Oldwick: New Germantown Renamed

The hamlet at the center of Tewksbury Township was once known as New Germantown, after Palatine immigrants from the Rhine Valley had settled here in such numbers that they reshaped the community entirely. Around Zion Lutheran Church, built in seventeen forty-nine, they built a cemetery and a village that served as a gathering place for German-speaking families across the Somerset Hills. The name New Germantown eventually gave way to Oldwick, a plain English name meaning simply old village. The new name stuck, though the Palatine heritage it replaced had been here long before the controversy that buried it.