The history of Sussex County, New Jersey spans over 13,000 years from the time Paleo Indians arrived after the Wisconsin glacier melted to the present day, and the entire width of the American experience.
Before Europeans arrived, the area was a wilderness with large areas of forests and grasslands inhabited by bands of Munsee, a subgroup within the Lenape, or Delaware Indians. The Netherlands claimed the area in the early 1600s, although the area was never settled when the Netherlands had control of the area. First settled by Dutch colonists from the New Netherland Colony in the early 1700s, after the area came under English control. Sussex County later welcomed Palatine Germans who journeyed north from Philadelphia, Dutch from New York, and other British settlers in the eighteenth century.
Paleo Indians
The area now known as Sussex county, was first occupied by Paleo Indians as the Wisconsin glacier melted 16,000 B.C. The entire county was covered in ice, hundreds of feet thick for thousands of years. After the Wisconsin Glacier melted around 16,000 B.C., the area slowly warmed, but was still cold and wet. Paleo Indians are estimated to have moved into the area around 11,000 B.C. and lived in small groups that traveled in search of game and plants to eat. They also ate fresh water clams and fish that migrated north in the Delaware River to spawn. Fish were caught by spears or fish traps made of stones and sticks.
Mastodons roamed the area during the Paleo Indian era. It is unknown if Paleo Indians hunted this mega fauna.
As climate warmed further around 3,000 B.C. nut producing trees supported Archaic Indian population growth. Some Paleo Indians moved north with the caribou and musk ox.
Around 1000 B.C. clay pottery was beginning to be used. This was the beginning of the Woodland Period. With this advancement in technology.
Technological innovations occurred around the year 500 A. D. with the invention of the bow and arrow; as projectile points became smaller to fit onto an arrow shaft. Now Native Americans could procure more food as they could be further away from game to kill it. The adlatls were still being used.
Various cultures of indigenous peoples occupied the area at that time.
There are 25 rock shelters in Sussex County. ( NJGS Schrabisch 1915). Early hunters established places to live near water sources and food supply.
Lenape Native Americans
At the time of European encounter, the historic Lenape ( or ), a Native American people, also called Delaware Indians after their historic territory along the Delaware River, inhabited the mid-Atlantic coastal areas and inland along the Hudson and Delaware rivers.
The Lenape claim that they came from the Mississippi River area around the year 1000. Their villages were along the Delaware River and along other river drainages that went into the Delaware or other rivers.
Problems developed in the early 17th century when the Little Ice Age came to North America. With late frost in May or June and early frosts in August or September; made the growing of corn, beans and squash difficult. Cold weather also made big and small game more difficult to find, as game went into semi hibernation. Also nut crops from oak, hickory, beech, walnut, chestnut, and butternut failed at times; making the supply of these nuts scarce for food. Rivers froze early so fishing became impossible. Native American populations declined after epidemics of infectious diseases, for which they had no acquired immunity. Native American populations were separated from Europe for thousands of years and had no immunity to the diseases the Europeans brought with them. Many Native American populations were weakened from starvation due to the Little Ice Age, which was coldest during the 17th century. Their important corn, bean and squash crops failed due to late cold weather and early frosts. As the Native American population declined due to disease, starvation, or killing of Native Americans; more land was available for European settlement. Land was also purchased either fairly or by deception. All these factors made the Native populations decline dramatically. After 1750, very few Native Americans were left in Sussex County. The Treaty of Easton in 1758, forced what little Native Americans remained in New Jersey to move west to the Mississippi River drainage or north to Ontario or Quebec Canada.
European Settlement
Henry Hudson working for the Dutch East India Company explored eastern North America during the summer of 1609. Due to Hudson's voyage, the Dutch claimed all land between the 40th and 45th latitude. This was from Delaware Bay to Albany New York: including the area now known as Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island. The Dutch settled the Hudson River Valley and claimed all lands west of the Hudson River in the early 17th century. They traded with the Native Americans for furs, such as beaver, otter, muskrat, and deer. The Dutch built a fort at the southern end of Manhattan Island known as Fort Amsterdam. This was their main fort in North America. They also had other forts along the Hudson River up to Albany, New York including Fort Nassau.
In 1615, 3 men left Fort Nassau near Albany N.Y., traveled southwest to the Delaware River, then along the Delaware to where they were captured in 1616 by Native Americans near Schuylkill River and the Delaware River. This area is south of Easton, Pa. It is unknown the route that the 3 men traveled. They may have traveled through Sussex County or may have traveled though Pennsylvania. This is the earliest record of Europeans traveling near or in Sussex County.
The English took over the Fort Amsterdam in August 1664 and gain control of the land the Dutch claimed. There was a ten-year war that followed with England and the Netherlands, but the English won.
Since the English owned the Province of New Jersey, it was divided into two parts; East and West Jersey. The Quintipartite Deed of 1674 to 1702; divided the province of Jersey with two surveys. These surveys were the Keith Line and the other survey was the Coxe-Barclay line which created the border of eastern Sussex county. The Coxe-Barclay line which was drawn in the late 1600s, established West Jersey in what is now Sussex County from the headwaters of the Pequannock River with a line going northeast to the line of the Province of New jersey and New York. This line was between 41 degrees 40 minutes north to 41 degrees north. The western border was the Delaware River.
Dutch began to migrate southwest from the Hudson River area toward the Delaware River. As early as 1690, Dutch and French Huguenot colonists from New York began permanently settling in the Upper Delaware Valley (known as the "Minisink"). They settled the Port Jervis area, which at that time was Burlington County. Burlington County went as far north along the Delaware as 41 degrees and 40 minutes north, which is near Callicoon, New York. Later a Quaker meeting house was established in 1700 in Plains, near Papakating Creek.
At this time there was the twelve dominate hardwood species of trees of North America growing in Sussex County. These trees are Ash, Beech, Birch, Cherry Chestnut, Elm, Hickory, Sweetgum, Maple, Oak, Sycamore, and Walnut.
At this time, the county was populated by bands of Munsee-speaking Lenape; people who inhabited Northwestern New Jersey and Southern New York, including Long Island. They had also been in western Connecticut, but migrated into New Jersey by the early eighteenth century. Speakers of other dialects of Lenape inhabited areas further south into Delaware. Following Indian Trails from Esopus (now Kingston, New York), these Dutch and Huguenot families established settlements along the Rondout Creek, Neversink River and Mamakating Valley in Orange County, New York, and along the Delaware River in northwestern New Jersey and northeastern Pennsylvania.Decker, Amelia Stickney. That Ancient Trail. (Trenton, NJ: Privately published, 1942, reprinted Newton, NJ: Sussex County Historical Society, 2003). This Indian Trail led to the council fire of the Lenape tribes at Minisink, an island in the Delaware in present-day Montague Township. It would later become the route of the Old Mine Road and stretches of present-date U.S. Route 209.
Several amateur historians refer to a "company of Dutch miners" building the Old Mine Road and establishing a copper mine near the Delaware Water Gap circa 1640, citing it as the first European settlement in Sussex County. But, these stories are not supported by documentary or archaeological evidence.For a full refutation of the Dutch miners legend, see: Kraft, Herbert C. The Dutch, the Indians and the Quest for Copper: Pahaquarry and the Old Mine Road. (West Orange, New Jersey: Seton Hall University Museum, 1996). See also: "No documented evidence has been found to confirm the legend that the Dutch operated the Pahaquarry copper mines in the 1650s or constructed a 104-mile road from that location to the village of Esopus on the Hudson River...." in Burns, Chavez, S.R., and Clemensen, A.B., Pahaquarry Copper Mine Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, New Jersey, Final Cultural Landscape Report, Volume 1. (Denver, CO: Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1995), 32. At this time, many adventurers (or coureurs des bois) from Sir Edmund Plowden's failed New Albion Colony and Dutch New Netherland are reputed to have sought mineral deposits (especially precious metals) and animal furs in the undefined wilderness and journeyed to trade with inland Indian tribes, but no evidence of their efforts remain.
Palatine German immigrants, refugees from religious wars and harsh winters, arrived in Philadelphia and New York City in 1709 and 1710, but generally had to work for several years in English camps to pay off their passage to the colonies. Some began settling river valleys in Northwestern New Jersey and Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in the 1720s, with more settlers added by additional German immigrants after 1740.Chambers, Theodore Frelinghuysen. The Early Germans of New Jersey: Their History, Churches, and Genealogies (Dover, New Jersey, Dover Printing Company, 1895), passim.Armstrong, William C. Pioneer Families of Northwestern New Jersey (Lambertville, New Jersey: Hunterdon House, 1979). In the 1740s and 1750s, Scottish settlers from Elizabethtown and Perth Amboy, and English settlers from these cities, Long Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, came to New Jersey and moved up the tributaries of the Passaic and Raritan rivers. Some settled in the eastern sections of present-day Sussex and Warren counties.
After the French and Indian war there was a border dispute between the Province of New Jersey and New York. This was the New Jersey-New York line war. This boundary line was settled in 1769. So the northern border of Sussex County was established at the confluence of the Neversink River and Delaware River at Port Jervis, New York going on a southeast angle to the Hudson River. There is a stone in the Delaware River to mark the border where the three states meet.
Organization of Sussex County
Sussex county was originally included in Burlington county when it was established in 1694. This was considered as part of West Jersey. This area now known as Sussex County was then part of Hunterdon County on March 11, 1714. When Morris County was created in 1739, Sussex County was then part of Morris County.