Editing Newton, New Jersey (section)

===In the eighteenth century===
Newton is located near the headwaters of the east branch of the [[Paulins Kill]], a {{convert|41.6|mi|km|adj=on}} tributary of the [[Delaware River]].<ref name="USGSPaulinsKill">Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), United States Geological Survey, [http://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=gnispq:3:0::NO::P3_FID:879174 Geographic Names Information System Feature Detail Report: Paulins Kill], entered September 8, 1979. Accessed May 11, 2015.</ref> In October 1715, Colonial surveyor Samuel Green plotted a tract of {{convert|2500|acres|ha}} at the head of the Paulins Kill, then known as the ''Tohokenetcunck River'', on behalf of [[William Penn]]. This tract, which would not be settled for approximately 30–35 years, was part of the survey and division of the last acquisition of Native American land by the [[West Jersey]] Board of Proprietors. At the time of Green's survey, northwestern New Jersey was populated with bands of the [[Munsee]], the northern branch of the [[Lenape]] [[Native Americans in the United States|Native Americans]].

The first recorded European settler within the boundaries of present-day Newton was a [[German Palatine]] immigrant named Henry Hairlocker who arrived sometime before 1751 when he appears in [[Morris County, New Jersey|Morris County]] records as receiving a [[Liquor license|tavern license]]. The ''Newtown Precinct'', a large township, was created in 1751, and Sussex County was created from Morris two years later on June 8, 1753.{{efn|Created in 1739, Morris County encompassed the area of present-day Morris County, Sussex County (created 1753), and Warren County (created from Sussex in 1824) in northwestern New Jersey. Sussex County was created with four large precincts (or townships)—Walpack (created before 1731), Greenwich (created 1738), Hardwick (1750), and Newtown (1751).}} The township would be named ''Newtown'' after the colonial village of [[Elmhurst, Queens|Newtown]] in [[Queens]], [[New York (state)|New York]] from where the Pettit family originated (the six Pettit brothers, all prominent landowners and influential figures in early local government, settled in northwestern New Jersey in the 1740s){{citation needed|date=September 2015}} or from its status as a "new town".<ref>Hutchinson, Viola L. [http://mapmaker.rutgers.edu/356/nj_place_names_origin.pdf#page=23 ''The Origin of New Jersey Place Names''], New Jersey Public Library Commission, May 1945. Accessed September 10, 2015.</ref>

In 1762, [[Jonathan Hampton]], of [[Elizabeth, New Jersey|Elizabethtown]], surveyed the location for a [[Sussex County Courthouse (New Jersey)|county courthouse]] and town green at the intersection of a [[Military Road (New Jersey)|military supply road]] he built during the [[French and Indian War]] and a major north–south artery called the King's Highway (present-day [[New Jersey Route 94]]). The construction of the courthouse was completed in 1765 and the village that developed around it became known as ''Sussex Court House''. The county courthouse was the site of a raid by British partisan Lieutenant [[James Moody (loyalist)|James Moody]] during the American Revolution.

In 1797, the village's [[post office]] was renamed ''Newtown'' and later, in 1825, the spelling was altered to ''Newton''. Newton Township would cede land to create new townships on several occasions in the eighteenth and nineteenth-centuries, until a final division dissolved the township on April 11, 1864, through a [[legislative act]] of [[New Jersey Legislature]] that created the village of Newton as an incorporated town and two rural townships—[[Hampton Township, New Jersey|Hampton]] and [[Andover Township, New Jersey|Andover]].<ref name=Story/>