Do you have a county boundary nemesis? I do, in the form of New Jersey. I have yet to come up with a one stop way to figure out where the Windsor townships are in any given year. Legally, I know that Windsor Township split into East and West Windsor on 9 February 1797 while these were in Middlesex County. The townships were incorporated in 1798 and their boundaries changed when Hightstown borough formed in 1853 and Washington Township formed in 1860.
Cartographically, the townships do not appear on Tanner’s 1836 state map of New Jersey, the one which shows Hunterdon, Middlesex, and Burlington Counties coming to a mash up right at Trenton. The 1845 state map shows the formation of Mercer County and shows Hightstown but now the mash up is complicated by the borders of Monmouth and Middlesex county changing to accommodate Mercer. And a call out to other New Jersey genealogists produced the suggestion from fellow researchers of John F. Snyder’s The Story of New Jersey’s Civil Boundaries 1608-1968. What a wonderful resource. Here is a chronology for East Windsor township:
- 1797 Formed from Windsor twp. in Middlesex Co.
- 1798 Incorporated.
- 1838 Most set off to Mercer Co.; part to South Amboy twp., Middlesex Co.
- 1853 Part to Hightstown bor. within twp.
- 1857 Boundary with Hightstown bor. changed.
- 1860 Part to Washington twp.
- 1894? Hightstown bor. set off from twp.
- 1913 Part to Hightstown bor.
- 1915 Part to Hightstown bor.
- 1927 Part to Hightstown bor.
When researching the early 19th century generation of the Mount family it pays to search in Monmouth, Mercer and Middlesex counties. I have already tracked my mother’s line back to my great-great-grandmother Mary Jane Mount, and I have written about Thomas Hiram Mount and his wife Catherine Fisher Mount. I wanted to flesh out some of the details of his parents, Hiram Mount (1786-1847) and Margaret Allen Mount (1790-1865). There are numerous Mounts in the area and figuring out which is which is proving complicated.
Hiram Mount was born on 10 August 1786 but where is proving difficult. The early census in New Jersey are missing or incomplete. The 1830 Census (Upper Freehold, Monmouth, NJ) is the first in which Hiram Mount appears and the household has the appropriate 5 people in the right gender/age groups. At some point before 1808 he married Margaret Allen, daughter of Thomas Allen and Mary Forman Allen. I have not yet found a marriage record for them. But in the one tax list I can find online, Iram (Hiram) Mount is paying taxes on two horses and two cattle and the column for “Single male with horse” is blank.
Hiram and Margaret had four children that I know of:
- William Mount (1808-1817)
- Thomas Hiram Mount (1812-1876)
- Rebecca Ely Mount (1814-1892)
- William H. Mount (1818-1877)
The three living children are mentioned in Hiram’s Monmouth County 1845 will and there is a clue there about how this Monmouth County family came to be in Mercer County. Hiram divides his land holdings between his two sons, mentioning that he leaves Thomas the “plantation or farm” in which he currently lives. I matched that with a house history I uncovered in doing Thomas H. Mount’s essay and Voila!
Thomas H. Mount moved onto this site soon after his father Hiram (d. 1847) bought it in 1834.
Upper Freehold is less than 10 miles from Hightstown, which was probably one of the closest towns of any size at this point in history. Once again #52ancestors challenges me to add up all the facts and write them down.
Telling My Story 