The Frenchtown Historic District [†] is a small, highly intact river town that became a center of regional commerce and trade around 1825 due to its location on the Delaware River and other transportation systems, and its access to a sizable agricultural hinterland. The development process that formed the town can clearly be read in the landscape, street plan, architectural characteristics, and in the locations of river, road, canal, bridge and rail; mills, factories, hotels, stores and other enterprises. As an agricultural service center, Frenchtown provided a market for farm products; processing for grain, fruit and vegetables, timber, livestock and poultry; and suppliers of hardware, staple goods, wagons, medicines, clothing, and everything else a farmer could not produce for himself. The town had to be a hub of transportation connecting the hinterland it served with its markets: Philadelphia, New York City, Trenton and other urban areas. In order to remain a strong and healthy center, Frenchtown had to keep its competitive edge in terms of providing supplies, services and transportation to the markets. In its capacity as a service center, Frenchtown was similar to many other small towns that served their surrounding countrysides. However, Frenchtown is unusual today in that so many sites and buildings from its era of significance have survived. Frenchtown is also unusual in that it had a single major function — agricultural service center — and that uncomplicated economic focus fostered the development of a town that is atypically clear and legible to observers today. Another aspect of Frenchtown Historic District's significance is that more than one-third of its original area is a real estate development promoted by a local merchant and booster. This development was most active between 1866 and 1870, and some 70 houses built within that interval in the development area survive today. This survival affords an unusual opportunity to study architectural practices current here at that moment in time.
Historical Summary
Frenchtown's history as a community began in 1757 when the three joint owners of a tract bought from the West Jersey Land Society began to lay out streets and building lots for a town where Frenchtown is now sited. A map made at that time was described in 1893, but its whereabouts have long been unknown (Race, 1893). This, or another map of approximately the same date, labeled the prospective settlement "Sunbeam," but there is no evidence that name was ever commonly used. At the time of the proprietors' plan, this site was known as "Calvin's Ferry," named for the current operator of the Delaware River ferry. Such a river crossing is known to have been operated here at least as early as 1741 (Schmidt, 1946). At the time of the survey the projected town was named "Alexandria," in honor of William Alexander, Lord Stirling, one of the three original owners and later a general in Washington's Continental Army. That name has survived as the name of the larger township of which the settlement was to be the focus, and early deeds make it clear that the town, too, was called "Alexandria" in its early years. Several of the proprietors' early actions indicate efforts to settle the town. In 1758 they contracted for the construction of a saw mill and dam on Nishisackawick Creek. This mill, modernized, remained in use through the 1920s. A grist mill (on the site of an old mill that still stands at 15 Trenton Avenue) was built around the same time. By 1766 few settlers had arrived, so in that year the proprietors arranged to have a Philadelphia merchant build and operate a store. This structure stood on the site of today's 10 Bridge Street, near the river, and was operated as a store until the late 1860s. There was a brisk trade in grain and other farm products, which were shipped to Philadelphia by Durham boat. This little store-and-mill plantation flourished from the 1760s through the 1790s, although the store lot was the only property to change hands. In addition to trading with farmers, processing agricultural products and transporting them to market, the hamlet developed a second activity based on timbering and river traffic. Because of the saw mill, Alexandria became a stopping place for the river men who piloted log rafts and Durham boats downstream on the spring and fall currents. Here, until timber supplies had become virtually depleted by the mid-19th century, the boatmen bought and sold cargoes and rafts, hired pilots and fortified themselves with food and spirits.
In 1776 the proprietors sold the entire 968-acre Alexandria tract (minus the store lot) to Flemington speculator Thomas Lowrey. Lowrey continued the proprietors' tradition of absentee ownership (although he did build himself a house on what is today the bend where Bridge Street becomes Race, and lived here briefly). Lowrey continued to lease land to tenants rather than to sell lots, and in 1794 he sold the tract to Swiss emigre Paul Henri Mallet-Prevost.
Prevost, a fugitive from the French Revolution, came to live in Alexandria, bringing his family and a number of servants and associates with him. Records indicate that several families with French names such as LaRoche, Femere and Carpentier arrived with Mallet-Prevost, and that slaves were part of his Alexandria household. People began, in the late 1790s, to call the place "Frenchtown" after the language so many of its inhabitants spoke. Mallet-Prevost was a tremendously energetic landowner. He and his sons and associates encouraged craftsmen and tradesmen to settle in the town, and, under his influence, it grew from a small mill hamlet into a thriving village. Three Mallet-Prevost houses survive today, as do a hotel and many other buildings built in the 1820s and 1830s on Bridge Street and in the southern part of town.
The 1830s saw the beginning of a slow but steady period of growth and development for Frenchtown, spurred in part by the Delaware Canal's opening directly across the river in 1833 and encouraged by the construction in 1844 of a covered bridge improving access to the canal. In 1836, Hugh Capner, member of a prominent Flemington family, bought a large tract on the north side of town, and laid out streets and building lots between Second and Fifth streets. Shortly before coming to Frenchtown, in 1833, Capner had built a house for himself on Mine Street in Flemington, but he was displaced in 1836 by the discovery of copper and the subsequent ravaging of his land by mining operations.
After the Belvidere-Delaware Railroad opened through Frenchtown in 1853, the town burgeoned. Still primarily an agricultural service center, the railroad allowed Frenchtown to develop steam-powered industry on a large scale. By 1860, the manufacture of wagon wheels and spokes had grown to factory proportions, with a number of firms engaged in production. Several former mills (a grist mill, a cotton mill and a "spar mill") were converted to the wagon-wheel industry during its Civil-War-era golden age in Frenchtown. This industry languished in the 1890s as the regional and Pennsylvania hardwood resources it depended upon were depleted.
Just as things were more prosperous than ever before, at the close of the Civil War, a pair of boosters initiated a new development scheme with the potential to double Frenchtown's size. Hardware merchants Samuel B. Hudnut and Gabriel Slater bought the undeveloped north portion of Hugh Capner's tract in 1866, laid out the streets between 5th Street and 12th Street, and immediately started development.
After the Slater & Hudnut boom, which had peaked by 1870, the streets north of 8th Street remained relatively undeveloped. Frenchtown continued through the rest of the 19th century with little change in appearance or activity. Early in the 20th century the town experienced several changes in economic focus that spurred development. Although industry had always existed in Frenchtown, it became a major employer at this time. In 1909 the Frenchtown Porcelain Works, north of Eighth Street, began to manufacture spark plugs and electrical ceramics. Due to its vigor, and to the jobs it brought to the community, the Porcelain Works contributed to the development of Harrison Street between 10th and 11th streets. Another incentive for early-20th century growth was the establishment of the Milford plant of the Warren Paper Company (later the Riegel Paper Company, now James River Corporation), the largest manufacturer of glassine paper in the world. But even more significant to early-20th century Frenchtown was the spectacular rise of the poultry industry, and the role of the Kerr Hatcheries in Frenchtown as a pioneer. Under the Kerr influence the local chick industry grew phenomenally, and contributed to a final significance-era period of prosperity and development.
Commerce and Transportation
Frenchtown Historic District's primary significance is in the area of commerce, and is due to its long history as an agricultural service center for a broad farming hinterland. Three forms of transportation — the river, the canal and the railroad — tied the town to the markets it needed until its relative isolation early in the automotive age left the town something of a backwater from the 1920s until the relatively recent 1970s.
The three Americans who purchased the 968-acre tract that was to include Frenchtown's site intended as early as 1757 that a town should be established at that location. Already known as "Calvin's Ferry," the place may have had a squatter or two in residence near the river bank, but no land was in private ownership, and there was no significant commerce or industry. The three proprietors took several steps designed to attract settlement and trade to their planned community. First, in October, 1758, they contracted with one Samuel Schooley to build a saw mill and mill dam on the Nishisackawick Creek. Although the contract does not specify the exact location of the proprietors' mill, local tradition places it on the site where a large stone sawmill stood until the mid-1920s. This sawmill enabled Frenchtown to capitalize on the river-borne trade in timber: logs rafted downriver could be hauled out and cut into lumber and construction materials here. This enterprise also drew river men, who could be served by local hostelries and stores.
The Alexandria proprietors also provided for the establishment of a store, arranging to sell a lot of land in 1766 to Philadelphia merchant Thomas Riche in return for his promise to build a store and dwelling house and keep the store stocked and in operation. Riche also leased a grist mill (or perhaps built it, the record is not clear). This mill is said to have stood on the site of the Worman Mill (named after its 1868 purchaser), which operated through the 1950s and is still standing. Thomas Riche's store and mill were essential elements in the town's development as an agricultural service center. Henry Race's analysis of "letters and business papers" (their exact nature and present whereabouts are unknown) shows that farm produce was traded there for imported goods, cloth, imperishable foodstuffs and other trade goods brought from Philadelphia (Race, 1893). The mill was important, too, as it processed grain for sale and shipment out to market. Without the store and the gristmill, outlying farmers would not have begun to bring their goods to trade in the settlement that would become Frenchtown.
As the town grew, its role as a service center for the surrounding area expanded. Merchants and entrepreneurs capitalized on each transportation improvement to open new kinds of businesses and start new industries, and to attract farmers from ever farther away to trade on Frenchtown streets. In 1833 the Delaware Canal opened on the Pennsylvania side of the river, and down it flowed an endless stream of coal, slate, lime, lumber and other materials from the north. Central western Hunterdon County farmers who had previously traded in Somerville and other market towns not on the river shifted to Frenchtown after the canal opened. Frenchtown merchants formed the Alexandria Delaware Bridge Company in 1841 to raise money for and build the covered bridge over the river, opened in 1844, which facilitated access to the canal port of Uhlerstown, Pennsylvania.
Frenchtown people worked even harder to speed the arrival of the Belvidere-Delaware Railroad, anticipated as early as 1837 and finally realized in 1853. As the railroad superseded the canal as the prime link between farm and market, Frenchtown's focus as an agricultural service center intensified. By around 1855, three major hotels were in business, one of them an enlargement and renovation of a much older hotel built for the Prevosts around 1805 (the Frenchtown Inn, 7 Bridge Street). Two of those hotels, the Frenchtown Inn and the National Hotel, 31 Race Street, survive today. Major agricultural-oriented retailers located in Frenchtown, creating a greater attraction than had existed before. Among these were sophisticated hardware merchants, first Slater & Hudnut in the 1850s, followed by George Bunn, Ishmael Brink, the George W. Eddy family and others (the 1840s block where many of these hardware businesses were sited survives in part at 36 Bridge Street). Another successful merchandising venture was the very popular emporium "Britton Brothers Big Brick Store." The first, and for many years the largest department store in Hunterdon County, Britton Brothers stocked everything from canned goods to harness to ladies' clothing. It opened at 10 Bridge Street in 1889. (The 1869 Gem Building in which Britton Brothers was located still stands.)
Frenchtown also held a regular outdoor calf market, an event at which farmers displayed beef on the hoof to prospective buyers who could then ship it live to Trenton by rail, or have it slaughtered and processed in Frenchtown. Merchants Slater & Hudnut, who were also harness and wagon makers, held an annual wagon market, also on Bridge Street. Farmers would gather to look over the new models at an event that was something of a social occasion.
Frenchtown also had a distillery, opened in 1850 (in a stone building still standing on Trenton Avenue), where grain was distilled into spirits. These industries and fairs, together with the grist and saw mills, offered services that were essential to the farm community, and helped keep Frenchtown prosperous as a town center.
Community Planning and Development; Architecture
Frenchtown's earliest settlement was along Bridge and Race streets and in the area to the south, between "the main street" and the creek. This settlement was planned to the extent that the absentee owners drew a map delineating streets and lots. Although that map is unavailable today, a late-19th century account of it states that the streets mapped in 1757 were essentially similar to streets existing in Frenchtown at that time. The grist mill was on what was known through the mid-19th century as "Mill Street" (now Trenton Avenue), and the saw mill also fronted on the same street, although it stood farther to the north, near what is now Race Street. A headrace (still extant below ground) connected the mills, and the creek ran just behind them. The store and storekeeper's house of 1766 stood on the main street near the river (10 & 12 Bridge Street). After 1794, the Prevost family's three houses were built on a parcel called "the [Prevost] homestead lot" that extended between the main street and the creek, and between the river and the lane where the mills stood. (All three houses still stand: 35 Railroad Avenue, 8 Front Street and 8 Trenton Avenue.) Frenchtown's first streets were narrow, bending lanes that connected mills, stores and houses: South Harrison and South Bridge were later formalized by deeds reserving rights-of-way along these traditional passages. Railroad Avenue, Front Street, Lott Street, Kerr Street and Hawk Street were created by deed as the Prevost family sold off its homestead in parcels, reserving rights-of-way to avoid land-locked lots. All of these early streets simply map Frenchtown's growth and its evolution from a single-owner plantation to a town where lots were individually owned.
In 1836 planned real estate development began in Frenchtown. The regular blocks north of Bridge Street, between the steep slope of Everittstown Hill and the river, with their right angles, service alleys and regular-shaped lots began to take form when Hugh Capner purchased a 181.68-acre tract from Paul Henri Mallet-Prevost and laid out the portion between 2nd Street and the north side of 4th Street for development. Capner built a house for himself on Harrison Street just south of 6th Street (torn down in the 1960s for the American Legion post at No. 510), and farmed the land between 6th and 12th streets.
A plat, probably drawn for Capner, of the lots in the southern portion of this parcel outlines the way the town developed from then on. Each lot had frontage on two sides, either on Harrison and a side street, or a side street and an alley. That gave each property a front and a back approach, dictating the placement of entries, porches, barns, workshops and privies. Those streets and alleys survive very much as Capner mapped them, although later subdivisions have created some Harrison Street lots with no access to a side street or a back alley.
The town had no church structures before Capner's development was laid out; three of the four denominations that have ever had buildings in Frenchtown were built between 2nd and 4th streets in the 1840s and '50s.
The residential development progressed rather slowly, probably due in part to the nationwide depression associated with the "Panic of 1837," but houses were built through the rest of the 1830s, the 1840s and 1850s. Many lots in the Capner plat were still vacant when Slater & Hudnut's larger and more ambitious plan was initiated thirty years later.
Samuel B. Hudnut and Gabriel Slater were hardware merchants and entrepreneurs who bought the undeveloped north portion of Hugh Capner's tract in 1866, laid out the streets between Fifth and Twelfth, and with the resulting development more than doubled Frenchtown's physical size. Not only did the developers lay out streets, alleys and building lots very similar to the ones Capner had drawn up, they also designed the streets and sidewalks, and their sales policies — conveying blocks of lots to sub-developers, some of whom were builders themselves — established a recognizable architectural character for the newly developed north end of town. It is thought that many of the houses were built by Elisha and Jeremiah Rittenhouse, who were probably contractor-builders rather than formally trained architects.
At about the time Slater & Hudnut began laying out their parcel, exciting rumors began: a major industry was coming to locate a factory at the foot of Sixth Street...the Belvidere-Delaware Railroad was going to build its machine shops in Frenchtown. The developers actually built rows of workers' housing on Seventh, Eighth and Twelfth streets, in anticipation of the employees the new industries would hire. Lots sold quickly at first, then, when neither factory nor machine shops materialized, a reaction set in and the development saw little growth from around 1870 until the mid-1880s. (By that time a factory had located on the reserved site.) While enthusiasm was still high, Slater & Hudnut pushed for the borough's incorporation, which took place in April, 1867, with Samuel Hudnut as the first mayor.
Slater & Hudnut intended their development to be a substantial and handsome addition to Frenchtown, a concern that is apparent in the dignified Italianate style of many of the original houses (no exuberant detail here, but a careful attention to massing and form that conveys a spirit of solid dignity). The developers clearly envisioned a boulevard-like Harrison Street, wide and tree-lined, and they reserved easements across each lot where the borough would pave streets, install slate sidewalks and plant trees. The borough did, in fact, lay slate sidewalks as its first project in 1867. Many of those sidewalks survive today.
The first wave of Slater & Hudnut houses was built very quickly, between 1867 and 1869. These houses bear a strong resemblance to one another, and may be the design of one or two supervising contractor-builders. Although this group of houses are distinct from the earlier structures built on the Capner plat, they are still Frenchtown houses, and they exhibit local characteristics apparent in buildings dating from the 1830s through the end of the century. These "Frenchtown characteristics" include: stuccoed stone foundations, clapboard siding with cornerboards (pilaster-treated on the more elaborate buildings), a penchant for the three-part front entry with transom and sidelights over wood panels, and slate roofs. Slater & Hudnut details include: central facade gables with a round-arched or pointed-top "pine-tree window;" T-shaped or five-bay, center-entry, floor plans. Cornices are extended, molded, boxed and returned at the gable fields, often with a fascia that skims the tops of the second-floor windows, but with one exception they are never bracketed. Windows often have stepped cornice lintels, and two-over-two sash was the usual choice, although six-over-six was sometimes selected. The more elaborate Slater & Hudnut houses nearly always have front porches, often with their chamfered square posts elaborately trimmed with scroll-sawn brackets, screens and other decorative details. (With this group of houses, the front porch made its first wholesale appearance on Frenchtown streets.) Kitchens were usually originally located in the sunniest corner of the basement, although most were moved upstairs early in this century, often to a back porch enclosed for the purpose. Front doors are heavy, most are single-leaved, and nearly all of them now have single glass panes in their upper halves (although it is believed that the glass panes were inserted around the turn of the century). Side doors are somewhat lighter in construction, and often have four glass panes over wood panels. These doors probably always had glass in their upper portions. The distinction between one contractor's work and another's is often a matter of the treatment of details, as construction techniques remain consistent, and house types are generally similar from one builder to another. Nevertheless, some houses exhibit unstepped cornice lintels, gable-field returns that extend a bit farther into the gable than the norm; there is even one house of the Slater & Hudnut boom period, within their parcel, that actually has paired cornice brackets (407 Harrison Street). By these subtle differences various builders' hands can be detected, an exercise possible only in developments like this one where many houses were built in a limited area within a very short period.
Although Frenchtown is significant for the survival in it of large numbers of fairly ordinary 19th-century houses and commercial buildings, a number of structures within the Frenchtown Historic District are interesting because of their construction techniques or their architectural style.
The earliest of these individually interesting buildings is the brick house at 35 Railroad Avenue built by a Captain William Conner for the Swiss immigrant Paul Henri Mallet-Prevost. This house, built in 1795, is believed to be the oldest structure extant in Frenchtown, and it is one of only three surviving brick-walled pre-20th century dwelling houses. The Prevost House is a simple Federal style three-bay, center-entry, two-and-a-half-story structure with a pitched slate roof and a center entry. The walls are laid up in Flemish bond, and the front entry has a round-arched fanlight. Interior brick chimneys rise from the ridge at each gable end. Although the Prevost House is architecturally very simple, it was the home of the last of the major landowners, and the owner under whose tenure a real community developed in this place. This house is intriguingly built of brick, a material virtually never used in local domestic architecture before the 20th century. The presumed reason for this is that the closest major brick-making center, Philadelphia, was downriver (and downstream on the canal), making transported brick far more a luxury than stone or wood. New York brick would have been even more difficult to come by. The only other two local houses known to have been of brick, 8 Trenton Avenue and a Bridge Street structure demolished in the 1960s, were also Prevost houses.
A pair of cupola-crowned, square-plan Greek Revival-Italianate style houses were built in 1868-69 atop the steep hillside overlooking the town (3 Reading Avenue & 5 Cedar Street) for spoke-factory partners Philip G. Reading and W.W. Hedges. These mansions with their massive corner pilasters, horizontal "eyebrow" windows set into the frieze below the cornice, tri-part doors with transoms and sidelights and deep, decorated porches with scroll-sawn trim are unique in the Frenchtown Historic District. Unusually large in scale and dramatic in siting, they nevertheless share certain features with the "development" Italianate houses built around the same time below. Like their less-elaborate contemporaries, these generally Italianate-style houses have a number of Greek Revival survivals (the corner pilasters, the eyebrow windows, the tri-part entries). Every element of their trim can be seen, on a smaller scale, on numbered-street houses. Although these twins are clearly the homes of successful people, they are equally clearly Frenchtown houses, the products of local builders and local lumber yards.
Two other Italianate houses, also built in the late 1860s, demonstrate non-local influence. Although their designers and builders are not known, these men were probably not Frenchtown-trained. The H.H. Pittinger House (28 Bridge Street) and the Worman-Apgar Residence (The Old Hunterdon House, 12 Bridge Street) were both built in 1869, at the same time as most of the Italianate houses in the Slater & Hudnut area uptown. Yet they are completely dissimilar from the development models. The Worman House in particular is about twenty-five years too late to be a high-style example of its type (similar villa-style houses were built in the 1840s by Richard Upjohn, A.J. Downing and other mid-Victorian architects), but it has always been regarded as the most elegant domestic building in Frenchtown. With its asymmetrical villa-style massing and tower, ashlar-incised stucco walls and pagoda-hooded window features, the Worman house is unlike any other structure ever built in Frenchtown. The Pittinger House, with its subtle vertically, its paired-bracket cornice and elaborate interior woodwork, is also a very unusual house type for Frenchtown. It would have been somewhat less "dated" when first built than its contemporary the Worman House. Interestingly, the windowless west wall of this house, which stands only a few inches from the store on the lot next west, is built of brick, presumably to reduce maintenance requirements in a hard-to-reach spot.
Several other Frenchtown Historic District buildings are architect-designed, and survive in good condition. These include the Oddfellows' Building, a Romanesque Revival cream-and-rust brick commercial block at 17 Bridge Street (built in 1897, architect Henry E. Finch of Trenton); and the Renaissance Revival Frenchtown branch of the First Fidelity Bank (originally the Union National Bank, 21 Bridge Street, built in 1878, architect John L. Whittaker of Trenton). Also architect-designed is the Stick Style/Queen Anne Lorenzo Hagaman House, 112 Harrison Street, built in 1889 according to the design of D.S. Hopkins, probably also of Trenton.
Another group of buildings deserves notice: a number of substantial stone houses were built in the late 1840s in both the Capner development parcel and in the old Prevost "120-foot parcel" along Trenton Avenue south of Bridge Street. All were built by mason Jesse Sinclair, who arrived in Frenchtown in 1846, to be hired almost immediately by Samuel B. Hudnut to build three houses on lots he had purchased in the Capner parcel. The most impressive of these houses is Samuel B. Hudnut's own, the three-story, flat-roofed, Greek Revival mansion on the northeast corner of Harrison and Fourth streets (15 Fourth Street) in 1848. Built of rubble masonry, this house was stuccoed and incised and painted to resemble brick. Other Sinclair houses have simple late-Federal style doorways. All were apparently originally stuccoed (and perhaps incised to resemble ashlar or brick), although some have been "restored" and the stucco removed.
The fabric of Frenchtown's historic district speaks distinctly of its origin and long history as an agricultural service community in the survival of several early mills, the clear evidence of key transportation systems and the cluster of commercial blocks on downtown Bridge and Race streets. The town's growth, particularly during the two real estate development eras, can be charted in a northward direction along Harrison Street and the blocks that bracket it to the east and west. Frenchtown's buildings are in some ways typical of Hunterdon County architecture, but they demonstrate so many persistent local characteristics both in construction and in trim as to define a strong local tradition that arose early in the 19th century and persisted until the rise of mid-20th century homogeneity.
References
Primary Sources
Beers, F. W. Atlas Map of Hunterdon County. New York: Beers, Comstock & Kline, 1873.
Hunterdon County Historical Society. Frenchtown. Assorted Building Contracts (Delaware River Bridge, 1842; Foundry lot for Hiram Deats, 1878; Union National Bank, 21 Bridge Street, 1878; Lorenzo Hagaman house, 112 Harrison Street, 1889; Eddy Building, 36 Bridge Street, remodeling, 1897; I.O.O.F. Building, 17 Bridge Street, undated). File number #0016, Box 5, Folder 37. Frenchtown. Untitled manuscript map. Probably made for Hugh Capner, circa. 1836. Showing streets and lots in Frenchtown between Second Street and alley north of Fourth Street. File number #0016, Box 12, folder 619.
Hunterdon County Clerk's Office, Registry of Deeds. Various deeds conveying property in Frenchtown between 1828 and the present.
Insurance Maps of Frenchtown, NJ (1"= 50') New York: Sanborn Map & Publishing Company, Ltd., 1885, 1891, 1897, 1903, 1912, 1925.
Secondary Sources
Anonymous. The Great Flood Disaster of 1955. Flemington, NJ: The Democrat Press, 1955.
Delaware Valley News. 1867 Diamond Jubilee Edition, October 9, 1942. "Frenchtown's Great Fire." "Worman Mill One of Borough's Oldest Buildings." "The Old Foundry." "Mallet-Prevost." "Samuel B. Hudnut."
Fargo, Clarence B. History of Frenchtown. New York: Clarence B. Fargo, 1933.
Frenchtown Historical Society. Newsletter. July, 1977.
"Frenchtown 100 Years Ago." Newspaper clipping in Hunterdon County Historical Society, vertical file. Unlabeled, undated. Stamped Jan. 10, 1901.
Race, Henry. "The First Years of Frenchtown." Jerseyman Vol. 2 (1893): 22-25.
Schmidt, Hubert G. Rural Hunterdon, An Agricultural History. New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 1946.
Seymour, E. L. D., editor. Farm Knowledge. Vol. 4, "Farm Life." Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co. for Sears, Roebuck & Co, no date, circa. 1920.
Snell, James P. History of Hunterdon and Somerset Counties of New Jersey. Philadelphia: Everts & Peck, 1881.
"Walking Tour, Flemington, New Jersey." Flemington NJ: Clayton & Whitley, 1990.
‡ Ellen Fletcher, Trustee, Frenchtown Historical Society, Frenchtown Historic District, Hunterdon County, NJ, nomination document, 1993, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.
Adapted from: the nomination document The Frenchtown Historic District listed on the National Register of Historic Places< in 1994.
Nearby Neighborhoods
Street Names
12th Street • 2nd Street • 3rd Street • 4th Street • 5th Street • 6th Street • 7th Street • 8th Street • Bridge Street • Cedar Street • Everittstown Road • Front Street • Harrison Street • Hawk Street • Kerr Street • Kingwood Avenue • Lott Street • Milford Road • Race Street • Railroad Avenue • Reading Avenue • River Road • Route 12 • Route 29 • Trenton Avenue