Warren Township celebrates its bicentennial this year, marking two hundred years since its founding in 1806. In fact, the civil history of the township begins more than a century earlier when Somerset County was formed.

The legislators who created New Jersey’s fifth county in 1688 had only limited knowledge of the central part of the colony. Although they intended to set off the mountainous portion of Middlesex County into a new County of Somerset, the northern boundary of the new county actually ran along the base of the Blue Hills (today’s Watchung Mountains). As created, Somerset County was nothing more than a triangular rump of land bordered on the north by the Bound and Green Brooks. Today’s Warren Township, then inhabited only by the Lenni Lenape, remained part of western Essex County.

In 1710 a large portion of northern Middlesex County was finally annexed to Somerset, tripling its size. What would later become Warren Township, however, remained part of Essex until 1741 when much of western Essex County (there was no Union County at that time) was annexed to Somerset, doubling it in size and bringing its borders substantially in line with today’s.

   Originally, Somerset County was considered one township, so sparse was its population. Around 1745 it was divided into Northern, Western and Eastern Precincts. The present township system dates to April 1749 when Bridgewater and Bedminster Townships (both in the Northern Precinct) were created by letters patent issued by King George II. Bridgewater’s northern boundary ran along the crest of the Second Mountain, its eastern boundary followed King’s Road (possibly today’s Hillcrest Road and Somerset Street) south to Lawrence Ruth’s mill on the Green Brook. What remained of the Northern Precinct was chartered as Bernardston Township in 1760.

   During the rest of the 18th century present-day Warren Township south of the crest of the Second Mountain was part of Bridgewater Township, while present-day Watchung and Warren Township north of the crest of the Second Mountain were part of Bernards Township. Sprawling nearly 15 miles from east to west, from the Watchung Mountains to the Hunterdon County line, Bridgewater proved too unwieldy, too diverse, to survive as a single political unit. During the 19th century Bridgewater was to give birth to seven other Somerset County towns – Warren, North Plainfield, Watchung, Green Brook, Branchburg, Somerville and Raritan.

   Warren was the first to claim its independence. In February 1799 109 “Freeholders and Inhabitants of the Easterly parts of…Bernard and Bridgewater” petitioned the State Legislature for a new township, claiming “that the local Situation of the Inhabitants of said Townships is such at present which renders it very Inconvenient to attend Town meetings with many other Difficulties.” Preserved in the state’s archives are two other petitions dated the same year: One, signed by 64 residents “of the North west end of the Township of Bernards” in support, another subscribed by residents of Montgomery Township in opposition. “Your petitioners conceive of the impropriety of the inhabitants of Barnards township indevouring to having that township Divided,” wrote the Montgomery Township opposers. “Your Petitioners would Beg leave to Suggest…if that Should be the Case theay will always have A Majority of Votes on that Side of the River Rerriton when ever the freeholders or assessors meets and on many other Accounts” The petitioners “humbly requested” that the State Legislature “put a Stop to their undertaking.”

   For the next seven years the documentary record is silent. Then, on February 10, 1806, Somerset County Assemblyman James Van Duyne of the Eastern Precinct (today’s Franklin Township), rising in opposition to a bill to create a new township from the eastern parts of Bridgewater and Bernards, offered “sundry petitions” against the proposal. Although no one is recorded as speaking in favor of the bill, on March 5, 1806, the legislation was called up for a vote and passed by a margin of 22 to 14. All three Somerset County legislatures voted “nay.”

   What role politics played in delaying the creation of Warren Township for seven years is unknown. More than likely, voters in the lower townships who were none too happy at the prospect that the county’s upper townships would gain additional votes on the Board of Freeholders, then composed of two freeholders from each township, did what they could to scuttle the legislation.

   Designated as Chapter 192 of the Laws of 1806, the act creating Warren Township provided that the first town meeting would be held “on the second Monday of April next, at the house of David Stewart, tavernkeeper.” Stewart’s tavern, later known as Demler’s Hotel and during the 20th century as the Washington House, was a popular rest stop along the stagecoach route from Trenton to Morristown. Built in 1773, it stood on Somerset Street in Watchung (then Warren) across from the Stony Brook until a spectacular fire destroyed it in 1963.

   Warren’s first town meeting, held on April 14, 1804, probably attracted about 100 voters, all men and all landowners. By voice vote, the inhabitants of Warren agreed to raise $800 in taxes, to be split equally between work on the highways and support of the poor. Jacob Smalley was elected Moderator, Thomas Terrill, Town Clerk. John Wilson, Alexander Kirkpatrick, Frederick Vermeule, James Wymsess and Isaac Smalley gained seats on Warren’s first Township Committee.

   Sixty-six years after its creation Warren fell victim to the same centrifugal forces that gave it birth. By the time of the Civil War, the village of North Plainfield, although politically a part of Warren, was a very different place from the mountainous farmlands of the upper township. Since the coming of the Central Railroad, farm lands had gradually been supplanted by modest dwellings and businesses. “The place has been laid out on the lands of the farms,” wrote a 19th century historian, “and has been largely settled by people from New York, or those who do business in that city. The trains so run that they can go into the city in the morning and return in the evening…. [North Plainfield] is one of those suburban places where people of moderate means seek quiet and inexpensive homes in the pure air and ample spaces of the country.”

   And not only did “people of moderate means” settle in North Plainfield village. In 1867 ten New York business people began quietly buying up farmland a mile or so west of the Plainfield railroad station. In July 1868 they announced plans for Washington Park, a 300-acre enclave laid out for “Villa sites” where every home would have a minimal construction cost of $5,000, a grand sum on those days. A planned residential community, Washington Park was designed to emulate Llewellyn Park in West Orange and Short Hills in Millburn. “[D]riving through the serpentine roadways, one knows not whether most to admire the scenery of the valley and mountain beyond, or the taste displayed in the buildings and grounds before him,” gushed an adoring publicist for the railroad in 1873.

   Compared to sparsely populated upper Warren, North Plainfield village was a boom town. In 1872 over 500 youngsters were attending its schools, in contrast to some 300 in Warren’s sleepy villages. The 1870 census counted 2705 people in Warren, of which more than 60% lived in what would soon become North Plainfield Township. In its politics, North Plainfield village tended to vote Republican while upper Warren was strongly Democratic. Perhaps most important of all, villagers were businessmen, artisans, shopkeepers and homeowners, what we would today call “suburbanites,” while upper Warren was ruled by “the Dictator,” Daniel Cory, an old school politician who held the township’s rustics in his iron grip. So different had upper and lower Warren become that the separation that came in 1872 seems inevitable.

   Tradition has it that the leaders of Washington Park were “instrumental” in having North Plainfield set off from the rest of Warren Township. Whatever political forces were at work (and there is no documentary evidence of what occurred), they achieved success on April 2, 1872, when the State Legislature voted to detach the lower half of Warren Township (nearly 16 of its 33 square miles and about 60% of its population) to create North Plainfield Township.

   The new township, which then included what would become Watchung and Green Brook, was itself broken up in 1885 when its core residential area was set off as North Plainfield Borough. North Plainfield Township split again in 1926 when Watchung, an area much like Warren, seceded. Later, in 1932, what was left of the township changed its name to Green Brook.