Gamaliel Bartlett was the first postmaster of Stanhope, New Jersey. He was appointed to the position in 1823 by President James Monroe. In 1829 Mr. Bartlett petitioned the Sussex County Court for a license to "...keep an Inn or Tavern in the house in which he now lives, in the Township of Byram..." It was signed by the 16 town council members. Probably the location of the proposed licensed premises was what is locally referred to as The Stanhope House.
Bartlett was involving with bringing about the Morris Canal section and Morris Canal and Banking Company. The Palladium of Liberty, a Morristown, New Jersey, newspaper of the day, reported on August 29, 1822: "...Membership of a committee which studied the practicality of a canal from Pennsylvania to Newark, New Jersey, consisted of two prominent citizens from each county concerned: Hunterdon County, Nathaniel Saxton, Henry Dusenberry; Sussex County, Morris Robinson, Gamaliel Bartlett; Morris County, Lewis Condict, Mahlon Dickerson; Essex County, Gerald Rutgers, Charles Kinsey; Bergen County, John Rutherford, William Colefax...". During November 1829, William C. Lewis announced his intention of joining Gamaliel Bartlett's blacksmithing business in Stanhope. In 1833, Mr. Bartlett would find himself embroiled in a lawsuit entitled President and Directors of the Morris Canal and Banking Co. vs. Gamaliel Bartlett. The case took four days to try before Justice Ford. On May 30, 1833, Mr. Gamaliel Bartlett prevailed and was awarded $1,500.00 plus all costs for "...damages for forge, grist mill, and saw mill, through lying still or lack of water during the making of canal." In the parlance of 2009, the award would be approximately $50,000.00.
Family
His parentage unproven, Gamaliel Bartlett is believed to have been born in Massachusetts and married at the age of 21 to Mary A. Parmelee who was born about 1790 in Massachusetts. Three of their five children died young, viz., Samuel, Emma, and Laura Mariah. These three children were born and died at Sussex County in Stanhope. The first of their two children who lived to maturity was Jane Mariah who was born at Monroe, New York in the county of Orange, on December 4, 1819. She married William A. Jackson and she died on February 15, 1865 at the Centerville Section of Livingston Township, Essex, New Jersey. This couple had one child, Laura Maria who married William H. Griffith. There were no offspring. The second surviving child was Henry Clay who was born at Stanhope, Sussex, New Jersey, on April 13, 1830. He first married Mary Spencer Parkman who was born at Spencertown, Hudson, Columbia, New York, on March 15, 1825. Less than two years after their marriage, his wife died, childless, on January 15, 1854, at the place where they married. His second wife, with whom he had four children, was Mary Eliza Russell who was born about 1838 at Brooklyn, New York City, New York, and died there as a widow on September 23, 1869. Henry Clay graduated from Princeton University with a law degree in 1847. A captain in Company "G" of the Thirty-third regiment of the New Jersey Volunteers, he was fatally wounded as he led his men at the Battle of Dug Gap near Dalton, Georgia. He died on May 8, 1864, despite the ministrations of the Freylock family who attended to him at their farm at the foot of the mountain. Captain Henry Clay Bartlett was buried in an unmarked grave on their property.
