Raritan, to begin at a small brook where it empties itself into the Raritan about 70 chains below the Bound Brook and from thence to run upon a southwest line to the uttermost line of the Province, be divided from the said County of Middlesex and to thereafter be deemed taken, and to be a County of the Province, and that same county be called the County of Somerset."
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Acts of Parliament
"A sketch of the operations of His Majesty's Fleet and Army. . . . Published according to an Act of Parliament, 1777, shows Bound Brook emptying into the Raritan."
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Maps o f the Revolution
" A map laid down chiefly from actual surveys received from the Right Honorable Lord Stirling and others, and delineated for the use of His Excellency General Washington, by Robert Erskine, F.R.S., 1777," shows Bound Brook emptying into the Raritan.
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State Surveys o f New Jersey
From the New Jersey Geologic Atlas, 1914, ..... Middlebrook and Bound Brook, which drain the southern slope of the First Mountain, the Washington Valley and a little of the inner slope of the Second Mountain, enter the Raritan at Bound Brook." So it was in 1688, that the name Bound Brook was officially applied to the stream, and in course of time a settlement grew upon its western bank that also took that name. Why, and when the name of the stream was changed from Bound Brook to Green Brook is not known, but whatever the reason it was not justified and should be restored to keep the record straight.
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