Liberty Corner: A Revolution in a Name
New Jersey
The crossroads hamlet of Liberty Corner in Bernards Township owes its name to a moment of revolutionary feeling. For decades the settlement was called Annin's Corner, named after John Annin, the main landholder here by seventeen twenty-two. His family shaped the community for generations.
When the Revolution came, the patriotic sentiment ran high enough that residents chose to rename the corner entirely, swapping a family name for a political ideal. Liberty Corner it became, and Liberty Corner it remained. In seventeen eighty-one the French Army marched through on its way south to Yorktown, passing a village that had already declared its sympathies in the clearest possible terms.
