Editing Princeton, New Jersey (section)

===Government history===
During the most stirring events in its history, Princeton was a wide spot in the road; the boundary between [[Somerset County, New Jersey|Somerset County]] and [[Middlesex County, New Jersey|Middlesex County]] ran right through Princeton, along the high road between New York and Philadelphia, now Nassau Street. When Mercer County was formed in 1838, part of [[West Windsor Township, New Jersey|West Windsor Township]] was added to the portion of [[Montgomery Township, New Jersey|Montgomery Township]] which was included in the new county, and made into Princeton Township; the area between the southern boundary of the former Borough and the [[Delaware and Raritan Canal]] was added to Princeton Township in 1853. Princeton Borough became a separate municipality in 1894.<ref name=Story/>

In the early nineteenth century, [[Borough (New Jersey)|New Jersey boroughs]] had been quasi-independent subdivisions chartered within existing townships that did not have full autonomy. Princeton Borough received such a charter in 1813, as part of Montgomery and West Windsor Townships; it continued to be part of Princeton Township until the Borough Act of 1894, which required each township to form a single school district; rather than do so, Princeton Borough petitioned to be separated. (The two Princetons combined their public school systems in the decades before municipal consolidation.) Two minor boundary changes united the then site of the Princeton Hospital and of the Princeton Regional High School inside the Borough, in 1928 and 1951 respectively.<ref name=Story>Snyder, John P. [https://nj.gov/dep/njgs/enviroed/oldpubs/bulletin67.pdf ''The Story of New Jersey's Civil Boundaries: 1606-1968''], Bureau of Geology and Topography; Trenton, New Jersey; 1969. See p. 23 and 164, which cites the Acts of the NJ Legislature 1843, p. 67; 1853, p. 361, for the changes of those years. Accessed May 30, 2024.</ref> See the [[Princeton, New Jersey#Government and politics|section on "government and politics"]] for more details about the 2011 merger of borough and township.