Bedminster: A Royal Charter in the Somerset Hills

Bedminster Township in Somerset County received its royal charter on April fourth, seventeen forty-nine, in the name of King George the Second of England. The name came directly from Bedminster, a parish in Somerset, England, just south of Bristol. Settlement began in the early seventeen hundreds, shaped by the Peapack Patent of seventeen oh one, and drew Dutch, German, Irish, and Scottish families into the rolling hills along the upper Raritan.

It remained a farming township for its first century and a half, shaped more by seasons than by industry. Bedminster later became best known as horse country, home to some of the oldest foxhunting traditions in New Jersey and, eventually, to a golf course that would make headlines for very different reasons in the twenty-first century.