Robbinsville was formed by an act of the New Jersey Legislature in March 1859 after a group of independent minded citizens petitioned to separate from East Windsor Township. A year later, the first town election and annual meeting was held to establish Washington Township with its 1,279 citizens and about 21 square miles.
Originally, the area now known as Robbinsville was part of Piscataway in East New Jersey. The East Jersey Board of Proprietors established two large land grants south of the Assunpink in 1690 – one to Augustine Gordon and the other to Robert Burnet, both Scotch Quakers – and a third grant north of the Assunpink to Colonel Andrew Hamilton in 1701.. Later our area became part of New Brunswick in 1723, then part of New Windsor Township in 1731, and part of just plain Windsor in 1751, before becoming the southern portion of East Windsor in 1797 when Windsor was divided into East and West Windsor Townships.
The eastern boundary is the Old Post Road, so named when the Colonial Post Office was established in 1692, that served as the boundary between Monmouth County and Middlesex County (and later Mercer). The southwestern boundary with Hamilton was the original Province Line that separated East and West Jersey in 1687. The development of our 21 square miles in all likelihood began along the Post Road in New Sharon and New Canton. When what is now the Allentown Robbinsville Road (Route 526) was opened in 1725 as a main road to Trenton and the Robbinsville Edinburg Road opened in 1754 to Princeton, Newtown was settled around the Cross Keys Tavern; the post office at Newtown was renamed Robbinsville in 1844 after the Honorable George R. Robbins, a member of Congress. Windsor, previously known as Centreville, came later as it developed around the commercial activity spurred on by first the Bordentown-Amboy Turnpike in 1816 and then the Camden-Amboy Railroad chartered in 1830, one of the earliest railroads in the United States. By 1833, travel was revolutionized by the inauguration of steam locomotive service with the “John Bull”, and both Windsor and Newtown benefitted from twice daily freight, passenger and mail service.
By 1883, Washington Township had six one-room schoolhouses, there were four grist mills and a saw mill. There was a shoe factory, brickyards, a tannery, a hat factory. And of course there were many successful farms. There is so much more to report on the history of Robbinsville, but this is a mere sketch.
Robert C. Craig, Windsor Township and the Early Years of Central New Jersey, 1680 – 1797
Major E. M. Woodward and John F. Hageman, History of Burlington and Mercer Counties, New Jersey
--, 2000 Master Plan Washington Township, Mercer County, New Jersey
--, Washington Township Centennial Anniversary Brochure
