New Jersey’s early townships were too large for administrative ease and were divided by the 1840’s. One, Middletown, then embraced all of Monmouth County north of the Navesink River and east of Freehold Township. Monmouth County was organized into municipalities in 1693 when its 3 original townships were formed. In the absence of public education, regulating escaped animals was one of its principal concerns. Local government was minimally involved in rural New Jersey. These plots were typically cultivated or left wooded. Most village property owners also possessed “out lots,” which were typically extensive tracts, often located some distance from the village. The village at Middletown, which is now a National Register of Historic Places historic district, was laid out with an English nucleated grid, a series of 36 lots placed north and south of a major road, the Kings Highway, a land-division pattern that still exists. The Town Book was published in Volume II of John Stillwell’s Historical and Genealogical Miscellany. Formal records in Middletown began in 1667 with The First Town Book in Middletown it is arguably the County’s most extraordinary extant document and is now in the collection of the Monmouth County Historical Association. Portland Point faltered, but organized community life thrived at Middletown village and Shrewsbury they were known informally as the Two Towns of the Navesink.
Three “villages” were established near-simultaneously, including the short-lived Portland Point located near Atlantic Highlands, Shrewsbury, south of the Navesink River, and the village of Middletown, which was, in a rough geographic sense, in the “middle” of the aforementioned. Additional people were required to settle here in order to foster permanence. The new settlers were required to secure the land from the local Indians, a population that was, in time, displaced. This grant, issued to 12 Britons, contained several provisions governing settlement. Officially founded in 1664 as one of the seats of colonial America, Middletown was settled by English who migrated from western Long Island and New England, beginning at the 1665 proclamation of the Monmouth Patent by royal governor Richard Nicholls.
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