Sussex County () is the northernmost county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Its county seat is Newton.New Jersey County Map, New Jersey Department of State. Accessed July 10, 2017. It is part of the New York metropolitan area and is part of New Jersey's Skylands Region. As of the 2020 census, the county was the state's 17th-most-populous county,Table1. New Jersey Counties and Most Populous Cities and Townships: 2020 and 2010 Censuses, New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Accessed December 1, 2022. with a population of 144,221, a decrease of 5,044 (−3.4%) from the 2010 census count of 149,265, which in turn reflected an increase of 5,099 (+3.5%) over the 144,166 persons at the 2000 census. The United States Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program estimated a 2025 population of 148,063, an increase of 3,842 (+2.7%) from the 2020 decennial census. Based on 2020 census data, Vernon Township was the county's largest in both population and area, with a population of 22,358 and covering an area of . The county is part of the North Jersey region of the state.Willis, David P. "'This is how wars start': Does Central Jersey include both Ocean and Union counties?", Asbury Park Press, February 20, 2023. Accessed March 31, 2024. "North Jersey is defined as Sussex, Warren, Morris, Passaic, Bergen, Essex and Hudson counties; South Jersey would be Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Atlantic, Salem, Cumberland and Cape May counties. But for Central, things get a little tricky. It would include Hunterdon, Somerset, Union, Middlesex, Mercer, Monmouth, and Ocean counties."
In 2015, the county had a per capita personal income of $55,497, the ninth-highest in New Jersey and ranked 220th of 3,113 counties in the United States.250 Highest Per Capita Personal Incomes available for 3113 counties in the United States: 2015 , New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Accessed October 24, 2017.Local Area Personal Income: 2015 , Bureau of Economic Analysis. Accessed October 24, 2017. the Bureau of Economic Analysis ranked the county as having the 131st-highest per capita income ($49,207) of the 3,113 counties in the United States (and the ninth-highest in the state).250 Highest Per Capita Personal Incomes of the 3113 Counties in the United States, 2010 , U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis. Accessed July 16, 2012.
Etymology The county was established in 1753 from portions of Morris County and named after the county of Sussex in England.Hutchinson, Viola L. The Origin of New Jersey Place Names, New Jersey Public Library Commission, May 1945. Accessed October 11, 2015.Gannett, Henry. The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, p. 294. United States Government Printing Office, 1905. Accessed October 11, 2015.
History
The area of Sussex County and its surrounding region was occupied for approximately 8,000–13,000 years by succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples.Kraft, Herbert C. The Lenape-Delaware Indian Heritage: 10,000 B.C. to A.D. 2000. (Stanhope, New Jersey: Lenape Books, 2001). The Munsee Indians inhabited the region at the time of European encounter. The Munsee were a loosely organized division of the Lenape (or Lenni Lenape), a Native American people also called "Delaware Indians" after their historic territory along the Delaware River. The Lenape inhabited the Mid-Atlantic coastal areas and inland along the Hudson and Delaware rivers.Goddard, Ives; and Trigger, Bruce G. (1978) "Delaware" in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 15: Northeast. Washington. 213–239 The Munsee spoke a very distinct dialect of the Lenape and inhabited a region bounded by the Hudson River, the headwaters of the Delaware River and the Susquehanna River, and south to the Lehigh River and Conewago Creek.Grumet, Robert Steven. The Munsee Indians: A History from Civilization of the American Indian 262 (series). (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2009).Otto, Paul. The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006). As a result of disruption following the French and Indian War (1756–1763), the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, the main Lenape groups now live in Ontario in Canada, and in Wisconsin and Oklahoma in the United States.Keenan, Jerry. Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492–1890. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1999), 234; Moore, Charles. The Northwest Under Three Flags, 1635–1796. (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1900), 151.Weslager, Clinton A. The Delaware Indians: A History. (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1972).
As early as 1690, Dutch and French Huguenot colonists from towns along the Hudson River Valley in New York began permanently settling in the Upper Delaware Valley (known as the "Minisink"). The route these Dutch settlers had taken was the path of an old Indian trail and became the route of the Old Mine Road and stretches of present-date U.S. Route 209.Decker, Amelia Stickney. That Ancient Trail. (Trenton, New Jersey: Privately published, 1942, reprinted Newton, New Jersey: Sussex County Historical Society, 2003). These Dutch settlers penetrated the Minisink Valley and settled as far south as the Delaware Water Gap, by 1731 this valley had been incorporated as Walpack Precinct. Throughout the 18th century, immigrants from the Rheinland Palatinate in Germany and Switzerland fled religious wars and poverty to arrive in Philadelphia and New York City. Several German families began leaving Philadelphia to settle along river valleys in Northwestern New Jersey and Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley in the 1720s, spreading north into Sussex County in the 1740s and 1750s as additional German emigrants arrived.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). Also during this time, 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, settling in the eastern sections of present-day Sussex and Warren counties.
By the 1750s, residents of this area began to petition colonial authorities for a new county to be formed; they complained of the inconvenience of long travel to conduct business with the government and the courts. By this time, four large townships had been created in this sparsely populated Northwestern region: Walpack Township (before 1731), Greenwich Township (before 1738), Hardwick Township (1750) and Newtown Township (1751). On June 8, 1753, Sussex County was created from these four municipalities, which had been part of Morris County when Morris stretched over all of northwestern New Jersey. Sussex County at this time encompassed present-day Sussex and Warren Counties and its boundaries were drawn by the New York-New Jersey border to the north, the Delaware River to the west, and the Musconetcong River to the south and east.Paterson, William. Laws of the State of New Jersey (Newark, New Jersey: Matthias Day, 1800), 15. Note: the "great pond" referenced in the legal boundaries of the act is an 18th-century reference to Lake Hopatcong. After several decades of debate over where to hold the sessions of the county's courts, the state legislature eventually voted to divide Sussex County in two, using a line drawn from the juncture of the Flat Brook and Delaware River in a southeasterly direction to the Musconetcong River running through the Yellow Frame Presbyterian Church in present-day Fredon Township (then part of Hardwick).State of New Jersey. Acts of the Legislature of the State of New Jersey, (1824), 146–147. The landmark used for drawing the boundary through Yellow Frame was the Presbyterian Church edifice torn down in 1898. On November 20, 1824, Warren County was created from the southern territory of the Sussex County.
Throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, Sussex County's economy was largely centered around agriculture and the mining of iron and zinc ores. Early settlers established farms whose operations were chiefly focused towards subsistence agriculture. Because of geological constraints, Sussex County's agricultural production was centered around dairy farming. Several farms had orchards—typically apples and peaches—and surplus fruit and grains were often distilled or brewed into alcoholic beverages (hard ciders, applejack and fruit brandies). This was the economic model until the mid-19th century when advances in food preservation and the introduction of railroads (e.g. the Sussex Railroad) into the area allowed Sussex County to transport farm products throughout the region. Railroads also promoted the building of factories as companies relocated to the area at the end of the 19th century—including that of the H.W. Merriam Shoe Company (1873) in Newton.Ricord, Frederick W. (editor). Biographical Encyclopedia: Successful Men of New Jersey. (New York: New Jersey Historical Publishing Co., 1896), 1:47.
The Highlands Region of Northwestern New Jersey has proven to possess rich deposits of iron ore. In the mid 18th century, several entrepreneurial colonists began mining iron in area around Andover, Hamburg, and Franklin present-day Sussex County and establishing forges and furnaces to create pig iron and bar iron. During the American Revolution, the Quartermaster Department of the Continental Army complained to Congress of difficulties in acquiring iron to support the war effort and the Congress ordered two colonels, Benjamin Flower and Thomas Maybury to take possession of the iron works at Andover in order to equip General Washington's army. During the middle of the 19th century, under the management of Cooper and Hewitt, the Andover mine produced 50,000 tons of iron ore each year. The firm manufactured railroad rails and the country's first structural steel, which and led to the building of railroads and commercial development in the county. Iron from the Andover mines was fashioned into cable wire for the bridge built at Niagara Falls and for the beams used to rebuild Princeton University's Nassau Hall in Princeton, New Jersey after a fire undermined the structure in 1855. During the American Civil War, Andover iron found its way into rifle barrels and cannonballs just as it had during the Revolution years before.