It Happened in Hillsborough: The Hillsborough Poor Farm

How will a community care for its poor? This is a question Hillsborough Township has contemplated since before the municipality was Hillsborough Township. Meeting minutes of the Westering Precinct of Somerset County - the name for the combined future townships of Hillsborough and Montgomery - regularly include notations of funds to be raised for indigent residents. 

The Hillsborough Poor Farm

On at least a couple of occasions after Hillsborough and Montgomery split in 1771, attempts were made to establish permanent housing for the poor both locally and at the county level. Apparently, these attempts received no support, as the Overseers of the Poor were directed in 1824 to purchase a poor farm jointly with Montgomery. Some sources say that this was the Van Pelt Farm on the southbound side of Great Road/Belle Mead-Blawenburg Road/Rt. 601 before the intersection with Grandview Road.

The enterprise lasted until 1836, when the Poor Farm was folded and the property sold. The next year, the township purchased a 120-acre tract on Amwell Road west of Neshanic known as the Indian Farm from J.S. Young and his wife for $5,000 - about $130,000 today. The original farmhouse on the property was used to house the inmates (the term for those persons without income or any means of support who were committed to the farm) until about 1858, when a new, large, two-story house was erected. The last custodian of the Poor Farm, Mrs. Florence Brown, was interviewed in her later years and described the building’ss original layout. A center hall with a staircase to the second floor separated the custodians’ quarters on the west front and rear living rooms with bedrooms above - and inmate’ quarters on the east - front common living room with three bedrooms in the rear, along with a bathroom and the kitchen, and six bedrooms and a bath above on the second floor.

Inmates - men, women, and sometimes children - lived and worked on the farm. They grew some of what they needed to eat and sold enough produce to fund the purchase of other staples and household goods. Still, when the custodian’s salary was figured in, it was unlikely that the farm would break even. The Courier News reprinted the original resolutions for the “conduct of the paupers” from April 1837:

“1 - Any pauper that brings spiritous liquors about the place to be punished therefore.”

No. 2 - Any pauper that comes drunk or gets intoxicated on the premises to be punished therefor.

No. 3 - Any pauper that refuses to do labor that the steward thinks him capable of performing or abuses the steward while he is in conduct of his duties, to be punished therefor. Punishment to consist in not allowing any food until the steward is satisfied that he will comply with the rules.”

The Browns were the final custodians of the Poor Farm between about 1926 and 1947. Under their management, the farm established a large dairy herd with all modern facilities and a modern poultry operation. In the 20th century, the number of poor working on the farm varied - from a high of 16 during the Depression down to just two men when Hillsborough voters approved the discontinuance of the farm by a vote of 354 to 272 on November 6, 1946. The property was sold at auction on January 18, 1947.

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Gregory Gillette has been writing about local history for 20 years, starting with his Courier News column “Gillette on Hillsborough” and continuing today with a Facebook page of the same name. He was named as Hillsborough’s first Local Historian in 2025.