Chatham Borough, New Jersey
Chatham Borough is a suburban borough in Morris County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 9,212, an increase of 250 from the 2010 census count of 8,962, which in turn reflected an increase of 502 from the 8,460 counted in the 2000 census.
The area that is now Chatham has been inhabited by humans for thousands of years. During historic times, Europeans began trading with the Native Americans who farmed, fished, and hunted in the area when it was claimed as part of New Netherlands. The community that now is Chatham was first settled by Europeans in 1710 within Morris Township, in what was then the English Province of New Jersey. The community was settled because the site already was on the path of a well-worn Native American trail, the location of an important crossing of the Passaic River, and being close to a gap in the Watchung Mountains. The residents of the English community changed its name from John Day's Bridge to Chatham, New Jersey in 1773.
Chatham's residents were active participants in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783. Chatham Township was formed as a local government in the new state of New Jersey on February 12, 1806, taking its name from this pre-revolutionary village. Initial local government forms were limited while the new state government evolved. The new township governed the village of Chatham that lay within the present-day borough boundaries, along with several other pre-revolutionary, colonial villages and large areas of unsettled lands connecting or adjacent to them. On August 19, 1892, Chatham adopted a new village form of government when it became allowed within townships in the state after the revolution. Shortly thereafter, once it was allowed, the village of Chatham reincorporated for governance as a borough by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 1, 1897, returning to complete independence from the surrounding Chatham Township.
An early railroad located along the Morris and Essex Lines that had become well established by the start of the Civil War as one of America's first commuter railroads, had a stop at Chatham, which attracted many from nearby Manhattan, 20 miles to the east. It remains a commuter town for residents who work in New York City. Today, Chatham is a pedestrian-friendly community that covers less than, including a central business district and railroad station within approximately from its farthest boundary. The borough is situated in southeastern Morris County bordering both Essex and Union counties along the Passaic River. Northeast of the borough is the upscale Mall at Short Hills located in the Short Hills section of Millburn.
In July 2005, CNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Chatham ninth on its annual list of the 100 Best Places to Live in the United States. New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Chatham as its 25th best place to live in its 2008 rankings of the "Best Places To Live" in New Jersey. In 2012, Forbes.com listed Chatham as 375th in its listing of "America's Most Expensive ZIP Codes", with a median home price of $776,703.
The borough has been ranked as one of the state's highest-income communities. In March 2018, Bloomberg ranked Chatham as the 64th highest-income place in the United States and as having the 8th-highest income in New Jersey. In the 2013–2017 American Community Survey the borough had a median household income of $163,026, ranking 16th in the state. The 2014–2018 ACS showed a median household income of $169,524 in the borough versus $111,316 in the county and $79,363 statewide. The most-recent ACS places the median household income of Chatham Borough at $209,283.
History
Indian habitation
Occupied for thousands of years by Native Americans, this land was overseen by clans of the Minsi and Lenni Lenape, who farmed, fished, and hunted upon it. They were organized into a matrilineal, agricultural, and mobile hunting society sustained with fixed, but not permanent, settlements in their clan territories. Villages were established and relocated as the clans farmed new sections of the land when soil fertility lessened and moved among their fishing and hunting grounds.Early European settlement
In 1498, John Cabot explored this portion of the New World. The area was claimed as a part of the Dutch New Netherland province, where active trading in furs took advantage of the natural pass west, but, the Lenape prevented permanent settlement beyond what is now Jersey City. Although rapid exhaustion of the local beaver population soon turned the Dutch interests much farther north, contention existed between the Dutch and the British over the rights to this land and battles ensued. Passing to the rule of the British as the Province of New Jersey upon the fall of New Amsterdam in 1664, and becoming one of its original thirteen colonies, marks the beginning of permanent European settlements on this land.The land that would become Chatham was part of the Province of East Jersey; the Indian rights to Chatham were purchased in 1680 from members of the Minsi and Lenni Lenape tribes. They spoke an Algonquian language. They hunted and fished in the area and farmed on the lands of their settlements. The area was well connected with established paths among their settlements, to and from bountiful resources, and to neighboring settlements. Safe passageways through the valleys, marshes, swamps, and mountains of this portion of the Watchung Mountains connected the area that would become Chatham with other settlements in the area. Except for highways built since the 1970s and a shunpike built to avoid tolls on the roads connecting the colonial settlements of Chatham and Bottle Hill, the roads of the area follow those time proven, long trodden trails made by the native tribes. Main Street rises from a shallow crossing of the Passaic River and, after traveling through what became the settlements of Chatham and Bottle Hill, the road follows a westward path that leads to the top of the plateau on which Morristown was founded.
In 1680, the British first purchased this Lenape land upon which John Day made the first European settlement in 1710. He chose to settle upon the western bank of the Fishawack Crossing on the traditional Lenape Minisink Trail. Chatham was in the area delineated as Morris Township by the English. The landing at that location was the best place to ford the river and always had been used by the Lenape on their route to the Hudson River and south from their hunting grounds in what is now Sussex County. That traditional part of the Great Trail would become today’s Route 124, leading to Madison, Morristown, Mendham, and Chester. It became known as Main Street in Chatham.
Establishment
Before long, the village became known as John Day's Bridge because of a bridge he built across the river at the shallow landing. By 1750, the village had a blacksmith shop as well as a flour mill, a grist mill, and a lumber mill.In 1773, the village was renamed to "Chatham" to honor a member of the British Parliament, William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, who was an outspoken advocate of the rights of the colonists in America.
New Jersey was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolutionary War. The New Jersey Constitution of 1776 was passed on July 2, 1776, two days before the Second Continental Congress declared American Independence from Great Britain. It was an act of the New Jersey Provincial Congress, which made itself into the state legislature. To reassure neutrals, it provided that it would become void if the state of New Jersey reached reconciliation with Great Britain.
The citizens of Chatham were active participants in the Revolutionary War and nearby Morristown became the military center of the revolution. George Washington twice established his winter headquarters in Morristown and revolutionary troops were active regularly in the entire area. The Lenape assisted the colonists, supplying the revolutionary army with warriors and scouts in exchange for food supplies and the promise of a role at the head of a future Native American state. The Treaty of Easton signed by the Lenape and the British in 1766 had required that the Lenape move to Pennsylvania. Wanting to recoup rights lost thereby to the British, the Lenape were the first tribe to enter into a treaty with the emerging government of the United States. In 1781, General Rochambeau built a large bakery operation at Chatham as a subterfuge that could be interpreted as his plan to stay in Chatham for an extended amount of time, in order to distract from the fact that his troops were marching south toward Yorktown.
The Watchung mountain range was a strategic asset in the war, acting as a natural barrier to the British troops and providing a vantage point for Washington to monitor their troop movements. The Minisink Trail and the village bridge provided a route for essential supplies across the river and through the mountain range. The Hobart Gap was vital as the only pass through the Watchung Mountains.
Washington wrote 17 letters while he stayed at a homestead in Chatham. The community was the site of several skirmishes, as residents and the rebel army held off British advances, preventing them from attacking Washington's supplies at Morristown.
In 1779, a printing press was established in the village of Chatham by Shepard Kollock. From his workshop, he published books, pamphlets, and the New Jersey Journal conducting lively debates about the efforts for independence and boosting the morale of the troops and their families with information derived directly from Washington's headquarters in nearby Morristown. Kollock's newspaper was published until 1992 as the Elizabeth Daily Journal and was the fourth oldest newspaper published continuously in the United States.