page_title: Sussex County, New Jersey
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Sussex County, New Jersey / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture of the Westbrook-Bell House (southeast elevation) built by Johannes Westbrook, c. 1701/1730 (sources vary) in the Minisink, located along Old Rine Road in Sandyston Township, NJ in Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. Oldest house still standing in Sussex County, New Jersey. Picture taken 13 July 1937, Library of Congress collection, from Nathaniel R. Ewan, Photographer Historical American Buildings Survey. Sussex County NJ Historical Marker: http://www.sussex.nj.us/Cit-e-Access/webpage.cfm?TID=7&amp;TPID=7989
context_page_description: Sussex County is the northernmost county in the State of New Jersey. Its county seat is Newton. It is part of the New York Metropolitan Area and is part of the state's Skylands Region, a term promoted by the New Jersey Commerce, Economic Growth, & Tourism Commission to encourage tourism. As of the 2019 Census estimate, the county's population was 140,488, making it the 17th-most populous of the state's 21 counties, a 5.9% decrease from the 149,265 enumerated in the 2010 United States Census, in turn an increase of 5,099 over the 144,166 persons enumerated in the 2000 Census. Based on 2010 Census data, Vernon Township was the county's largest in both population and area, with a population of 23,943 and covering an area of 70.59 square miles.
  In 2015, the county had a per capita personal income of $55,497, the ninth-highest in New Jersey and ranked 220th of 3,113 counties in the United States. As of 2010 The Bureau of Economic Analysis ranked the county as having the 131st-highest per capita income of the 3,113 counties in the United States.
  The county was established in 1753 and named after the county of Sussex in England.
context_section_description: The area of Sussex County and its surrounding region was occupied for approximately 8,000-13,000 years by succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples. The Munsee Indians inhabited the region at the time of European encounter. The Munsee were a loosely organized division of the Lenape (or Lenni Lenape), a Native American people also called "Delaware Indians" after their historic territory along the Delaware River. The Lenape inhabited the mid-Atlantic coastal areas and inland along the Hudson and Delaware rivers.  The Munsee spoke a very distinct dialect of the Lenape and inhabited a region bounded by the Hudson River, the head waters of the Delaware River and the Susquehanna River, and south to the Lehigh River and Conewago Creek.  As a result of disruption following the French and Indian War (1756–1763) the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, the main Lenape groups now live in Ontario  in Canada, and in Wisconsin and Oklahoma in the United States.
  As early as 1690, Dutch and French Huguenot colonists from towns along the Hudson River Valley in New York began permanently settling in the Upper Delaware Valley (known as the "Minisink").  The route these Dutch settlers had taken was the path of an old Indian trail and became the route of the Old Mine Road and stretches of present-date U.S. Route 209. These Dutch settlers penetrated the Minisink Valley and settled as far south as the Delaware Water Gap, by 1731 this valley had been incorporated as Walpack Precinct. Throughout the 18th century, immigrants from the Rheinland Palatinate in Germany and Switzerland fled religious wars and poverty to arrive in Philadelphia and New York City. Several German families began leaving Philadelphia to settle along river valleys in Northwestern New Jersey and Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in the 1720s, spreading north into Sussex County in the 1740s and 1750s as additional German emigrants arrived. Also during this time, Scottish settlers from Elizabethtown and Perth Amboy, and English settlers from these cities, Long Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, came to New Jersey and moved up the tributaries of the Passaic and Raritan rivers, settling in the eastern sections of present-day Sussex and Warren counties.
  By the 1750s, residents of this area began to petition colonial authorities for a new county to be formed; they complained of the inconvenience of long travel to conduct business with the government and the courts. By this time, four large townships had been created in this sparsely populated Northwestern region: Walpack Township (before 1731), Greenwich Township (before 1738), Hardwick Township (1750) and Newtown Township (1751). On June 8, 1753, Sussex County was created from these four municipalities, which had been part of Morris County when Morris stretched over all of northwestern New Jersey. Sussex County at this time encompassed present-day Sussex and Warren Counties and its boundaries were drawn by the New York-New Jersey border to the north, the Delaware River to the west, and the Musconetcong River to the south and east. After several decades of debate over where to hold the sessions of the county's courts, the state legislature eventually voted to divide Sussex County in two, using a line drawn from the juncture of the Flat Brook and Delaware River in a southeasterly direction to the Musconetcong River running through the Yellow Frame Presbyterian Church in present-day Fredon Township (then part of Hardwick). On November 20, 1824, Warren County was created from the southern territory of the Sussex County.
  Throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, Sussex County's economy was largely centered around agriculture and the mining of iron and zinc ores.  Early settlers established farms whose operations were chiefly focused towards subsistence agriculture.  Because of geological constraints, Sussex County's agricultural production was centered around dairy farming.  Several farms had orchards—typically apples and peaches—and surplus fruit and grains were often dis
caption: The Westbrook-Bell House in Sandyston Township is the oldest house still-standing in Sussex County, built by Dutch settler Johannes Westbrook in the early 18th century.
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