Notable Bordentown Residents

Though never larger than a small village, Bordentown was home in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to a remarkable cross section of notable and influential people. Among leaders of the American Revolution who lived on Farnsworth Avenue were Joseph Borden, Joseph Kirkbride, and Francis Hopkinson, the multi talented signer of the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Paine, the influential writer who championed American independence, lived on Church Street. Hopkinson's son Joseph, a jurist and man of letters, was advisor to Joseph Bonaparte, elder brother of Napoleon, who created one of the young nation's grandest estates between Park Street and Crosswicks Creek. Bordentown also had strong artistic connections: Patience Lovell Wright, whose home stood at this intersection, and her sister Rachel Wells were America's first female sculptors and international art entrepreneurs, exhibiting popular wax figures in America and abroad in the eighteenth century. Joseph Wright, Patience's son, was a successful portrait painter and engraver, and maritime artist George Bonfield, folk artist Susan Waters, and the Samuel Waugh family were among the artists living here in the nineteenth century. Bordentown native Richard Watson Gilder became a prominent figure in New York's artistic and literary circles, a civic and educational reformer, a journalist, a poet, and one of the most influential magazine editors of the nineteenth century. Clara Barton launched her first charitable project here in 1852, establishing one of New Jersey's first free public schools before later founding the American Red Cross.

Bordentown, New Jersey · United States