Brief History of Lawrence Township
From Lhi
The state of New Jersey is often characterized by proximity to its big neighboring cities – New York to the north and Philadelphia to the south. In a similar manner, Lawrence Township has sometimes been defined by its two more historically famous neighbors, Princeton to the north and Trenton to the south.
Lawrence was founded in 1697, and for most of its three centuries it was a rural community that travelers passed through on their way from one place to another. Since the township is equidistant between Philadelphia and New York, it should not be surprising that most of the major north-south transportation corridors of the Northeastern U.S. – both past and present – traverse Lawrence.
These include the King’s Highway (now US 206), dating to the 18th century; the Brunswick Pike (now US 1), the Delaware & Raritan Canal, and the Camden & Amboy Railroad (now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor) from the 19th century; and Interstate 95 in the 20th century. Today in Lawrence (as in much of New Jersey) it remains easier to travel north-south than east-west.
Even Lawrence’s most famous Revolutionary War episode – the delaying action of Colonel Edward Hand before the second battle of Trenton in January 1777 – took place as the British and Colonial armies were just passing through. (Colonel Hand’s achievement is still celebrated every year with a march to Trenton from the Township Municipal Building.)
The township’s original name was Maidenhead, a part of Burlington County in what was then West Jersey. In 1816 the name was changed to Lawrence in honor of Capt. James Lawrence, a naval hero of the war of 1812. As political boundaries evolved in colonial and post-colonial New Jersey, Lawrence was later part of Hunterdon County before finally becoming part of the then-new Mercer County in 1838.
The original township was slightly larger than the current one. In the late 19th century a neighborhood at the south end of town seceded to become its own municipality – Millham Township. Millham’s independence was short-lived, however. A few years later it was annexed to Trenton. Today the former Millham is best known as the home of Helene Fuld Hospital.
Lawrence first became a destination in its own right in the 19th century with the founding of Maidenhead Academy, forerunner to the Lawrenceville School – today one of the nation’s elite boarding schools. The Lawrenceville School was the chief economic and political engine behind the development of the village of Lawrenceville (now the Lawrenceville Main Street area) during the 19th and 20th centuries.
The township began its transformation from an agricultural to a suburban community in the early 20th century, when industrial workers from Trenton began moving into new neighborhoods along the southern border. From 1900 to 1930, Lawrence’s population more than quadrupled from 1,500 to over 6,000.
But it was not until after World War II that Lawrence began to take on its current suburban character. With the construction of large housing subdivisions in the central part of the township, from 1950 to 1970 the population more than doubled from 8,500 to over 19,000. As part of that suburban migration, Rider College (today Rider University) moved from Trenton to its current Lawrence campus in 1959.
In the final decades of the 20th century Lawrence added another 10,000 residents as the northern end of the township emerged as a suburb of Princeton and the Route 1 Corridor. The township’s two major corporate campuses – Educational Testing Service and Bristol-Myers Squibb – grew to their current dimensions, as did the Quakerbridge Mall, which became the catalyst for significant retail development along Route 1.
