It Happened in Hillsborough: Neshanic

Hillsborough became serious about preserving its past around the time of the township’s bicentennial in 1971. Some of the ways it did this were by enacting a historic preservation ordinance, adding a Historic Preservation Plan Element to the Master Plan, and creating historic districts. There are six historic districts registered at the state and national level: South Branch (1977), Neshanic Mills (1978), Neshanic (1979), Millstone Valley Agricultural (1979), Clover Hill (1980), and Millstone River Road (1991). In this column, we’ll take a look at one of these every couple of months throughout the year.

Neshanic

The Neshanic Historic District, centered at the intersection of Amwell and Zion Roads, contains some of Hillsborough’s most important early buildings. At the time it was entered onto the National Register of
Historic Places in 1979, there were more than twenty contributing structures in the district. The area was first settled in the early to mid-1700s. The Dutch farmers who lived in the area split from the Readington Dutch Reformed Church in 1752 and formed their own congregation. The church, which can be seen today, was constructed between 1759 and 1772 and enlarged in the 1800s.

In the latter part of the 19 th century, besides the church and a school, the village also contained a tannery, a harness, wheelwright, and blacksmith shop, a shoe shop, a cabinet shop, and a coffin maker. There was also a hotel, still to be seen, opposite the church. In the days before the railroads, when Amwell Road was a major wagon route for both travelers and goods, the hotel was an important overnight rest stop.

Most of the remaining houses in the district, aside from three or four modern dwellings, date from the busy period of the mid to late 1800s. Almost fifty years after its inclusion on the historic registers, Neshanic retains much of its historic character and is a fine example of a 19th-century rural New Jersey village.

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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.