The Town

In July 2005, CNN/Money and Money magazine ranked Chatham ninth on its annual list of the 100 Best Places to Live in the United States. New Jersey Monthly magazine ranked Chatham Borough as its 25th best place to live in its 2008 rankings of the "Best Places To Live" in New Jersey.

Because Chatham covers less than 2.5 square miles, including a business district and railroad station within about a mile from its farthest boundary, it is a pedestrian friendly community.  Chatham is a borough in Morris County, New Jersey.  As of the United States 2000 Census, the population was 8,460.  The village that now is Chatham first was settled by Europeans in 1710 in Morris Township, within the Province of New Jersey. It was settled because the site already was the location of an important crossing of the Passaic River as well as being close to a gap in the Watchung Mountains and on the path of a well-worn Native American trail. Changing its name to Chatham by 1773, it was an active community fighting in the American Revolutionary War.

In February 12, 1806, Chatham Township was formed, taking its name from the village, and including several other villages. On August 19, 1892, based on a referendum held ten days earlier, Chatham adopted a new village form of government allowed within townships.  Chatham later was incorporated as an independent borough by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 1, 1897, replacing the village form of government.

Chatham is located twenty-five miles west of New York City on the eastern edge of Morris County. Chatham's neighboring communities are Summit, New Providence, Berkeley Heights, Long Hill Township, Chatham Township, Harding Township, Madison, Florham Park, Morristown, New Vernon, Short Hills, Millburn, and Livingston.  Being only 2.4 square miles in area, Chatham was mostly built out well before the Second World War, retaining its charming homes that sometimes display the dates of their construction during the colonial and revolutionary times.

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Transportation

New Jersey Transit stops at the Chatham station to provide commuter service on the Morristown Line, with trains heading to the Hoboken Terminal and to Penn Station in Midtown Manhattan.  NJ Transit local bus service is provided on the MCM3 and MCM8 routes.  Bus lines also connect Chatham with the other towns along Route 24 from Newark to Morristown, mostly running parallel to the train lines. Nowadays, buses transport people along the line, but stagecoaches and trolleys were mass transit methods once used along the route that followed Main Street. That section of the old route now is labeled Route 124 because of the opening of a new Route 24, a modern highway. The destruction of the historic downtown by a proposed widening of the historic route was opposed and after much debate, an alternate route was chosen to preserve the historic downtowns of Chatham and Madison. The last rails for the trolley system were removed from the area roads in the 1950s.

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Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 8,460 people, 3,159 households, and 2,385 families. The population density was 3,505.9 people per square mile (1,355.4/km²). There were 3,232 housing units at an average density of 1,339.4/sq mi (517.8/km²). The racial makeup of was 95.79% White, 0.14% African American, 0.06% Native American, 2.81% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 0.50% from other races, and 0.69% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.64% of the population.

There were 3,159 households out of which 39.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 67.6% were married couples living together, 6.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 24.5% were non-families. 21.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.67 and the average family size was 3.14.  The population was spread out with 28.3% under the age of 18, 3.8% from 18 to 24, 33.5% from 25 to 44, 21.4% from 45 to 64, and 13.0% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 91.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.0 males.  The median income for a household was $101,991, and the median income for a family was $119,635. Males had a median income of $81,543 versus $59,063 for females. The per capita income was $53,027. About 1.7% of families and 2.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 1.0% of those under age 18 and 3.3% of those age 65 or over.

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Education

Public Schools

School District of the Chathams

Chatham and Chatham Township held elections in November 1986 to consider joining their separate school systems into a joint district. This proposal was supported by the voters and since then, the two municipalities have shared a regionalized school district, the School District of the Chathams.

Private schools

Saint Patrick School is a Roman Catholic school located in Chatham that serves students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade, and is operated under the auspices of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Paterson. Saint Patrick School was awarded the Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence by the United States Department of Education, the highest award an American school can receive, during the 2003-04 school year.

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Notable residents

Notable current and former residents of Chatham Borough include:

Ben Bailey (1970-), host of Discovery Channel's Cash Cab, was born in Chatham.

Shepard Kollock, American Revolutionary War-era editor and printer of the New Jersey Journal. who published it as the first newspaper in Chatham in 1779

Ann McLaughlin Korologos (1941-), United States Secretary of Labor in the administration of President Ronald Reagan

David K. Shipler (1942-), author, Winner of the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land.

Walter Scott Story (1879-1955), author.

Aaron Montgomery Ward (1844-1913), inventor of mail order.

Alice Waters (1944-), chef and mother of local, organic food movement in the USA. Graduated from Chatham High School class of 1963

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History

Occupied for ten thousand years by Native Americans, this land was overseen by clans of the Lenni-Lenape, who farmed, fished, and hunted upon it. They were organized into a matrilineal agricultural and mobile hunting society sustained with fixed, but not permanent, settlements in their clan territories. Villages were established and relocated as the clans farmed new sections of the land when soil fertility lessened and moved among their fishing and hunting grounds.
In 1498, John Cabot explored this portion of the New World. The area was claimed as a part of the Dutch New Netherland province, where active trading in furs took advantage of the natural pass west, but, the Lenape prevented permanent settlement beyond what is now Jersey City. Although rapid exhaustion of the local beaver population soon turned the Dutch interests much farther north, contention existed between the Dutch and the British over the rights to this land and battles ensued. Passing to the rule of the British in 1664 as the Province of New Jersey, and becoming one of its original thirteen colonies, marks the beginning of permanent European settlements on this land.

Having been part of the New Netherland territory, dating from 1614, New Jersey became a British colony at the fall of New Amsterdam in 1664. The land that would become Chatham was part of the Province of East Jersey; the Indian rights to Chatham were purchased in 1680 from members of the Minsi and Lenni Lenape tribes. They spoke an Algonquin language. They hunted and fished in the area and farmed on the lands of their settlements. The area was well connected with established paths among their settlements, to and from bountiful resources, and to neighboring settlements. Safe passageways through the valleys, marshes, swamps, and mountains of this portion of the Watchung Mountains connected the area which would become Chatham with other settlements in the area. Except for highways built since the 1970s and a shunpike built to avoid tolls on the roads connecting the colonial settlements of Chatham and Bottle Hill, the roads of the area follow those time proven, long trodden trails made by the Indians. Main Street rises from a shallow crossing of the Passaic River and, after traveling through what became the settlements of Chatham and Bottle Hill (which became Madison), the road follows a westward path that leads to the top of the plateau on which Morristown was founded.
In 1680, the British first purchased this Lenape land upon which John Day made the first European settlement in 1710. He chose to settle upon the western bank of the Fishawack Crossing (of the Passaic River) on the traditional Lenape Minisink Trail. Chatham was in the area delineated as Morris Township by the English. The landing at that location was the best place to ford the river and always had been used by the Lenape on their route to the Hudson River and south from their hunting grounds in what is now Sussex County. That traditional part of the Great Trail would become Route 24, leading to Madison, Morristown, Mendham, and Chester, it became known as Main Street in Chatham.

Old Mill at Chatham, from a 1911 postcardBefore long, the village became known as John Day's Bridge because of a bridge he built across the river at the shallow landing. By 1750, the village had a blacksmith shop as well as a flour mill, a grist mill, and a lumber mill.

In 1773, the village was renamed to Chatham to honor a member of the British Parliament, William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham, who was an outspoken advocate of the rights of the colonists in America.  The citizens of Chatham were active participants in the American Revolutionary War and nearby Morristown became the military center of the revolution. Washington twice established his winter headquarters in Morristown and revolutionary troops were active regularly in the entire area. The Lenape assisted the colonists, supplying the revolutionary army with warriors and scouts in exchange for food supplies and the promise of a role at the head of a future native American state. The Treaty of Easton signed by the Lenape and the British in 1766 had required that the Lenape move to Pennsylvania. Wanting to recoup rights lost thereby to the British, the Lenape were the first tribe to enter into a treaty with the emerging government of the United States.

Location of Morristown in relation to New York, showing the importance of the river crossing at Chatham and Hobart Gap through the Watchung Mountains, a blue arrow indicates American forces and a red arrow indicates British forces; the blue arrow ends at the crossing of the riverThe Watchung mountain range was a strategic asset in the war, acting as a natural barrier to the British troops and providing a vantage point for Washington to monitor their troop movements. The Minisink Trail and the village bridge provided a route for essential supplies across the river and through the mountain range.
A graphic presentation of the importance of this pass from a site about Morristown, where arrows are pointing from Morristown and New York to demonstrate how vital the Hobart Gap was as the only pass through the Watchung Mountains, is displayed to the right.  Seventeen letters were written by Washington while he stayed at a homestead in Chatham and the village was the site of several skirmishes, as residents and the rebel army held off British advances, preventing them from attacking Washington's supplies at Morristown.

A printing press was established in the village of Chatham during the war by Shepard Kollock. From his workshop he published books, pamphlets, and the New Jersey Journal (the second newspaper published in New Jersey) conducting lively debates about the efforts for independence and boosting the morale of the troops and their families with information derived directly from Washington's headquarters in nearby Morristown. Kollock's paper was published until 1992 as the Elizabeth Daily Journal (having moved to there) and was the fourth oldest newspaper published continuously in the United States.

After the revolutionary war was over, New Jersey became a state and governmental reforms were instituted throughout the new nation. In 1806, the village of Chatham became part of a township form of government that also took its name, but included several other villages. "In 1892 Chatham Village found itself at odds with the rest of the township. Although village residents paid 40 percent of the township taxes, they got only 7 percent of the receipts in services. The village had to raise its own money to install kerosene street lamps and its roads were in poor repair. As a result, the village voted on August 9, 1892, to secede from governance by the township."  Ten days later, on August 19, 1892, the citizens of Chatham reincorporated as a village. With the introduction of yet another new local government form in New Jersey, five years later, the village reincorporated, again, as a borough on March 1, 1897.  In 1910, Chatham also acquired a slice of Florham Park to enlarge farther. The local form of government and the boundaries of Chatham have remained the same since that acquisition, making it about 2.4 square miles.

Chatham Library was founded in 1908 in downtown Chatham after decades of discussion and planning. Growth of the collection brought about expansion and movement to progressively larger facilities until the current building was built on Main Street. The new site was chosen after the Fairview Hotel, which had been on the site, burned down. The hotel land was bought in the early 1920s by Charles L. Lum, after whose family Lum Avenue is named, and a brick building was constructed to house the library. The new Chatham Library was dedicated and opened to the public in 1924.
A referendum was placed on the November 1974 ballot regarding jointure, providing that the Chatham Library would serve Chatham Township residents also, and the measure passed. The library was renamed as the Library of the Chathams, which now is administered by six trustees, who are appointed jointly through the two governments via the mayors of Chatham and Chatham Township or their representatives, as well as a representative from the newly created joint School District of the Chathams.  The Library of the Chathams joined the Morris Automated Information Network (MAIN), an electronic database linking together all the public libraries in Morris County, in 1985. Recently, an expansion costing nearly $4,000,000 was completed (with the governments of Chatham and Chatham Township contributing a combined $2,000,000). The project was completed and the new addition dedicated on January 11, 2004.

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