Bordentown is a city in Burlington County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the city's population was 3,993, an increase of 69 (+1.8%) from the 2010 census count of 3,924, which in turn reflected a decline of 45 (−1.1%) from the 3,969 counted in the 2000 census.Table 7. Population for the Counties and Municipalities in New Jersey: 1990, 2000 and 2010, New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, February 2011. Accessed May 1, 2023.
Bordentown is located at the confluence of the Delaware River, Blacks Creek, and Crosswicks Creek. The latter is the border between Burlington and Mercer counties. Bordentown is the northernmost municipality in New Jersey that is a part of the Philadelphia metropolitan area.Philadelphia-Reading-Camden, PA-NJ-DE-MD Combined Statistical Area, United States Census Bureau. Accessed February 1, 2023. It sits about one-third of the distance from Center City, Philadelphia to Midtown Manhattan; it is located south of the state capital Trenton, northeast of Center City Philadelphia, and southwest of New York City.
Bordentown's first recorded European settlement was made in 1682 in what became known as Farnsworth's Landing and, after 1717, the town that had developed in the Provence of New Jersey was renamed to Borden's Town. After the American Revolution and the establishment of the New Jersey state government, Bordentown was incorporated with a borough government form by an act of its legislature on December 9, 1825, from portions within Chesterfield Township. It was reincorporated with a city government form on April 3, 1867, and it was separated from Chesterfield Township about 1877.Snyder, John P. The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968, Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. Accessed May 1, 2026.
History Thomas Farnsworth, an English Quaker, became the first European settler in the Bordentown area in 1682, when he moved his family upriver from Burlington. He made a new home on the windswept bluff overlooking the broad bend in the Delaware River, near today's northwest corner of Park Street and Prince Street, perhaps where an 1883 frame house now stands. "Farnsworth Landing" soon became the center of trade for the region.Staff. , Courier-Post, July 28, 2007. Accessed June 13, 2012. "According to the Bordentown Historical Society, it was one of the first free public schools in New Jersey. According to past Courier-Post reports, an English Quaker named Thomas Farnsworth settled the area in 1682 and created an active trading center called Farnsworth's Landing." Farnsworth is also the namesake of one of Bordentown's main streets, Farnsworth Avenue.
Joseph Borden, for whom the city is named,Hutchinson, Viola L. The Origin of New Jersey Place Names, New Jersey Public Library Commission, May 1945. Accessed August 27, 2015.Gannett, Henry. The Origin of Certain Place Names in the United States, p. 37. United States Government Printing Office, 1905. Accessed August 27, 2015. arrived in 1717, and by May 1740 founded a transportation system to carry people and freight between New York City and Philadelphia. This exploited Bordentown's natural location as the point on the Delaware River that provided the shortest overland route to Perth Amboy, from which cargo and people could be ferried to New York City.Bordentown City Master Plan Historic Preservation Element , Burlington County Bridge Commission, March 2012. Accessed June 13, 2012. "In 1717, Joseph Borden, a farmer from Freehold, New Jersey, settled here, bought up a substantial part of the land, and changed the town's name to Borden's Town. He started a packet line from Philadelphia to Bordentown, where travelers would stop to rest and then proceed on Borden's stage line to Perth Amboy, where they would make their connections to New York." The town was the childhood home of Patience Wright, America's first female sculptor, who lived there in the 1730s.
By 1776, Bordentown was full of Patriots. Joseph Borden's son (also named Joseph Borden) became a colonel during the American Revolutionary War. Other noted patriots lived in the area, including Thomas Paine. Francis Hopkinson (a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and designer of a United States Flag), Colonel Kirkbride, and Colonel Oakey Hoagland. Hessian troops briefly occupied Bordentown in 1776 as part of the New York and New Jersey campaign before leaving to engage in the Battle of Iron Works Hill on December 23. On May 8, 1777, during the Philadelphia campaign, British forces raided Bordentown in pursuit of retreating American militiamen. The Redcoats burned several Bordentown buildings along with large quantities of American military supplies and several ships in the nearby waters. On June 23, 1778, British forces again raided Bordentown, destroying several buildings.Boatman, Gail. "Re-enactors to do battle in Bordentown", Burlington County Times, June 7, 2007. Accessed June 13, 2012.
In August 1831, master mechanic Isaac Dripps of Bordentown re-assembled (without blueprints or instructions) the locomotive John Bull (originally called "The Stevens") in just 10 days. It was built by Robert Stephenson and Company, in England, and was imported into Philadelphia by the Camden and Amboy Railroad. The next year it started limited service, and the year after that regular service, to become one of the first successful locomotives in the United States. The John Bull is preserved at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.John Bull Locomotive, Smithsonian Institution. Accessed July 8, 2013.
Another notable resident of Bordentown is Clara Barton, who started the first free public school in New Jersey in 1852. Barton later founded the American Red Cross.Staff. , Courier-Post, January 12, 1999. Accessed July 8, 2013. A recreation of her schoolhouse stands at the corner of Crosswicks and Burlington streets.Staff. "Clara Barton was Pioneer in BurlCo Public Education", The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 20, 1999. Accessed July 8, 2013. "At Burlington and Crosswicks Streets in Bordentown is a one-room brick schoolhouse, believed to be the first public school in the county, which Barton, then 30, started in 1852 as part of her goal to overcome a bias in the community against 'pauper schools.'"
In 1866, Susan Waters moved into what is now one of the larger properties on Mary Street. This was a base from which she taught and produced over 50 of her works, many of which are painting of animals in natural settings and pastoral scenes. She was also an early photographer. In 1876 she was asked to exhibit several of her works at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition.History of Bordentown, Bordentown Historical Society. Accessed October 23, 2013.
In 1881, Rev. William Bowen purchased the old Spring Villa Female Seminary building (built on land purchased from the Bonapartes in 1837) and reopened it as the Bordentown Military Institute. In 1886, African-American Rev. Walter A. Rice established a private school for African-American children, the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth, in a two-story house at 60 West Street, which later moved to Walnut Street on the banks of the Delaware, and became a public school in 1894 under Jim Crow laws. The school, which was known as the Bordentown School, came to have a , 30-building campus with two farms, a vocational/ technical orientation, and a college preparatory program.Institutional History, New Jersey State Archives. Accessed November 21, 2013. The Bordentown School operated from 1894 to 1955.
In 1909, the religious order Poor Clares established a convent in the former Motherhouse of the Sisters of Mercy on Crosswicks Street. The building still stands and is used as an assisted living community called The Clare Estate. The Order of Poor Clares moved to a new facility outside Bordentown City.Stadnyk, Mary. "Grace of Perseverance; For 100 years, diocese has been blessed with the Poor Clare Sisters", The Monitor, December 10, 2009. Accessed October 23, 2013. "Having heard of the Poor Clares in Boston, Bishop McFaul contacted Mother Charitas, the abbess, and asked her to send sisters to Bordentown. Mother Charitas, who became the Bordentown's community's first abbess, was delighted with the request for it had been her wish to spread the Franciscan Order of St. Clare to other areas of the United States. On Aug. 12, 1909, the first five Sisters of St. Clare arrived in Bordentown."
Joseph Bonaparte
Several years after the banishing of his family from France in 1816, arriving under vigilant disguise as the Count de Survilliers, Joseph Bonaparte,McGreevy, Nora, "New Jersey Estate Owned by Napoleon’s Older Brother Set to Become State Park", Smithsonian, March 23, 2021. Accessed March 25, 2021. "Comparatively, Napoleon’s older brother Joseph had an easier time in exile. After the French emperor’s downfall, the elder Bonaparte, who’d briefly served as king of Spain and Naples, headed to the United States, where he settled on a bluff overlooking the Delaware River in Bordentown, New Jersey. Between 1816 and 1839, Bonaparate lived on and off at a property dubbed Point Breeze, spending the remainder of his adult years in resplendent luxury." former King of Naples and Spain and brother to Napoleon I of France, purchased the Point Breeze Estate near Bordentown from American revolutionary, Stephen Sayre.E.M. Woodward. “Bonaparte's Park, and the Murats, 1879. Page 38” He lived there for 17 years, entertaining guests of great fame such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and the future 6th U.S. President, John Quincy Adams. The residents of Bordentown nicknamed the Count, "The Good Mr. Bonaparte" (Good to distinguish him from his younger brother). He built a lake near the mouth of Crosswicks Creek that was about wide and long. On the bluff above it he built a new home, "Point Breeze".A View of the Delaware from Bordentown Hill by Charles B. Lawrence , New Jersey Historical Society. Accessed October 23, 2013. The current Divine Word Mission occupies its former site along Park Street.Kilby, David. "Divine Word Father Detig reflects on his 50 years as missionary ", The Monitor, July 24, 2013. Accessed October 23, 2013. "When walking through the peaceful grounds of the Divine Word Residence, Bordentown, it's easy to forget that those 100 acres overlooking the Delaware River provide a home for missionaries like Father Joseph Detig, who has spread the Gospel around the world and endured many of the trials that come with doing so."
Today only vestiges of the Bonaparte estate remain. Much of it is the remains of a formerly Italianate building remodeled in English Georgian Revival style in 1924 for Harris Hammon, who purchased the estate at Point Breeze as built in 1850 by Henry Becket, a British consul in Philadelphia. In addition to the rubble of this mansion and some hedges of its elaborate gardens, only the original tunnel to the river (broken through in several places) and Bonaparte's secretary’s house remain. Many descendants of Joachim Murat, King of Naples and brother-in-law of the Bonapartes executed in 1815, also were born or lived in Bordentown, having followed their uncle Joseph there. After the Bonaparte dynasty was restored by Napoleon III, they moved back to France and were recognized as princes.
Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city had a total area of 0.97 square miles (2.52 km2), including 0.93 square miles (2.42 km2) of land and 0.04 square miles (0.10 km2) of water (4.02%).