Page "John Hart (New Jersey politician)" Paragraph 1

Sources disagree as to John Hart's year and place of birth.

Some place his birth as early as 1706 in Stonington, Connecticut ; others insist that he was born in 1713, and after his parents had moved to Hopewell Township, New Jersey in what was then Hunterdon County ( now part of Mercer County ).

He was the son of Captain Edward Hart, a farmer, public assessor, Justice of the Peace, and leader of a local militia unit during the French and Indian War, and grandson of John Hart, a carpenter who came to Hopewell from Newtown, Long Island.

An earlier ancestor was Edward Hart, the clerk for the town of Flushing on Long Island who authored the Flushing Remonstrance on December 27, 1657, considered the first expression of religious freedom in America.