Rodent Removal in Pequannock, NJ

The name for the area goes back at least as far as March 1, 1720, when it was referred to as “Poquanick”, a precinct in Hunterdon County. Formed as “Poquanock Township” on March 25, 1740, as the county’s largest township, what is now a 7.1-square-mile (18 km²) bedroom community composed of Pompton Plains in its northern portion and old Pequannock in its southern was once a vast 176-square-mile (460 km²) region of rural farmland settled by the Dutch after its purchase by Arent Schuyler and associates in 1695 and 1696. The township was incorporated by the New Jersey Legislature’s Township Act of 1798 as one of New Jersey’s initial group of 104 townships on February 21, 1798.

Over time, several municipalities were split off from the township: Jefferson Township on February 11, 1804; Rockaway Township on April 8, 1844; Boonton Township on April 11, 1867; Montville Township on April 11, 1867; Butler Borough on March 13, 1901; Kinnelon Borough on March 21, 1922; Lincoln Park Borough on April 25, 1922; and Riverdale Borough on April 17, 1923.

During the American Revolutionary War, both Comte de Rochambeau and George Washington’s troops camped on what is now the site of the Pequannock Valley Middle School. While Washington stayed at the Schuyler-Colfax House in nearby Pompton, unproven oral history states that he attended church services in the First Reformed Church located in Pompton Plains, also known as the Pompton Meeting House, which had been constructed in 1771. The Mandeville Inn, located on the site of where the soldiers had camped during the war, was built in 1788 and was once owned by Garret Hobart, later Vice President of the United States. The stone with the engraved date is now located inside the Pequannock Valley Middle School when the Inn was demolished and replaced with the school in 1950.