It Happened In Hillsborough: The Township Committee

New Jersey state law allows for various forms of municipal governance. Many of the foundational types
were created in the 1890s, including the town, city, village, and borough forms. The mayor-council form
– sometimes called the “strong mayor” form – was added as part of the Faulkner Act in 1923, along with
the council-manager, small municipality, and mayor-council-administrator forms. But the oldest type of
municipal government in New Jersey is the township committee. And, with a stretch, Hillsborough’s may
be the oldest!

The Township Committee

The township committee government has its roots in the New England Town Meeting of the 1600s.
Male property owners and respected members of the community gathered once a year to conduct the
business of the town. This carried over into New Jersey in the 1700s, and we can see its use in
Hillsborough.

We have the meeting minutes for Hillsborough going back to 1746, when the town was still part of the
Westering Precinct of Somerset County. Most of these early minutes, besides accounts of missing cattle
and where they could now be found, consist entirely of noting that there was a meeting and that there
would be another one next year.

The first meeting after Hillsborough received its 1771 charter took place on March 10, 1772. The
minutes of that meeting, and subsequent ones, include the names of persons chosen for the various
positions of clerk, freeholders, overseer of the poor, overseers of the roads (one person for each road),
tax collector, and constable. But there was no actual governing body.

After the list of overseers of the roads in the March 12, 1776, minutes, there is a further notation,
"According to the Resolves of the Congress, at the same time, the following persons were chosen for a
Township Committee: John Baptist Dumont, Abraham Dubois, Johannes Dumont, Cornelius Sebring,
Peter A. Dumont, Lawrence Van Kleef, Garret Terhune, Jun., Isaac Van Nuys, Jun., Peter H. Dumont."

Did these nine men truly comprise the first Hillsborough Township Committee? If the purpose of the
committee was for governance, the answer is Yes. But we don’t know what the purpose was. The war
for independence had already begun and would reach New Jersey within months. Although the
Hillsborough meeting minutes never mention the war or any aspect of it, it seems apparent that the
formation of this committee, “according to the Resolves of Congress,” was related to it.

A Township Committee was not chosen again until after New Jersey passed the Township Act of 1798,
formalizing what municipal governance should look like. In that year, Peter D. Vroom, Esq., Frederick
Frelinghuysen, Peter B. Dumont, John Staats, and Jacobus Garretson were selected as the first true
township committee.

At some point in the 1800s, the number of committeemen (and, yes, they were all men for more than a
century and a half) was reduced from five to three. That didn’t change until the November 1961

election, when the committee was expanded by two. The first modern five-person Hillsborough

Township Committee was sworn in on January 2 nd , 1962, and consisted of Milo Somerville, John
Guerrera, Bruce Amerman, Douglas Walker, and William Jamieson, Jr. That makes this year’s committee
the 65 th in the current configuration.
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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.