Sussex County was created on 8 June 1753 and was formed from the western portion of original Morris County . Consult the Morris County for pre-1753 records. The southern portion of old Sussex County was set off as Warren County in 1824. The County was named for the English county of Sussex. The County Seat is Newton. See also County History for more historical details.
Sussex County Boroughs Include Andover, Branchville, Franklin, Hamburg, Hopatcong, Ogdensburg, Stanhope, Sussex. Towns Include Newton. Townships Include Andover, Byram, Frankford, Fredon, Green, Hampton, Hardyston, Lafayette, Montague, Sandyston, Sparta, Stillwater, Vernon, Walpack, Wantage. CDPs and Communities Include Crandon Lakes, Hainesville, Highland Lake, Lake Mohawk, Layton, Stockholm, Vernon Valley
Rivers, Clove Brook, Delaware River, Flat Brook, Lubbers Run, Musconetcong River, Papakating Creek, Paulins Kill, Pequannock River, Pequest River, Punkhorn Creek, Wallkill River, Wawayanda Creek.
PLEASE READ!! Please call the clerk's department to confirm hours, mailing address, fees and other specifics before visiting or requesting information because of sometimes changing contact information.
All Departments below are in the Sussex County Judicial Center, 43-4 7 High Street, Newton, NJ 07860; (973) 579-0675, unless otherwise noted below. The Official County website is located at http://www.sussex.nj.us/. NOTE: The record dates below are from the earliest date to present time.
Sussex County Clerk has Land Records & Marriage Records from 1766/1785 and is located at 83 Spring Street, Suite 304,
Newton, New Jersey 07860 ;
(973) 579-0900. [ County clerks were required by law to file copies of deeds beginning in 1785 and mortgages beginning in 1766.] New Jersey county clerks are responsible for land records, including deeds and mortgages, naturalizations, marriages (usually 1795-1840s), and various county court records. A few original county justice of the peace dockets are at the New Jersey State Archives. Estate matters are handled in the surrogate's and orphans' courts.
Sussex County Surrogate Court / Orphan's Court has Probate Records from 1804 and is located atHall of Records,
4 Park Place,
Newton, NJ 07860 ;
973-579-0920. [ Recording of wills and estate inventories at the county level began in 1804. Orphans Courts were established in 1785.] By virtue of laws enacted since 1844, the responsibilities of the County Surrogate have been expanded. The County Surrogate now has two major functions:
As Judge and Clerk of the County Surrogate's Court, the Surrogate is responsible for settling the estate of every county resident who dies individually owning any assets in New Jersey--whether or not that resident dies leaving a will. Therefore, the Surrogate reviews and probates wills and appoints Executors, Administrators and guardians of minors. In addition, the Surrogate administers and invests monies (now more than $30 million in Bergen County) primarily for minor children who receive judgments in the courts in Bergen County; and
As Deputy Clerk of the Superior Court, Chancery Division, Probate Part, the Surrogate dockets, reviews and schedules all actions pertaining to will contests, estate matters, accountings, mental incompetencies, guardianships of incompetents and all adoptions occurring in Bergen County. In addition, all documents involved in all County Surrogate Court matters are recorded, stored and maintained by the County Surrogate's Court.
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Court Records. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Court Records by clicking the link below:
New Jersey Immigration & Emigration Records - Immigration records help the family historian to understand the movements of their ancestry as they relocated to different parts of the world.
Click Here to Search New Jersey Birth, Marriage & Death Records! - Birth, marriage, and death records are connected with central life events. They are prime sources for genealogical information. Look also for baptism, christening, and burial records in this collection.
New Jersey State Department of Health and Senior Services, State Registrar Search Unit, PO Box 370, Trenton, NJ 08625-0370; (609) 292-4087, Fax: (609) 392-4292. It can take up to 4 months to get a vital record from New Jersey.
Vital records from May 1848 - May 1878 may be obtained from the State Archives. The Archives also holds microfilm copies of births from 1878-1923, marriages from 1879-1940 and deaths from 1878-1940. These materials are available for in-person use only.
Birth, Marriage & Death Certificates:
Cost: Initial search and one certified copy or certification of the record or No Record Statement is $25.00 per certificate.
Additional copies of the same record ordered at the same time are $2 are per copy
Additional years searched (genealogy records only) are $1 per year.
Make Check or Money Order payable to Treasurer, State of New Jersey. If no record is found or no copy is made, state law requires that we keep $25.00 for a searching fee. Please do not send cash in the mail.
Dates: from 1878 to the present
Processing Time: 14-16 weeks when ordered by MAIL or 2-5 Days when you order ELECTRONICALLY
Divorce Certificates: Divorce records for 1900-1989 are kept by the Records Information Center of the State Superior Court. For records after 1989 contact the NJ County Court that issued the divorce decree.New Jersey divorce decrees are available through the Superior Court of New Jersey Records Center. For more information on obtaining a certified copy of a divorce decree, call the Records Center at: 609-777-0092
Cost: Include a fee of $10.00 per 10 year search per last name with request. Make check or money order payable to Clerk of the Superior Court.
Superior Court of NJ, Public Information Ctr, 171 Jersey Street, CN 967, Trenton, NJ 08625-0967
Order Online: You can also order Order Electronically and get the certificates within 2-5 days by ordering below
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Vital Records. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Vital Records by clicking the link below:
Search the Social Security Death Index for FREE - Search over 82 million death records and get genealogical information crucial to your family research. New content added weekly! Most comprehensive SSDI site online!
Research Death records In The World's Largest Newspaper Archive at NewpaperArchive.com! - Find thousands of historical New Jersey newspaper articles about deaths. Search for local articles about an old family friend that died many years ago or a celebrity that committed suicide. Historical newspapers contain a wealth of information about the deceased.
New Jersey Marriages, 1684-1895: This database update adds marriage records for Salem County, in addition to records for Warren County, Atlantic, Bergen, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Sussex, Hunterdon, and Somerset counties.
New Jersey Marriages, Colonial Era, 1665-1800: In addition to the 45,000 names in this database, included is an historical introduction on the early marriage laws of New Jersey ,and the precedents on which they were founded.
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Census Records. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Census Records by clicking the link below:
New Jersey Census, 1772-1890: This collection contains the following indexes: 1772-1822 Tax Lists Index; 1800 Cumberland County Federal Census Index; 1824-1832 Bergen County - Paterson City; 1830 Federal Census Index; 1840 Federal Census Index; 1840 Pensioners List; 1850 Federal Census Index; 1850 Slave Schedule; 1860 Federal Census Index; 1870 Federal Census Index; 1890 Veterans Schedule; Early Census Index.
Genealogy Atlas has images of old American atlases during the years 1795, 1814, 1822, 1823, 1836, 1838, 1845, 1856, 1866, 1879 and 1897 for Ohio and other states.
You can view rotating animated maps for New Jersey showing all the county boundaries for each census year overlayed with past and present maps so you can see the changes in county boundaries. You can view a list of maps for other states at Census Maps
You can view rotating animated maps for New Jersey showing all the county boundary changes for each year overlayed with past and present maps so you can see the changes in county boundaries.
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Maps. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Maps by clicking the link below:
Click Here to Search New Jersey Military Records! - Military and civil service records provide unique facts and insights into the lives of men and women who have served their country at home and abroad.
The uses and value of military records in genealogical research for ancestors who were veterans are obvious, but military records can also be important to re-searchers whose direct ancestors were not soldiers in any war. The fathers, grandfathers, brothers, and other close relatives of an ancestor may have served in a war, and their service or pension records could contain information that will assist in further identifying the family of primary interest. Due to the amount of genealogical information contained in some military pension files, they should never be overlooked during the research process. Those records not containing specific genealogical information are of historic value and should be included in any overall research design.
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Military Records. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Military Records by clicking the link below:
New Jersey Pensioners, 1835: This database identifies thousands of New Jersey soldiers who were covered under various pension acts in the early 1800s.
Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783 from the State of New Jersey (The National Archives): View, Print Copy & Save Original Documents in NARA publication M246 include muster rolls, payrolls, strength returns, and other miscellaneous personnel, pay, and supply records of American Army units, 1775-83.
Southern Claims Commission from the State of New Jersey (The National Archives): View, Print Copy & Save Original Documents In the 1870s, southerners claimed compensation from the U.S. government for items used by the Union Army, ranging from corn and horses, to trees and church buildings.
Because New Jersey's pre-1830 federal censuses have not survived, tax records are quite an important substitute for placing persons and families prior to that time. Tax lists arranged by township are available for 1773-1822. The originals, at the New Jersey State Archives, show heads of households, landowners, and single adult males, with information about their property that was taxable, including land, horses, cattle, slaves, and mills. Only about half of the 1773-4 lists are extant, and for some places, such as Sussex County, coverage is very slight. Microfilms of these records are at the state archives, the New Jersey Historical Society, Rutgers University, and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society. The 1784 tax lists for thirty-eight municipalities (predominantly in southern New Jersey) are the only ones to indicate the size of a household, with a column for number of whites and a column for number of slaves.
Later tax records are found in the counties starting about 1869-70. Tax lists for some extinct New Jersey municipalities are at the state archives.
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Tax Records. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Tax Records by clicking the link below:
The Repositories
in this section are Archives, Libraries, Museums, Genealogical
and Historical Societies. Many County Historical and Genealogical
Societies publish magazines and/or news letters on a monthly,
quarterly, bi-annual or annual basis. Contacting the local societies
should not be over looked. State Archives and Societies are
usually much larger and better organized with much larger archived
materials than their smaller county cousins but they can be
more generalized and over look the smaller details that local
societies tend to have. Libraries can also be a good place to
look for local information. Some libraries have a genealogy
section and may have some resources that are not located at
archives or societies. Also, take a special look at any museums
in the area. They sometimes have photos and items from years
gone by as well as information of a genealogical interest. All
these places are vitally important to the family genealogist
and must not be passed over.
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Genealogical Addresses. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Genealogical Addresses by clicking the link below:
Department of State Division of Archives and Records Management
Bureau of Archives and Records Preservation State Library Bldg, 185 West State Street, CN-307, Trenton, NJ 08625-0307 The New Jersey State Archives has many of the basic research materials for the state, such as federal and state census records; probate, land, and court records; newspapers; and vital records.
New Jersey State Library, State Library Building, 185 West State Street, CN-520, Trenton, NJ 08625-0520
Genealogical Society of New Jersey,
PO Box 1476, Trenton NJ 08607-1476
The Genealogical Society of New Jersey has published The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey since 1925. The society houses its collection of genealogical materials, including cemetery transcriptions, family Bibles (over 4,800), military records, notes of genealogists, and so forth, in the A. S. Alexander Library at Rutgers University.
New Jersey Newspapers & Periodicals Records - Newspapers and periodicals are the diaries of local communities. They are excellent sources of family history details - often recorded nowhere else. Look for obituaries, marriages, legal notices, and more found in our Historical Newspaper Archives.
Click Here to Search New Jersey Obituary Records! - This database is a compilation of obituaries published in U.S. newspapers, collected from various online sources. Obituaries can vary in the amount of information they contain, but many of them are genealogical goldmines, including information such as names, dates, places of birth and death, marriage information, and family relationships.
The important work of grave marker transcribing has been the goal of the Genealogical Society of New Jersey, which was originally formed by "Tombstone Hounds." Their core collection is at Rutgers University, where there is a card index by county and name of the cemetery as well as a "master index" arranged alphabetically by surname but only for selected cemeteries. Many of the society's transcriptions have been published in their journal, The Genealogical Magazine of New Jersey. Another large collection of cemetery records is that gathered by the New Jersey DAR chapters, with copies deposited at the New Jersey State Library and the New Jersey Historical Society. Both these places have other cemetery records, as do the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and the New York Public Library. Some individual books of cemetery inscriptions have been published, and some are found in The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record.
Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Cemetery & Church Records. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Cemetery & Church Records by clicking the link below:
Find Obituaries in The World's Largest Newspaper Archive at NewpaperArchive.com! - Find thousands of New Jersey obituaries to help you research your family history. Search for a New Jersey newspaper obituary about your ancestor or a celebrity. Begin your search today and find death notices and funeral announcements printed in newspapers from Indiana.
Click Here to Search New Jersey Family Tree Records! - The use of published genealogies, electronic files containing genealogical lineage, and other compiled sources can be of tremendous value to a researcher.
When view family trees online or not, be sure to only take the info at face value and always follow up with your own sources or verify the ones they provide. Below is a list of online resources for Sussex County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information. Email us with websites containing Sussex County Family Trees, web forums and other family type information by clicking the link below:
Genealogy Encyclopedia: General Abbreviations, Early Illnesses, Nickname Meanings, Worldwide Epidemics, Early Occupations, Common Terms, Censuses Explained, Free Genealogical Forms
Nichols and Related Families of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virgina.
New Jersey Family & Local History Records - The Family & Local Histories Collection lets you read journals, memoirs, and other first-hand historical narratives right on your computer. Gathered from some of the world's finest libraries, these materials may provide hard-to-find town, county, and state information; tax records and wills; military, church, and court records; as well as photographs, stories, and maps.
Sussex County is situated at the extreme top of New Jersey and has always been off the beaten path due to it's rural nature. It has 529 square miles with a population of 131,000. In addition, the rugged Kittatinny Mountains cut across its entire northwestern edge and the heavily-wooded New Jersey Highlands rise upward from the Kittatinny Valley in the eastern part of the county.
This very hilly aspect is what keeps Sussex rural. For one thing, the rock-strewn hills make usual farming difficult - thus explaining dairy cattle. For another thing, pockets in the slopes have led to lakes, both natural and man-made which encourage vacationing rather than permanent settlement. Finally, the county has thousands acres being used in State parks.
New Jersey's highest point, 1,803 feet above sea level, is at High Point near the New York border. The Kittatinny Mountains average 1,600 feet above sea level. The Sussex Highlands range upwards to 1,496 feet above sea level near Vernon. All of this lakeland and mountainland makes for fine scenery.
But it was neither cows nor scenery that brought the first Europeans to Sussex. They were Dutchmen from what is now Kingston, New York, who found copper on the rocky mountain slope just north of the Delaware Water Gap, sometime in the 1640's. As they took the ore back along the mountains, they developed a 140-mile thoroughfare linking the Pahaquarry copper mine with Esopus (Kingston, New York).
English, Irish, and Scotch immigrants came overland soon after 1700 to the Kittatinny slopes, which they called the "Blue" mountains. Germans came up from Philadelphia in the 1740's, led by John Peter Bernhardt, and Caspar Shafer, and settled along the Tockhokkonetkong River, now called by the more easily pronounceable name of Paulins Kill.
The County of Sussex (also known as Sussex County) is the northernmost county in the State of New Jersey. The county was founded on 8 June 1753, by an order of Jonathan Belcher (1689-1757), Royal Governor of New Jersey (1747-1757) and his council, from portions of Morris County. It originally contained all the land north and west of the Musconetcong River, including the area of the present-day Warren County (created from the southwestern half of Sussex County on November 20, 1824). At present, it is the fourth largest county in New Jersey by area. The county seat of Sussex County is the Town of Newton.
Though lacking much historical evidence, local tradition asserts that in the 1650s, Dutch adventurers from New Amsterdam started mines in the now-defunct Pahaquarry Township, building the Old Mine Road to transport copper ore to Esopus on the Hudson River. Sources indicate that first settlement by European colonists began circa 1690-1710, by Dutch settlers from New York along the Delaware River, and in the decades subsequent, Palatine Germans via Philadelphia, and English colonists from New England, Long Island, Newark, and Salem County, New Jersey.
Early industry and commerce chiefly centered around agriculture, iron mining, shifting during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to focus on several factories and the mining of zinc. Today, Sussex County features a mix of rural farmland, forests and suburban development at the western extent of the New York metropolitan area. Though agriculture (chiefly dairy farming) is on the decline and because the county hosts little light industry, Sussex County is considered a "bedroom community" as most residents commute to neighboring counties (Bergen, Essex and Morris Counties) or to New York City for work.
As of the 2000 Federal decennial census, 144,166 persons resided in Sussex County of which nearly 95% were white. Sussex County is the 91st richest county in the United States with its per capita income being $26,992.
Origin of the county's name
Sussex County was named by Royal Governor Jonathan Belcher (1689-1757) for Sussex in England which was the ancestral seat of His Grace, Thomas Pelham-Holles, first Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and first Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne (1693-1768), who at the time was the Secretary of State for the Northern Department, and later the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1754-1756, 1757-1762). Pelham-Holles, whose office oversaw British affairs in North America, was Governor Belcher's political superior. During his term as Governor of New Jersey (1747-1757), Belcher named many municipalities in honor of important British political figures, most of whom were superior to him in rank or precedence. It is believed that he did so in order to curry political favor and regain a level of standing that was diminished from his scandal which precipitated his removal from the Governorship of Massachusetts in 1741.
Sussex, in England, was notable historically as one of the seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy (A.D. 500–850), which were later unified under Egbert of Wessex (c. 770–839) into the Kingdom of England.
Under the 1664 deed from Charles II of England to his brother the Duke of York, and the subsequent deed that granted New Jersey to Lord Berkeley and George Carteret, New Jersey's northern border was drawn from a line at 41 degrees North Latitude on the Hudson River to a point at 41 40' North on the Delaware River. This line which granted New Jersey a significant swath of land in present day Orange and Sullivan Counties in New York.
With the boundary between the Provinces of East Jersey and West Jersey undefined, the land area that became Sussex County was first, briefly, under the auspices of Essex County when it was established in 1682. After the settling of the border with the Keith Line (1687) and the subsequent Coxe-Barclay Line (1688), this area was under the control of the West Jersey Proprietors and given to Burlington County when it was established in 1696. Burlington County ceded all the lands north of the Assunpink Creek to Hunterdon County in 1711. In 1739, Hunterdon County cede the land north of the Musconetcong River—comprising the present-day Morris, Sussex and Warren Counties—to form Morris County.
In the years following the creation of Morris County, the area north and west of the Musconetcong River grew in population to several hundred settlers. Given the lack of roads and the long, arduous journey to attend to the courts, government and other business at Morristown, the county's seat, the residents of this area petitioned the provincial government to erect a new county. On 8 June 1753, Royal Governor Jonathan Belcher and his Council ordered the creation of the County of Sussex by the following boundaries:
"That all and singular, the lands and upper parts of said Morris County northwest of Muskonetkong river, BEGINNING at the mouth of said river, where it empties itself into Delaware river, and running up said Muskonetkong river, to the head of the great pond; from thence to the line that divides the province of New-York and said New-Jersey; thence along the said line to Delaware river aforesaid; thence down the same to the mouth of Muskonetkong…”
At this time, Sussex County consisted of four municipalities that were founded before the establishment of the county: Walpack (1731), Newtown (1751), Hardwick (1751) and Greenwich Townships (1738). These townships would, over the next two hundred years, be carved into the twenty-four municipalities that comprise present-day Sussex County, and the twenty-two in present-day Warren County.
The first county seat was established on the lands of Jonathan Pettit, a local justice-of-the-peace and tavernkeeper in present-day Johnsonburg in Frelinghuysen Township, then part of Hardwick Township. At the first meeting of the Board of Chosen Freeholders in 1754, monies were appropriated for the construction of a jail which was built from logs. This caused the village to be known as Log Gaol. Disputes between Pettit and the early county freeholders lead to the courts and county government to be held elsewhere in the subsequent years, including at the taverns of Thomas Woolverton (1719-1760) and Henry Hairlocker (1715-1777) in Newtown Township. In 1761, the Provincial Legislature and Royal Governor Josiah Hardy authorized the construction of a courthouse and jail on the Newton Township lands of Jonathan Hampton (1720-1777), a surveyor and merchant from Elizabethtown, one half-mile (0.85 km) from the tavern of Henry Hairlocker. This site, which became known as Sussex Court House, is presently the Town of Newton.
Scarcely 600 people lived in the whole Sussex region in 1750 when settlers began to grumble about going all the way to Morristown for court business. There were no towns, no major plantations, and little economic value in the vast area when the colonial legislature created Sussex County on June 8, 1753.
Leaders of the new county met on November 20, 1753, to grant tavern licenses and to fix fees for liquor and provender. This reflected a major interest of the day, since for many decades the tavern keeper was an important man in Sussex county economic and political circles.
In the spring of 1754, county fathers levied taxes of 100 pounds annually; most of it to pay bounties for the killing of wolves and panthers. The rest went to build a log jail so flimsy the sheriff complained he couldn't keep the prisoners in. The prisoners, in turn. said they wouldn't stay in the jail if the sheriff couldn't keep the sheep out.
Sussex courts returned temporarily to Morristown in 1757, driven there by savage Indian uprisings along the Delaware valley. Long bitter over the loss of their territory, the Indians struck back at white settlers in 1755. Colonial officials appropriated 10,000 pounds in December of that year to build stone forts along the river.
Most noted of the killings by Indians took place near Swartswood Lake, where in May 1756, Anthony Swartwout, his wife and a daughter were slain by the savages, and two younger children became Indian captives. In 1758 the Indians were persuaded to relinquish their territorial claims peacefully, but another conflict already was raging in the not-so-peaceful Sussex hills. That was the New York-New Jersey border conflict which involved many beatings and shootings in the 50 years after it first broke out in 1719. Bi-state action fixed the border at its present line in 1769.
On the eve of the Revolution, in 1775, the freeholders boldly announced that Sussex County would no longer pay the salaries of Royal judges. The war itself passed Sussex by except for supplies which came from both the fields and forges of the northern county. The county also contributed Bonnell Moody, a well-known Loyalist spy who hid out in a cave near Springdale.
In May 1780, Moody led six men into Newton to free the prisoners in the jail. Tradition holds that Moody's foray frightened all the local people out of town and history indicates that Moody was never caught.
Ogdensburg is home to New Jersey last operating underground mine. A guided walking tour is available along with a museum.
In 1824, heeding the petitions of the southern residents of Sussex County, the State Legislature ordered a line drawn across the county from the mouth of the Flat Brook (where it enters the Delaware River) in Walpack Township, through the village of Yellow Frame in then Hardwick Township to a point on the county's eastern boundary, the Musconetcong River. The lands south of this line were ceded on 20 November 1824 to form Warren County, named for American Revolutionary War hero, Doctor Joseph Warren (1741-1775) who died leading American troops at the Battle of Bunker Hill on 17 June 1775.
