A stone building was erected in the mids and, in , its stones were reused for the present larger structure set back further off the road. In , some members who had moved up to Sussex County built a meeting house there, and for a time Monthly meetings were alternated between Kingwood Quakertown and Hardwick until Picture the village of Quakertown dotted with log cabins and the beginnings of commerce in the early s.
The men were primarily farmers, but plied their trades of tanning, carpentry, blacksmithing and more. It was a thriving business center, with a general store, hat shop, and a tavern. Yes, a tavern! Quakers were supposed to refrain from dressing flashy, drinking, lottery playing, profanity, and marrying non-Friends. But minutes of the Kingwood Meeting are filled with names of Friends who broke the rules. One particular item in notes that, "The committee on reformation report there is one Friend keeps a tavern which is under care.
The old burying ground behind the Meeting House is filled with early stones that are either blank or contain only initials, as was the Quaker style back in the s. Later stones of those interred in the s have full names inscribed and are descendants of the early Friends who first settled this picturesque plateau: Clifton, Robeson, Hampton, Rockhill, Emley, Willson, Large, King, Johnston, Stevenson, Allen, Laing, Wolverton and Vail.
In the Friends opened another cemetery a short distance away to serve as a burial ground for non-Quakers. Some of the same family names can be found in this graveyard as well. While Quakertown was growing, so was Pittstown, located a mile or so downhill in a valley bisected by the Capoolong Creek and its' tributaries, perfect waterways to be used as mill streams. Edward Rockhill, a prominent early Quaker, built his homestead in Pittstown around , a gristmill in the s and began practicing medicine there in Then Charles Hoff, a non-Quaker, bought much of the land that is now Pittstown and built a mill, an iron forge, and ran a general store.
In , Moore Furman, of Trenton, purchased the property known then as Hoff's Mills, and is said to have renamed it Pittstown. Furman established a nail factory, distillery, flour mills, general store, a hotel and dwelling houses.
The hotel, or tavern, may have been built upon an original structure belonging to Charles Hoff, and was enlarged by Furman in It still stands today but has withstood a huge fire in , and undergone many changes and additions. By , tiny, one-room stone or clapboard cottages with sleeping lofts began to replace the area's log cabins, and in Charles Hoff sold property he owned on the outskirts of Quakertown to his sister Phebe and her husband, Benjamin Coddington.
The Coddingtons erected one of those early stone cottages, but did not stay long, as the property then transferred to a Quaker, Peter Potter, in Potter, who had established a tanning business along the stream that runs through the farmland, made the serious mistake of marrying 'out of unity' and he was dismissed from the Meeting.
In Potter and his wife Mary moved away, selling the house and business to a young man from Shrewsbury, Monmouth County, our John Allen. It is unclear whether Allen was a Quaker before moving here, but he quickly joined the Friends Meeting. We suspect it was because he was smitten with Mary Large, a local Quaker girl who lived a short distance away from his new homestead and tannery. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War was in full swing.
Moore Furman became deputy quartermaster general of provisions for George Washington's army, and Pittstown became a base of activities for the troops. The village's citizens and military personnel were actively working to gather men, food, horses and other provisions for the Continental army. Due to their pacifist beliefs, the members of the Religious Society of Friends who inhabited the nearby village of Quakertown did not participate in the War, but some did allow provisions to be stored and hidden on their properties.
In Moore Furman built a mill in Pittstown specifically for military use, and grain was ground to feed soldiers camped at Jockey Hollow and other New Jersey encampments.
In our search to find out if the British had occupied Quakertown during the War, friends of ours found a Revolutionary War pension claim made by Jacob Gearhart in Gearhart stated that, " In the Spring of the year he volunteered as a private in the Company commanded by Captain Jacob Gearhart his father at Kingwood Township, Hunterdon County, New Jersey-and was immediately appointed orderly Sergeant of the Company-the Company was first marched to Pittstown to guard the Continental stores there.
Had a guard house between Pittstown and Quakertown. Continued in the service keeping guard in the spring of the year till August Seventeen hundred and seventy nine. We guarded Quakertown as well as Pittstown Young Jacob Gearhart was about fourteen when he joined the company commanded by his father. The elder Gearhart had been one of the men who helped gather boats for Washington's crossing of the Delaware on Christmas day, This information seemed to confirm that no British troops occupied Quakertown or Pittstown.
How could they with all those Continental troops around at the time? We recently came across an entry in a diary by a man named James Parker that puts a little twist into our argument. Parker was later discovered to be a Loyalist, and he resided on property a mile north of Pittstown.
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