page_title: Sussex County Community College
section_title: College Hill before SCCC
hierarchical_section_title: Sussex County Community College / History / College Hill before SCCC
caption_attribution_description: Formerly a Roman Catholic seminary called Don Bosco College. Now Sussex County Community College in Newton, New Jersey.
context_page_description: Sussex County Community College is a public community college in the town of Newton in Sussex County, New Jersey. The college is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and several of its programs are further accredited by state government agencies and national occupational standards associations.
  Established in 1981, Sussex County Community College acquired its 167-acre current campus in 1989. Before then, the location was the site of Don Bosco College, a former Roman Catholic seminary. SCCC's hillside campus is located along Mill Street between Swartswood Road and Plotts Road in Newton. The college has expanded by adding new classroom and instruction space and offering twenty-three associate degree programs, as well as several career and certificate programs. The student body, while it has declined in recent years comprises over 3,000 full-time and part-time students. The college's athletic teams participate in the Garden State Athletic Conference.
context_section_description: The land on which the Sussex County Community College campus is located was first settled before 1751 by Newton's first settler, Henry Hairlocker. Hairlocker, a German Palatine emigrant, operated a tavern on the site. Jonathan Hampton, a surveyor and land investor from Elizabethtown, New Jersey, built his Military Road through the area in 1755 during the French and Indian War. In 1762, before the construction of the county's first courthouse was completed in 1765, the county government and courts held sessions at Hairlocker's tavern. This structure was razed in January 1944. Newark-based saddle and harness manufacturer, John A. Horton (1807–1858) purchased the property and began construction of a mansion blending features of Rural Gothic and Italianate architecture with plans to establish a working farm on his estate. The mansion was completed in 1858 although several of Horton's plans would not be finished as a consequence of his death. The estate remained in the Horton family until 1921.
  On September 12, 1928, the property was sold to the Missionary Society of the Salesian Congregation who organized a Roman Catholic seminary at the Horton Mansion which they renamed to St. Joseph’s House of Studies. The seminary would complete construction of a large red-brick building "to provide dormitories, library, class rooms and laboratories for training Salesian teachers and priests" in 1931. It later became known as Don Bosco College, after nineteenth-century Italian priest John Bosco who dedicated his life to the betterment and education of street children, juvenile delinquents, and other disadvantaged youth.  According to local historian Kevin W. Wright, the seminary "received boys who desired to become priests and educators according to the Rule of the Salesian Congregation. The school provided high school courses and a one-year Novitiate, and three-year trial vows for those considering a religious profession. After two-years of this advanced training, the young Salesian left Newton to teach at one of the Salesian boarding schools in Ramsey, Goshen, or New Rochelle".
  Don Bosco erected a building for classrooms, faculty offices, and living quarters on campus in 1963.
caption: Main Building, built in 1931 to house a Roman Catholic seminary
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