Oldwick, New Germantown's Wartime Rename
New Jersey
The little village you pass through as Oldwick spent more than a century and a half known as New Germantown. Palatine Germans fleeing the endless wars and crushing taxes of the Rhine Valley arrived here in the seventeen forties. With Lutheran pastors of the Muhlenberg family among their early ministers, they built a church and cemetery, and the community took on a firmly German character that endured into the twentieth century.
New Germantown became Oldwick, a plain English name meaning simply old village, though the date and reason for the change are not well documented. The church the Palatine refugees built still stands, and the village looks much as it has for generations, even if the name no longer tells you who built it.
